Tom Morris of St. Andrews (eBook)

1 Roots in the Links

Tom Morris’s ancestry can be traced back in St Andrews, as far as the earliest records permit, to a seventeenth-century namesake.1 All the Morris families were handloom weavers who, for five generations, played a central role in the affairs of the Weavers’ Craft Guild, having continuously at least one family member amongst its office-holders until the demise of the trades guilds in the mid-nineteenth century. Tom’s earliest ancestors knew St Andrews at its greatest and through the generations witnessed its descent into penury as, first, the Reformation stripped it of its ecclesiastical wealth, and then the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England in 1603 diminished its political status and importance as a centre of learning.2 The Union of the Parliaments of England and Scotland in 1707 reduced St Andrews to an insignificant, decaying, provincial Scottish township, a relic of its great past.

Despite the ravages of ecclesiastical and political change in St Andrews, golf remained at the core of this small university town on the east coast of Scotland. As early as 1552, Archbishop Hamilton, on being granted the rights of harvesting rabbits from the Links for food and skins, was reminded that the townspeople reserved their hereditary rights to pasture animals, dig turf and play golf. Golf was sufficiently commonplace in the Town for the Kirk Session records to mention it as a distraction from Sunday worship. In one such record in 1583, Alexander Miller and his two disobedient sons along with two other miscreants were warned about playing golf when they should have been in the Kirk.

Golf, as we know it today, first flourished on the east coast of Scotland and St Andrews has long been the most important venue of the game. The golfing ground within the ancient links land of whin-covered dunes, bordered by the North Sea to the east and the estuary of the River Eden to the north, was a natural place to play golf. It is not surprising that it became the best and most testing arena for the early game and the premier place of play for the golfing gentry.

Although it is not known if Tom Morris’s earliest ancestors played, there is circumstantial evidence that his great-grandfather did. John Morris was born in 1722 and married Janet Robertson in 1744, sister of Patrick and William, members of a golf ball making family already two generations established in the craft, with premises both in Leith and St Andrews.3 John and Janet had four surviving children and their eldest, John, born in 1752, was undoubtedly associated with golf on the Links of St Andrews.

It was during the early childhood of this John Morris, Tom’s grandfather, that an event of crucial significance took place that profoundly affected the future importance and prosperity of the Town. In 1754 twenty-two ‘Noblemen and Gentlemen of Fife’ gave a silver club to be played for over the Links and the Society of St Andrews Golfers was effectively formed, ultimately becoming The Royal and Ancient Golf Club in 1834 upon being granted Royal Patronage by King William IV.4 Today, it is the premier club in the world, governing the game in all countries except the United States of America and Mexico.

That Tom’s grandfather John and his great-uncle Robert were golfers is indisputable, for both figured prominently in a ten-year legal dispute known as the ‘Dempster Case’, or colloquially, as the ‘Rabbit Wars’, a bitter battle over the breeding of rabbits on the Links of St Andrews. In November 1797, a penurious St Andrews Town Council had sold the Links to Thomas Erskine who was Provost of the Town and Captain of the Golfing Society. The Links consisted of about 50 acres of arable land and 250 acres of sandy dunes covered with thick gorse and scrub. Within this area of dunes was a narrow strip of undulating grassland with humps and hollows interspersed with areas of flat plains. It was this small crook-shaped area of about 12 acres that constituted the golf course. Whether or not the Town Council had a right to sell the Links is a topic debated to this day, but sell the Links they did, with the reservation in the terms of the sale that, ‘always no damage or hurt be done to the golf links’.

Two years later Erskine, now Sir Thomas, the Earl of Kellie, sold the lands on to a prominent St Andrews business family, father and son Charles and Cathcart Dempster.5 The Earl and Stuart Grace, who was the Town Clerk and Secretary of the Golfing Society, both understood that the purpose of the transaction was for the Dempsters to farm the rabbit population on the Links for commercial purposes, effectively turning the golf course and surrounding lands into a warren.

While Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson was turning his blind eye to the signal from the Fleet Commander to withdraw his ships at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, the Golfing Society of St Andrews was keeping a vigilant one on the state of the golfing ground. It would appear that the golf course quickly came under serious threat from the holes, scrapes and burrows that the much increased rabbit population made and, in that year, George Cheape, Captain of the Golfing Society, wrote to the Town Council complaining of the damage caused. The ancient rights of the citizens of the Town, he said, were not being upheld. By 1803 the conflicts brought matters into the courts and in 1805 the Council joined forces with the Society in claiming that the ancient right of playing golf on the Links was being seriously impaired; that the conditions regarding golf in the terms of the sale of the Links were being violated and that the townspeople had the right to take rabbits. War on the warrens was essentially declared. Marches of the citizenry on the Links were organised, the people were summoned by ‘tuck of drum’, rabbits were taken and warrens destroyed: the Dempsters were forced to bring a warrant against the Town, the Provost, magistrates and baillies, to prevent further destruction of their property.

When the case came to the Edinburgh Court of Session in 1805, the judge ordered that local evidence should be taken at St Andrews and in all some 39 witnesses were heard. Amongst the experts called to testify regarding the deterioration of the Links for golfing were the brothers John and Robert Morris. John was described as a ‘weaver and golf cady in St Andrews’ and Robert as ‘weaver’ who ‘plays at golf frequently… and has acted as a cady occasionally’. Robert had for some years been paid by the Golfing Society to maintain the Course. With them in the witness box stood their cousins, the brothers Patrick and William Robertson, golf ball makers whose trade had clearly not benefited from the clearance of whins and who were adamant that ‘rabbit scrapes are more abundant now than they were in the past’.

Tom’s grandfather, John Morris, then aged 53, stated that he had been a caddy for 30 years and was frequently on the Links, and testified that ‘these [rabbit] scrapes have become very numerous since Mr Dempster got the links’. In his opinion, ‘these holes or scrapes are a great prejudice to playing the game of golf and that if the number of rabbits continue the same as at present, it will become very difficult playing the golf, if there be any playing at all’.

Robert Morris, John’s brother, aged 49, surprisingly appeared for the Dempsters. He stated that he had known the Links for 40 years, played golf frequently himself and acted as a caddy occasionally for the last 20 years. Robert doubted that the Links had suffered from the rabbit farming enterprise. His testimony reflected the deep division in the Town over the Dempsters’ activities. The legal case dragged on for years and the result was deadlock. In the end, the rabbits themselves solved the case by contracting an infectious disease that all but wiped them out.

From the ‘Rabbit Wars’ papers we learn something about the state of the Links between 1760 and 1805. We also learn much about the extent to which golf was played. The social spectrum of the people called to give evidence testified to the broad appeal of the game in the Town. For too long the notion has prevailed that only gentlemen at their leisure played golf, with men from the working class – the caddies – carrying their clubs. In truth, golf was played by every class of society in St Andrews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and was an integral part of the way of life of the Town.

Looking back over two hundred years today, it is clear that the situation which arose on the Links of St Andrews in the first few years of the nineteenth century threatened the very existence of golf. Indeed, if the Society of St Andrews Golfers had not initiated legal proceedings to protect the Course, or if the outcome of those proceedings had been different, golf, if it had survived at all, would have in all probability remained a parochial Scottish pastime. With the game all but dying out at the time in Edinburgh and other golfing centres, the demise of the game at St Andrews would have been catastrophic. St Andrews literally kept the game alive for the next 30 or 40 years.

An altogether different outcome of the ‘Rabbit Wars’ was the debt incurred through legal costs by an already impoverished Town Council, who decided that a sale of land was the only solution to easing this position. Thus the triangle of land bordering the Town side of the eighteenth hole, known as Pilmuir Links, was sold in 1821 as a series of feus.6 This land was an integral part of the Course of the day and the Society of Golfers immediately threatened legal action against the Council. With the great expense of the...