As feudal distinctions declined in the early modern era, the major landholding orders, or heritors, were the lairds and yeomen. Others with property rights included husbandmen and free tenants. Many young people left home to become domestic and agricultural servants. The early modern era also saw the impact of the Little Ice Age, necessitating the shipping of large quantities of grain from the Baltic. Under the Commonwealth, the country was relatively highly taxed, but gained access to English markets. After the Restoration customs duties with England were re-established. Economic conditions were generally favourable, as landowners promoted better tillage and cattle-raising. The closing decade of the seventeenth century saw a slump, followed the failed harvests of the "seven ill years", but these shortages would be the last of their kind. After the Union of 1707 there was a conscious attempt to improve agriculture among the gentry and nobility. Enclosure displaced the run rig system and free pasture. The resulting Lowland Clearances saw hundreds of thousands of cottars and tenant farmers from central and southern Scotland forcibly removed. The later Highland Clearances saw the displacement of much of the population of the Highlands as lands were enclosed for sheep farming. Those that remained many were now crofters, living on very small, rented farms with indefinite tenure, dependent on kelping, fishing, spinning of linen and military service. Scotland suffered its last major subsistence crisis when the potato blight reached the Highlands in 1846.
