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Changes in the Ownership of Land in Ross-shire. 305
Amount of valued Amount of valued
Ucnt held in Rent which has
Parishes I.N RoiJri-siiiRE. 18S3 in direct sue- changed hands Total.
cession since between 1756 and
1750. 1883.
Brought forward £14 280 14 7 £48,247 12 9 £62,528 7 4
Uiquhart 1,124 687 5 1,811 5
Urray 764 6 1.689 12 2,453 18
£16,169 7 £50,624 9 9 £66,793 10 4
The Lews 5,250 5,250
£16,169 7 £55,874 9 9 £72,043 10 4
Of the total valued rent, amounting with the Lews to
£72,043, land representing £55,874: (not far siiort of 80 per cent.)
had passed through the market in those 127 years, and much of it
had been sold more than once.
The appended statement showing how the Ross-shire estates
of 1853 were distributed 97 years earlier, will, I hope, be found of
interest in the study though it can hardly be made so at a meeting.
T would ])articularly call attention to the fact that in 1756 the
landowners are described as possessing a large proportion of their
lands in vice of a previous possessor, and most frequently even that
previous possessor does not appear in the roll of 1643.
In conclusion I gather from these Valuation Eolls evidence
that property in land in Ross-shire has been constantly changing
hands, and to an extent very much greater than is popularly supposed
; that families who were great landowners little more than a
century ago have disappeared, and others have risen in their place,
and that the great estates of to-day are made up of many smaller
estates or part of estates ; that up to the middle of this century
property in land was getting into fewer and fewer hands, but that
during the last thirty years the tendency has been to a wider distribution
of ownership. That at all events since 1643 rents have
fluctuated in Hoss-shire, just as in other places, in accordance with
l)rices and other circumstances which determined the demand at
the time for the hire of land, and have not been tixed at a customary
amount, established by usage as is sometimes assumed ; and
that the Valuation Roll of 1643, made up at a time when the clan
system was still in full force, bears witness to a distribution of the
owaiership of land in Ross-shire under which the tenantry of the
different Chiefs can have formed but a small proportion of the
population, and shows, therefore, that the clau-forces must have
been largely if not mainly drawn from lands in respect of which
the Chief had neither the rights nor the liabilities of ownership.
The following is the statement prepared by me, to which I
have been referrinjj:
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