Seven ill years

The Seven Ill Years, also known as the Seven Lean Years (seachd bliadhna gorta), is the term used for a period of widespread and prolonged famine in Scotland during the 1690s, named after the biblical famine in Egypt predicted by Joseph in the Book of Genesis. Estimates suggest between 5 and 15% of the total Scottish population died of starvation, while in areas like Aberdeenshire death rates may have reached 25%. One reason the shortages of the 1690s are so well remembered is because they were the last of their kind. As documented in tree ring records, the 1690s was the coldest decade in Scotland for the past 750 years. Failed harvests in 1695, 1696, 1698 and 1699, combined with an economic slump caused by the Nine Years' War, resulted in severe famine and depopulation. The Old Scottish Poor Law was overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis, although provision in the urban centres of the burghs was probably better than in the countryside. It led to migration between parishes and emigration to England, Europe, the Americas and particularly Ireland. The crisis resulted in the setting up of the Bank of Scotland and the Company of Scotland, whose failure following the Darien scheme increased the pressure for political union with England, finalised in the 1707 Union with England Act. Before the mid-17th century, difficult terrain, poor roads and primitive methods of transport meant there was little trade between different areas of Scotland. This became less true after 1660, with the number of rural towns authorised to hold markets increasing from 100 to over 300 by 1707, but surpluses were exported, the most significant being the lucrative cattle trade with England. For various reasons, Scottish agriculture was not as productive as it should have been, a situation which persisted into the first decades of the 18th century. Most settlements depended for subsistence on what was produced locally, often with very little in reserve in bad years.