@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot I don't even believe they were cash poor, in our area. At a clearance site dating to 1812, Staffordshire pottery was found, hardly the stuff of poor folk. They traded those cattle as far south as Falkirk. No, it was greed and power, creating the conditions that THEN allowed them to say "Look, they're poor," when the reality was that they had been impoverished.