First full-length examination of bastardy in Scotland during the period, exploring its many ramifications throughout society.

For almost a century the islands of Orkney and Shetland were under the rule of the Stewart earls, father and son, a rule remarkable for its infamous reputation in island history. Robert Stewart was an illegitimate son of James V, king of Scots, who seized power in Orkney in the 1560s and was created earl of Shetland in 1581. Robert's son was the extraordinary and ill-starred Earl Patrick, 'Black Patie', whose execution for treason in 1615 brought the era to a close. This book has its foundations in two previous books by Peter Anderson, one on each character.

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.

This is the first full scholarly study of state formation and the exercise of state power in Scotland. It sets the Scottish state in a British and European context, revealing that Scotland — like larger and better-known states — developed a more integrated governmental system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This study provides an invaluable new contribution to the history of Scotland. Julian Goodare shows how the magnates ceased to exercise autonomous local power, and instead managed the new administrative structure through client networks. The state no longer drew its main revenues from land, but developed new taxes; its fighting forces were modernized and detached from landed power. With the Reformation, powerful church institutions were created, and were gradually integrated into the state. The states territorial integrity increased, giving it a closer and more troubled relationship with the Highlands. Scotland remained a sovereign state even after the union of crowns in 1603, but it was finally absorbed by England in 1707, and Dr Goodare examines the long-term context of this development.