There were economic reasons for insisting that the populace wore clothes made from materials made in Scotland, but the main reason for this act appears to have been one of sheer elitism. Nobody but royalty and nobility, it seems, was allowed to dress themselves in finery.
The king’s majesty and estates of this parliament considering the great abuse among his subjects of the lower order presuming to imitate his highness and the nobility in the use and wearing of costly clothing of silks of all sorts, wool, cambric, fringes and edging of gold, silver and silk and woollen cloth made and brought from other foreign countries as a result of which the prices of these are grown so exorbitant that it cannot be any longer sustained without great injury and inconvenience of the commonweal, given that God has granted this realm sufficient resources for clothing its inhabitants if the people were virtuously employed in working at this at home, whereby great numbers of poor people now wandering begging might also be released to the benefit and wealth of the country.
For the remedy of which it is statute and ordained that none of his highnesses subjects man or woman being under the degrees of dukes, earls, lords of parliament, knights, or landed gentlemen, that has or may spend two thousand merks of free yearly rent or fifty chalders victual at least, or their wives, sons, or daughters shall after the first day of May next, use or wear in their clothing or apparel or lining thereof any cloth of gold or silver, velvet, satin, damask, taffeta or any trimmings, fringes, edging or embroidery of gold, silver or silk, nor wool, cambric or woollen cloth made and brought from any foreign countries under the pain of a hundred pounds of every landed gentleman, a hundred pounds of every yeoman for every day that his wife, son or daugher transgresses this act. And also that the poor people may be the better kept in work through the working of the country’s wool, therefore it is statute and ordained that no type of wool be transported out of this realm in time coming under the pain of confiscation for the same wool and of all the remaining movable goods of the persons, owners and transports thereof to our sovereign lord’s use.
[modified version, see Appendix VIII, p. 443]