Thirlage

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Thirlage was a feudal rule in Scotland that forced tenants living on a lord’s land to have their grain ground at the lord’s mill. The mill was owned by the feudal superior, and people bound by thirlage, called suckeners, had to bring their grain there to be ground and paid a share of the grain to the miller as payment for the grinding.

How it worked
- Suckeners were tenants tied to a particular mill. The miller’s income came from the multure, a portion of the grain ground.
- The miller, who enforced the rule, also had to help maintain the mill, its water supply, and related parts like the lade and weir. Tenants sometimes had to carry wood and even millstones to the site.
- Some terms you’ll hear in old records: multure (the mill toll or fee), dry multure (the fee even if the grain wasn’t ground), outsucken (mills that ground grain from outside their own area), and querns (a home grinding stone some people used to avoid thirlage).
- People could be fined or punished for not taking their grain to the thirlled mill. There were also stories of millers cheating by collecting more meal than allowed, or by other tricks around the mill.

What changed in 1799
- The Thirlage Act of 1799 repealed the obligation to bring all grain to the lord’s mill. This meant many mills lost customers and gradually closed as they couldn’t compete or cover costs.

Abolition and end of thirlage
- The last remnants of thirlage were finally removed by the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, with a formal end date in 2004.
- After that, the old system no longer applied, and tenants could grind their grain where they chose.

A little history and impact
- Thirlage was common across feudal Europe in various forms, like mill soke in England or banalité du moulin in France.
- The idea was to keep work and taxes tied to the lord’s mill, and to ensure the miller could earn a living by taking a fixed share of the grain. Over time, changes in farming and milling made the system unnecessary, so it was eventually abolished.