 New farming methods began to transform agriculture in some parts of the country . Monastic agriculture was organised in granges , farms run by lay brothers of the order . Granges were theoretically within 30 miles of the mother monastery , so that those working there could return for services on Sundays and feast days . They were used for variety of purposes , including pastoral , arable and industrial production . However , to manage more distant assets in Ayrshire , Melrose Abbey used Mauchline as a " super grange " , to oversee lesser granges . The rural economy appears to have boomed in the thirteenth century and was still buoyant in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death , which reached Scotland in 1349 , and may have carried off a third of the population . However , by the 1360s there was a severe falling off in incomes that can be seen in clerical benefices , of between a third and half compared with the beginning of the era , to be followed by a slow recovery in the fifteenth century . 
