An exploration of the diverse lived experiences of marginality in Scottish society from the sixteen to the eighteenth century. Throughout the early modern period, Scottish society was constructed around an expectation of social conformity: people were required to operate within a relatively narrow range of acceptable identities and behaviours. Those who did not conform to this idealised standard, or who were in some fundamental way different from the prescribed norm, were met with suspicion. Such individuals often attracted both criticism and discrimination, forcing them to live confirmed to the social margins. Focusing on a range of marginalised groups, including the poor, migrants, ethnic minorities, indentured workers and women, the contributors to this book explore what it was like to live at the boundaries of social acceptability, what mechanisms were involved in policing the divide between "mainstream" and "marginal", and what opportunities existed for personal or collective fulfilment. The result is a fresh perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the stories of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers a deeper understanding of the ordering assumptions of society more generally. Specific topics addressed range from the marginalisation of people with disabilities in the domestic sphere to female sex workers, and the place of executioners in society.

An exploration of the complex and multifaceted connection between deviant behaviour and social marginality in Scotland between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. During the early modern period in Scotland, deviant behaviour often went hand-in-hand with social marginality. Individuals might be ejected from the mainstream after breaching core behavioural standards; the experience of marginality itself often necessitated transgressive behaviour as a survival strategy; and, for some minority groups, the simple maintenance of their accustomed culture or lifestyle was understood through the lens of deviance. To be marginalised and to be deviant were, in many cases, two sides of the same coin. Focusing on a range of behaviours, including irregular sex, violent and verbal assault, petty criminality, piracy, political dissidence, and religious nonconformity, this book explores the connection between deviance and marginality in early modern Scotland, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It assesses why certain behaviours were judged to deserve social marginalisation, what mechanisms were used to enforce this, how individual and groups responded to it, and what opportunities existed for avoiding, escaping, or mitigating its effects. The result is a fresh and innovative perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the experiences of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers insights into the nature of crime and deviance in the pre-modern world. Specific topics covered include sexual deviance, defining words as witchcraft, piracy and the state, the weaponisation of "marginality" in verbal violence, covenanting women, and the connection between deviance and the "common musician".sses why certain behaviours were judged to deserve social marginalisation, what mechanisms were used to enforce this, how individual and groups responded to it, and what opportunities existed for avoiding, escaping, or mitigating its effects. The result is a fresh and innovative perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the experiences of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers insights into the nature of crime and deviance in the pre-modern world. Specific topics covered include sexual deviance, defining words as witchcraft, piracy and the state, the weaponisation of "marginality" in verbal violence, covenanting women, and the connection between deviance and the "common musician".sses why certain behaviours were judged to deserve social marginalisation, what mechanisms were used to enforce this, how individual and groups responded to it, and what opportunities existed for avoiding, escaping, or mitigating its effects. The result is a fresh and innovative perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the experiences of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers insights into the nature of crime and deviance in the pre-modern world. Specific topics covered include sexual deviance, defining words as witchcraft, piracy and the state, the weaponisation of "marginality" in verbal violence, covenanting women, and the connection between deviance and the "common musician".sses why certain behaviours were judged to deserve social marginalisation, what mechanisms were used to enforce this, how individual and groups responded to it, and what opportunities existed for avoiding, escaping, or mitigating its effects. The result is a fresh and innovative perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the experiences of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers insights into the nature of crime and deviance in the pre-modern world. Specific topics covered include sexual deviance, defining words as witchcraft, piracy and the state, the weaponisation of "marginality" in verbal violence, covenanting women, and the connection between deviance and the "common musician".ctive on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the experiences of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers insights into the nature of crime and deviance in the pre-modern world. Specific topics covered include sexual deviance, defining words as witchcraft, piracy and the state, the weaponisation of "marginality" in verbal violence, covenanting women, and the connection between deviance and the "common musician".

A set of essays intended to recognize the scholarship of Professor Cynthia Neville, the papers gathered here explore borders and boundaries in medieval and early modern Britain. Over her career, Cynthia has excavated the history of border law and social life on the frontier between England and Scotland and has written extensively of the relationships between natives and newcomers in Scotland’s Middle Ages. Her work repeatedly invokes jurisdiction as both a legal and territorial expression of power. The essays in this volume return to themes and topics touched upon in her corpus of work, all in one way or another examining borders and boundaries as either (or both) spatial and legal constructs that grow from and shape social interaction. Contributors are Douglas Biggs, Amy Blakeway, Steve Boardman, Sara M. Butler, Anne DeWindt, Kenneth F. Duggan, Elizabeth Ewan, Chelsea D.M. Hartlen, K.J. Kesselring, Tom Lambert, Shannon McSheffrey, and Cathryn R. Spence.

Reconstructs the life of Peter Goldman and presents a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters. The Dundonian physician Peter Goldman, one of an immigrant family of merchants, was the first Scot to take a medical degree from Leiden; he then undertook research in Oxford, London, and Paris, before resettling in Dundee. An important figure in contemporary Scottish literary culture, he maintained a wide correspondence with significant intellectual figures and influenced two landmark Scottish publishing projects: the Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (1637) and the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland (1654). However, his major literary achievement was his Latin poetry, which establishes him as a unique voice of his time. His longest and most prominent work is an elegy on the deaths of four of his brothers, strikingly narrated in the voice of their lamenting mother. This book reconstructs and provides a study of Goldman's life, career and writing. It also offers a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters, with accompanying commentary. Appendices provide an edited list of his remarkable library and a transcript of his testament.

A nuanced approach to the role played by clerics at a turbulent time for religious affairs.

Illuminates how the ceremonial dimension of death and the succession reflected both Scottish royal identity and a broader culture of ceremony. To date, scholarly attention to royal ceremony in Scotland from the Middle Ages into the early modern period has been rather haphazard, with few attempts to explore how these crucial moments for the representation of royal authority. This monograph provides a long durée analysis of the ceremonial cycle of death and succession associated with Scottish kingship from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, including the final century of the Canmore dynasty, the crisis of the Bruce-Balliol conflict, and the emergence and consolidation of the Stewart family up to the funeral of last monarch buried in Scotland, James V, in 1543. Using a broad range of primary sources, including financial records and material culture, many of them previously untapped, it addresses key questions about kingship and power, the function of ceremony in legitimising royal authority, its significance in relation to the practical exercising of power, and evidence for Scottish similarities and distinctiveness within wider European contexts.

A study of Scottish thinkers and writers in their political and cultural context. The "advancement of learning" was the term used by late seventeenth-century Scots for intellectual enquiry of all kinds. Encouraged by Stuart patronage, and echoing a Royalist ideology of continuity and order following the chaos of the Civil War, the "Virtuosi", Scottish writers and thinkers, sought to define Scotland's identity. They undertook structured, empirical enquiry into Scottish natural history and geography, human history and antiquities, law and society, while the legal and medical professions developed their status and purpose through institutions such as the Royal College of Physicians and the Advocates' Library. They both complemented and eclipsed the changing intellectual life of the Church and Universities. This book considers the work of leading authors, such as Sir George Mackenzie, Sir Robert Sibbald and Lord Stair, alongside the many other voices engaged in learned research and debate, examining their shared or contrasting philosophy and methods. It shows how a distinctively Scottish take on the "Scientific Revolution" was enhanced by close contacts with the Royal Society and English thinkers, and a conscious membership of the European Republic of Letters.

Examines the political significance and performativity of elite hunting in sixteenth-century Scotland. Hunting during the early modern period was not simply a popular form of elite entertainment; it also had an important part in court politics and royal governance. However, little attention has been devoted to it in sixteenth-century Scotland. This study of the role that hunting played in the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, in France and in Scotland, aims both to shed new light on the subject and to provide a new perspective on Mary herself. Drawing on the hunting treatises of Gaston Phoebus and Henri de Ferrières, the histories of Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie and John Lesley, and a wide variety of other literary and visual sources, including letters, administrative records and fieldwork evidence, it reveals the full significance of the hunt in Mary's life and career. She is shown to be an able and enthusiastic huntress, using this "pastime" to establish herself as a Stewart monarch, demonstrate her royal authority, and, particularly during the later stages of her reign, to attempt to hold together a fractious Scottish aristocracy.

This book hinges upon ideas and discourses variously known under labels such as “Mercantilism” and “Cameralism”. Often viewed as antithesis of capitalism, inclusive institutions and good economy in the “West”, this book re-assembles them and builds them into a coherent origin story of modern capitalism. It explores the field of intellectual and conceptual history, especially the history of Renaissance and Mercantilism in a longer history of capitalism. Rather than hindrances, the author argues that Mercantilist and Cameralist political economies presented essential stepping stones of modern capitalism, in Britain and beyond. This book will be of interest to academics and students in general economic history, the history of capitalism, economic development and the history of economic thought.

The western coastal lands of the Northern Highlands are squeezed between the northern Hebrides and Drumalban, the mountainous spine of Highland Scotland. This is a region justly famed for some of the finest and most unspoilt scenery in the British Isles – but what happened here in times past? Scotland's Northwest Frontier provides the answer. For a long time, this area was a frontier zone between the medieval kingdoms of Norway and Scotland, and then between the Gaelic Lords of the Isles and the Scottish kings. In the 18th century, this remote seaboard was Britain’s ‘Afghanistan’, a dangerous region often beyond the control of London and Edinburgh. It was the last hiding place of Bonnie Prince Charlie before his escape to France after his Jacobite army had been crushed on Culloden Moor. A land of clans and lost causes, this is the story of powerful lords and warrior chiefs, Presbyterian soldiers of the Covenant and Hanoverian redcoats, Highland Clearances, road and railway builders, whisky smugglers and opium traders, from Viking times to the beginning of the 21st century. Scotland's Northwest Frontier is the entertaining story of what was for long a lawless region, followed through eight turbulent centuries. Backed by comprehensive appendices and glossary, this is one for the fireside, a travelling companion and an invaluable reference source for the bookshelf. Scotland's Northwest Frontier will appeal to those interested in Scottish history, and people who descend from Scottish clans and families.