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The Scottish natural philosopher David Brewster played an important role in the history of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), being at different times its general secretary, vice-president, and president. This paper examines his career between joining the society in 1808 and becoming principal of the University of St Andrews in 1838. It explores how he built a network of scientific and personal connections with key individuals in Scottish science that helped him establish himself as a leading Scottish natural philosopher of the nineteenth century. The surviving records of the RSE allow us to see how Brewster used recommendations of new members and his own contributions to the meetings of the society to build his reputation. Brewster was a committed reform Whig for his entire career. We will see how he both benefited from the patronage of fellow Whigs, such as John Playfair and James Russell, and was able to build strong personal connections with figures from across the political spectrum, from the Tory president of the society, Sir Walter Scott, to the radical anatomist, Robert Knox. Brewster's career at the RSE has much to tell about the roles of politics, patronage and sociability in the scientific culture of Scotland in the early nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1500s the distinctive turreted brooches of Lochbuie, Lorn and Ugadale were produced for the Argyll families Maclaine, MacDougall and Mackay. Unusual in style by comparison with other brooches of the time, they are stylistically similar as a group. Around 1730 an inscription was added to the Lochbuie brooch stating that it was made by a 'Tinker'. This paper examines the style, skills, materials and techniques involved in itinerant silversmithing in order to evaluate the claim that the three brooches were made by 'Tinkers', otherwise known as Nacken. Drawing on elements of art historical, ethnographic and archaeological research, the paper challenges existing assumptions about itinerant silversmithing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opening years of the 1700s were financially difficult for Scotland. The poor harvests of 1696 and 1697 had pushed up food prices and led to widespread starvation in the country, while coin flowed out to buy much needed imports. The loss of trade and taxation associated with the Nine Years' War (1688–97) exacerbated issues, before the relinquishing of the Scottish colony at Darien compounded the nation's economic problems in the new century. In 1704, a funding deficit then forced the Bank of Scotland to stop cash payments, lending, and discounting. In response to the economic crisis, a body of financial literature emerged from Scotland in 1705 which attempted to improve the situation. This included proposals to address the shortage of coin by debasing existing stocks with copper, schemes to establish land banks and issue a new paper currency on this security, and a proposal for credit secured on the money tied up in the failed Darien scheme. The works emerged from various men, with various models, but all were focused on capitalising the Scottish economy. This article will provide an overview of these works, and will make the case that by the middle of 1705 many of the Scottish parliamentarians tasked with considering these proposals were already predisposed to the idea that a union with England was the solution to Scotland's economic problems. Therefore, despite the revolutionary nature of some of the financial proposals, all were rejected by the administration, as the focus of the Scottish parliament shifted to paving the way for Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been known that there are similarities between the Declaration of Arbroath and the text known as the Irish Remonstrance which antedates it by three years and survives only in Scottish sources. Both are letters to Pope John XXII complaining of injustices the senders experience at English hands, asking him to intervene that they may be left in peace having a prince of their own ruling over them, the Declaration asserting that the Scots have chosen Robert I as their king, the Remonstrance that the Irish have selected his younger brother, Edward Bruce. Being diplomatic letters both naturally follow a set formula but this paper argues that, when broken into their constituent parts, they make (most notably in their exordium and narratio) a series of about a dozen important points in support of their case, in such a matching sequence as to indicate that the author of the Declaration relied heavily on the text of the Remonstrance. Given the high regard in which the Declaration is justifiably held, and the rather poor opinion modern scholarship has had of its Irish exemplar, the paper advocates a re-evaluation of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dury thought Schlezer "a modest godly and learned young man", and recommended him to the Anglo-Prussian intelligencer in London, Samuel Hartlib ( I c i . 1600-62).[9] This connection to Hartlib, which was initially limited to correspondence on literary matters, would later prove influential to the advancement of Schlezer's diplomatic career. Yet the desire to marry was also conditioned by Schlezer's concerns for his children, "especially my daughter".[35] For by this time Schlezer had been joined in London not only by his two children, but also by his sister, Elisabetha.[36] As Bernhard Erdmansdörffer has documented, Schlezer's diplomatic and personal missions in England came apart at the seams between 1656 and 1658. Keywords: Scotland; 17th century; John Slezer EN Scotland 17th century John Slezer 123 136 14 04/05/22 20220401 NES 220401 In 1669 an entrepreneurial foreigner named John Slezer arrived in Scotland. Schlezer's movements in the Netherlands are also documented in HP 36/1/3a (Schlezer in Amsterdam as recipient of Comeniana in 1637); HP, 37/62a (Johann Moriaen to Hartlib, 5 April 1640), mentioning Schlezer's communication of mathematical papers. [Extracted from the article]

This article seeks to examine Scottish politics in the decade or so following the Second World War. The objective is to uncover the texture of Scottish politics in a period that has been characterised rather simplistically. Much of the evidence for the paper is drawn from the Scottish popular press, most notably newspapers such as the Bulletin, which was a Glasgow publication with a unionist outlook, motivated by a concern to keep Scottish issues to the fore and to resist centralisation. The article will examine the way in which interpretations of this period in Scottish politics, as being one dominated by a unionism that was common to the main parties, serve to flatten what was an interesting and contested landscape. There is a considerable literature on this period in British historiography that engages in a debate about the value of the idea of 'consensus' in British politics. The apparent consensus over the Union hid a range of important debates about the way in which the Union ought to operate that were of such an extent as to bring the idea of a unionist consensus into question. Given that the Scottish National Party was such a marginal force in Scottish politics in this period, it seems more sensible to focus on the debates about the meaning of the Union rather than to adopt an existential focus that was simply not present in day-to-day political debate in the decade following the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores an aspect of the legacy of the Declaration of Arbroath and expands upon earlier research into tensions surrounding the commemorations in 1814 of the battle of Bannockburn. It considers the evidence for connections between those radical artisans and their leaders who attempted to rouse popular insurrection in 1820, Scotland's so-called 'radical war', and Bruce's now-celebrated missive to the papacy of 6 April 1320, five centuries before. Did the armed workers moving on Carron Shore Iron Foundry on 5 April 1820, routed by troops at Bonnymuir, seek to coincide with the Declaration's anniversary? To what extent was the radicals' own declaration, the Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland, influenced by the text of 1320? If so, did this represent a continuation, a renewal or a debut for the Declaration as an inspiration for popular political participation in modern times? A survey of the holdings of early working-class subscription, circulation and public libraries in central Scotland c. 1790–c. 1830 can be made to identify both known and previously unnoticed published works which reproduced, translated and/or discussed the Declaration, as well as any radicalised readers. This reveals public awareness of Arbroath in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to have been potentially far more widespread than hitherto recognised by historians, if still marginal as a catalyst to political agitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse in a comparative perspective diplomatic exchanges involving the Christian realms of the Iberian peninsula, especially the crown of Aragon, during the later middle ages. In a framework of legal pluralism, two types of community—kingdoms and towns—were especially important in diplomatic practice. The diplomacies of kings, communities within kingdoms and towns interacted in complex entanglements. When kings were absent or became the enemy of communities, the diplomatic role of the latter could increase dramatically. This phenomenon is explored in two case-studies: the so-called 'great division' of the Mallorcan king's lands (1324–26) and the Catalan civil war (1462–73). Some communities appear to have had an expert knowledge of diplomatic codes, practices and languages. The execution of diplomacy could be challenging and crucial for the resilience of communities but it could also reveal the fragility of their unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hoping to stop the ratification of a treaty of incorporating union with England, late in 1706 the parish minister Robert Wylie quoted the Declaration of Arbroath in a draft manifesto for an armed uprising. Rather than seeing Wylie's manifesto as part of a perceived tradition of popular sovereignty rooted in the Declaration of Arbroath, this paper asks what his quotation reveals about this early modern moment. It confirms a growing awareness of the Declaration of Arbroath in Scottish political culture and its usefulness as patriotic rhetoric for Whigs and Jacobites alike, aided by the publication of English translations from 1689. It shows how Wylie used the Declaration to suggest that the pro-treaty majority in the Scottish parliament was a traitorous faction out of step with the mind of a nation bound by its covenant oaths and how this attack on the legitimacy of the estates went against more than a century of presbyterian efforts to bolster the authority of the parliament as a counter to Stewart power. Wylie's document thus confirms the rising relevance of public opinion in this era and its construction in terms of conscience and covenants; and underlines a key struggle in the making of the union between extra-parliamentary opinion, highlighted in petitions and weaponised through calls for recesses and special assemblies, and the stature of the Scottish parliament as the embodiment of the political nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The HALO Trust was founded in 1988 to alleviate suffering among civilians living in hazardous areas. Today, it is the largest humanitarian de-mining charity in the world. Its earliest operations were in Afghanistan. Following the Soviet withdrawal, HALO moved into Kabul where it established a clinic for casualties of war, developed mine risk education and gradually rolled out an innovative mine clearance programme. These interventions helped to transform mine clearance from being a military legacy into a humanitarian priority. Much of the early strategic foresight for HALO extended from the military experience of the former Scottish foot soldier Colonel Colin Campbell Mitchell of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Based on semi-structured interviews with key participants and access to private papers and diaries, this article provides a narrative framework for understanding the emergence of humanitarian mine clearance or 'mine action', as it is now termed. Through sometimes fractious dialectical relationships with various United Nations agencies and discreet dealings with Afghanistan's communist government and regional warlords, HALO became a vital implementing partner in the work of refugee resettlement and rehabilitation assistance. Retrieving its history contributes to a clearer identification of the intersections between military expertise, development, humanitarianism and the post-Cold War world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In relation to the exercise of violence and disorder in late fourteenth-century northern Scotland, previous studies have suggested that the waning of royal and magnate control, owing to successive wars and the economic crisis caused by European-wide climate regression and plague, led to the rise of lesser Gaelic military kindreds in the central Highlands. The disorder at the end of that century, in particular, has been discussed in terms of the adoption of a Gaelicised style of lordship by Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan, and his conflicts with the neighbouring secular and ecclesiastical authorities. This paper, however, investigates another aspect of the disorder in the north, focussing on the conflicts between other local non-Gaelic lords and the regional ecclesiastical communities in Moray, which have received limited attention so far, and also discusses the political, economic and social factors behind these disputes with a view to the contribution of recent environmental history. In addition, the study highlights that the adoption of the Gaelicised style of lordship, traditionally considered a peculiarity of the earl of Buchan, was also found among other non-Gaelic local magnates, suggesting the possibility of a more nuanced understanding of Highland–Lowland divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores belief and identity as expressed through the material culture of dress. It focuses on supernatural engagements through material culture linked to human and animal bodies and offers a view of the means by which everyday ritual, habit and devotion were embodied and facilitated through dress and other amulets, including contextually re-purposed coins. The evidence is primarily archaeological and derives from medieval Perthshire, a place with wide connections, and so the discussion is presented in the context of Scottish and European practices. The key themes are status, magic and belief, all three of which speak to identity. The practices they elucidate are explored primarily through jewellery and dress fittings, pilgrimage souvenirs, coins and other amulets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews documentary and pictorial evidence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries concerning the wearing of plaids by men. Initially, sixteenth-century sources that specifically use the term 'plaid' are examined, in order to build a working definition, and this is then applied to earlier sources in languages other than Gaelic, where the terminology is uncertain. The early sources provide insight regarding the origins of traditions associated with plaid wearing. It is suggested that the origins of Highland military dress lie in the west Highlands and Islands in the mid-sixteenth century with the adoption of tartan plaids by local warriors. The article also draws attention to an apparent long running belief that plaids were derived from ancient Greek or Roman dress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence for textiles in viking-age Scotland and the adjacent Irish Sea region derives from small fragments usually surviving as mineralised products associated with metal dress fittings and grave goods such as shield bosses and weaving battens, excavated from the furnished graves of both women and men. Since Scottish viking-age textiles were last reviewed over twenty years ago, this paper collates information from antiquarian finds and more recent excavations which employed considerably enhanced techniques for retrieving fragile archaeological textiles. Evidence is presented for the occurrence and role of plant-based textiles derived from flax and hemp including linen in funerary processes as burial garments, shrouds and wrapping other grave goods, such as weapons and tools. Many richly appointed women's graves in viking-age Scotland were accompanied by tool assemblages used in the manufacture and maintenance of textiles. The presence of these tools raises questions about the status of textile production and the roles women played in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

22 C. E. Lutz, I Essays on Manuscripts and Rare Books i (Connecticut, 1975); M. D. Reeve "Manuscripts copied from printed books", in J. B. Trapp (ed.), I Manuscripts in the Fifty Years after the Invention of Printing i (London, 1983), 12-23; David McKitterick, I Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830 i (Cambridge, 2003). Manuscript versions of this text include BnF fr. 5750 and fr. 14116; BL, Stowe 582; Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library, ms 1491; Paris, École national supérieure des Beaux-Arts, ms 491; and Blois, Musée du château, inv 73.7.90. Keywords: Scotland; France; 16th century; diplomacy; Morgan Library & Museum; MS M. 42 EN Scotland France 16th century diplomacy Morgan Library & Museum MS M. 42 109 128 20 04/02/21 20210401 NES 210401 This paper examines a manuscript (New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.42) which was produced in France for a member of the Scottish royal family. [Extracted from the article]

The argument of this paper is that studies of an earlier world have something to tell modern political economy about the way economies develop and that, while history must draw on economic insights, economics ought not to be a science without time. The paper generalises from one sphere of trade, known from the Berwick 'particulars of custom', to national income, which can be estimated (or guessed at) from ecclesiastical taxations. Where studies of medieval Scotland have taken a distinctly theoretical, legal turn, it may do no harm to discuss the practicalities of concrete economic evidence: cargoes, merchants, ships, sailors and so on. The mechanics of customs administration can also be followed in the particulars. The taxations suggest that the immediate demand-side impacts of the export trade had longer-term supply-side effects, as landlords developed their sheep farming interests. The export trade tied in with foreign taxations, generating funds for transmission overseas. The opening of the economy had the potential for the usual multiplier effects but these were counter-balanced by selfish, and hugely damaging, English interference in Scotland's trade in Europe. Fourteenth-century Scots put up stiff resistance but could not entirely escape the tribulations brought on their heads by English decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the period after the Great Highland Famine being labelled by some historians as a period of relative prosperity for the crofting and cottar community of north-west Sutherland, poverty and occasional destitution remained the norm. This article examines the structural causes and social consequences of this recurring pattern, principally from the perspective of the owners and managers of the Sutherland estate. The views of those factors 'on the ground' revolved around the organisation of immediate assistance for the people, as well as a fear of a 'dependency' culture being the permanent result of landlord charitable aid. These views clashed with those of the estate commissioner and ducal family, who were concerned with their public image, especially in the wake of unfavourable comment on the clearances. These contrasting views were further complicated by contemporary debates about charity and Poor Law reform which, although often metropolitan in focus, had a direct impact on the Sutherland estate's response to destitution in the mid-nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patrick Wormald used legal material buried deep in volume i of the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland to argue for a comparatively maximalist view of early Scottish royal government. The paper compares this Scottish legal material to two Old English codes to show that there existed in Scotland structures of social organisation similar to that in Anglo-Saxon England and a comparable level of royal control over crime by the early eleventh century. The model of a strong judicial regime in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, put forward fully by Wormald in volume i of The Making of English Law, suggests that the kingdom of the Scots could have been inspired by (or followed a parallel trajectory to) its Anglo-Saxon neighbour in its government's assumption of rights of amendment previously controlled by kin-groups. English influence on Scottish legal and constitutional development can therefore be seen in the tenth and eleventh centuries as much as it can in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The paper also suggests methods of examining the legal material in volume i of the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland and effectively clears the way for further study of this neglected corpus of evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alexander Broadie discusses "Arbroath in the Shadow of Scotus" in typically clear and convincing style, a big score for the Declaration since he believes Scotus to be the greatest philosopher that Scotland has ever produced. According to a note on the bibliographical page, 'This book was initiated by Michael Rücker, Senior Commissioning Editor, who ingeniously first thought of it and made Klaus Peter Müller create it'. Müller, Scotland and Arbroath: 700 Years of Fighting for Freedom, Sovereignty and Independence When MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament) Alasdair Allan proposed a motion to highlight the Declaration, he secured only 14 signatures, none from Labour, [the] Lib Dem[s] or Conservatives. [Extracted from the article]

This paper challenges the idea that eighteenth-century Scotland was simply, as T. C. Smout once described it, 'a landowners' world'. It does so by examining the relationships between landowners and a sample of medium-sized and smaller burghs. To some extent, the case made here - that historians have by and large not properly appreciated the degree of independence and influence of the burghs - is suggestive. Partly, it derives from a particular view of the nature of 'urban community' and civic identity in this period. However, the bulk of the case rests on the close analysis of a series of issues which tended to bring towns and landowners into conflict and draws heavily on one particular case study - Kirkcudbright in the later Georgian period. Very modest in size, and with a single local dominant landowner - the earls of Selkirk - whose properties surrounded the burgh, Kirkcudbright provides a lens through which to view a relationship between town and landowner which was far from one-sided. As the case of Kirkcudbright illustrates very clearly, even where a landowner exercised significant and close influence, burgh elites took very seriously the task of stewardship of burgh interests and privileges, and they did so, so far as we can tell, with considerable support from the urban population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the religious dimension to popular protest in the early eighteenth century, highlighting in particular the continued influence of what has been called the Covenanting tradition – the defence of Presbyterian church government, popular sovereignty and the resistance of Anglican imperialism – in southwest and west central Scotland. Religiously inspired ideas of equality and economic equity in God's world, combined with the desire to resist the encroachment of Anglican hierarchy, drove ordinary Presbyterians to rebel. There is evidence to suggest that the reaction of some protesters to socio-economic conditions was coloured by their theological worldview. The phenomenon at work in southwest Scotland might best be described as ‘Presbyterian moral economy’. The paper suggests that lowland Presbyterian culture coloured popular protest to a degree not hitherto recognised. Presbyterian moral economy was a robust and continuous – but unduly neglected – strand in the history of Scottish radicalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to enlarge the picture of Highland emigration, not only by examining a little-studied region, but also by incorporating the sociological concepts of migration networks and the ‘value-added migration process’. To illustrate the migration process and the importance of networks, this paper analyses the origins of one Highland community in the United States, Scotch Settlement, established in eastern Ohio in 1802. Many of the émigrés in Scotch Settlement came from Strathnairn and Strathdearn, both located south of Inverness. This article explores the migration process that led individuals from this area to eastern Ohio, focusing on the particular economic conditions of Strathnairn and Strathdearn and the role of networks. The southern and eastern Highlands have been seen as being more stable and more technically advanced. This may very well be true for much of this region, especially that which was geographically Lowland. However, parishes like Moy and Dalarossie may not have been so blessed. The significant out-migration from these parishes probably was not caused by accessible employment opportunities, but because of the lack of opportunity in their home parishes. However, the long history of migration from this area coupled with the many opportunities nearby, especially in Inverness, may have meant that the residents of this region were better able to cope. There seem to have been fewer social pressures keeping them in their parishes while well-established migration networks meant that they had many more opportunities to depart. The Scotch Settlement emigrants, faced with disheartening circumstances not of their own making, decided that to best provide for themselves and their families it would be necessary to emigrate to the United States where they could obtain ‘a better way of living’ than they could in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Leges Scocie ( LS), the main source used by Patrick Wormald in ‘Anglo-Saxon Law and Scots Law’. It is shown here that the capitula of LS reveal much not only about the development of legal procedure in Scotland but also about the nature of medieval Scottish society in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In the process of this discussion, some conclusions put forward by Wormald about this material are questioned. This paper also shows that the ‘laws’ of David, William and Alexander II, once believed to be nebulous texts without any clear manuscript form, are, in fact, coherent legal compilations worthy of study in their own right. This corrects the impression that the early laws of Scotland survive in a manuscript tradition too late and too complicated to be studied with any fruitful results and thus opens up the material in volume i of The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland for further study. The paper concludes by arguing that the evidence contained in all these lawcodes can provide rather different narratives of subjects that are key to our understanding of Scotland during the central Middle Ages: the exercise of royal power, the ‘Anglo-Norman Era’ and the extent of the Scottish state before the twelfth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses customs figures to show that herring exports from the east and west coast lowlands expanded significantly in the last six decades of the sixteenth century. The paper argues that the rise was primarily due to the north-west Highland fisheries being opened up and exploited by east and west coast burghs. These ventures required greater capital supplies and more complex organisation than their local inshore fisheries and they were often interrupted by political hostilities. However, the costs were a fraction of those required to establish a deepwater buss fleet, enabling Scotland to expand production and take advantage of European demand for fish while minimising additional capital costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In seventeenth-century Scotland textiles were made in most districts and marketed widely at home and overseas. Woollens and linens, yarn, cloth, bonnets and stockings, with clear regional specialisations, were manufactured, but they were all of low cost and quality. Comparative advantage came from low rural wages. The wide distribution and character of textile production in the seventeenth century proved of great importance for post-Union success. Among imports the variety and social spread of luxury widened and deepened, though demand was restricted to the upper classes and the middling orders in Edinburgh and other large burghs. The seventeenth century, especially the second half, was a time of widening consumption of exotic articles such as tobacco, sugar and coffee among consumables, Asian silks and cottons (and their imitations) as articles of dress, and wall-hangings and pictures as décor. The social anxiety and economic stress this engendered gave rise to sumptuary laws like that of 1681. These had limited impact, though imports remained sensitive to tariffs. The letters of Andrew Russell, a merchant resident in Rotterdam between 1668 and 1697, demonstrate how this trade was carried out in both directions, and how the market responded to governmental attempts at control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: Scotland; medieval; early modern; dress and décor EN Scotland medieval early modern dress and décor 305 313 9 12/09/21 20211201 NES 211201 The articles in this special issue of I The Scottish Historical Review i are the product of a conference entitled 'Dress and Décor: Domestic Textiles and Personal Adornment in Scotland up to 1700', hosted at the University of St Andrews in March 2018.[1] The event brought together a wide range of researchers from the fields of history, archaeology, heritage, and dress and textile studies to focus on material display in medieval and early modern Scotland. Caroline Paterson opens with a discussion of dress and textiles from roughly two hundred early medieval pagan Norse graves in Scotland. She uses a variety of sources to recover the monarchs' own perspectives and intentions in relation to the visual and material aspects of their weddings, including James VI's personal writing on dress, eyewitness accounts and records of the incredible expense outlaid by the royal household on wedding-related dress and textiles. Moving the subject of dress accessories to Perthshire, Mark Hall explores the apotropaic and religious powers of dress fittings, jewellery, horse accessories, seal matrices, pilgrimage souvenirs and coins. [Extracted from the article]

The Irish rebellion of October 1641 drove large numbers of clerical migrants across the Irish Sea to Scotland. These ministers brought news of protestantism's plight in Ireland, petitions for charitable aid and, in many cases, requests to work as preachers in Scotland. Historians have long recognised the social and religious links between Ireland and Scotland in the mid-seventeenth century and have seen these men as part of a wider effort to establish presbyterianism across Britain and Ireland. Such an argument fails to understand the complexity of mid-seventeenth-century presbyterianism. This paper explores these petitions for work and the less-than-enthusiastic response of ecclesiastical authorities in Scotland. Rather than automatically embracing Irish ministers as fellow presbyterians, the covenanted kirk leadership was aware that the infant presbyterian congregations in Ireland had followed a very different course to their own. Rather than fellow sufferers for Christ's cause, or part of a wider covenanted network, kirk leaders needed to assess Irish ministers for their godly credentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The career and posthumous reputation of Andrew Lang (1844-1912) call into question Scottish historiographical conventions of the era following the death of Sir Walter Scott which foreground the apparent triumph of scientific methods over Romance and the professionalisation of the discipline within a university setting. Taking issue with the premise of notions relating to the Strange Death of Scottish History in the mid-nineteenth century, it is proposed that perceptions of Scottish historiographical exceptionalism in a European context and presumptions of Scottish inferiorism stand in need of re-assessment. By offering alternative readings of the reformation, by uncoupling unionism from whiggism, by reaffirming the role of Romance in 'serious' Scottish history, and by disrupting distinctions between whig and Jacobite, the historical works and the surviving personal papers of Andrew Lang cast doubt on many conventional grand narratives and the paradigms conventionally used to make sense of Scottish historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late eighteenth-century Scotland saw a period of growth in the availability of print material set against the backdrop of the Scottish Enlightenment. Yet despite much scholarly attention having been paid to the Enlightenment and an increasing interest in the books people were reading, little attention has been paid to the books that would have been found in individual Scottish houses and what they reveal about Scottish mindsets in these years. This paper addresses this topic, using a local case study of after-death inventories of personal possessions. These rich records reveal the size of household libraries, the varieties of books they contained, variation by occupation and social class, and the extent to which their owners engaged with and were influenced by debates and ideas of the time. In addition, the evidence allows us to consider the uses to which different types of books were put, examine differences between urban and provincial Scotland, and consider how and where people bought their books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scotland in 1700 was, in European terms, backward in the study of agronomy, but in the course of the eighteenth century the 'improvers' became a leading force in the study and practice of agricultural change. Nevertheless, over the course of the century they changed significantly: the early Honourable Society of Improvers, aristocrat-led and amateurish, gave way to a broader-based movement incorporating the rural middle-class, especially clergy and successful farmers, diffusing information through locally-based reports, magazines and societies. While unable to influence the course of agrarian change in the adverse demand circumstances before 1760, the improvers arguably had a profound impact on the response of the supply side between 1760 and 1820. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the growth of literature on agricultural improvement in the long eighteenth century, to look at its changing character, to form a judgement as to whom the improvers were, and to assess their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scotland has the oldest masonic lodges and the oldest masonic records in the world, predating their English counterparts by over a century. Yet freemasonry is usually neglected by social and cultural historians, partly, it may be, through ignorance and negative stereotypes of the movement and partly through the excessive secrecy of freemasons in the past. It is the purpose of this paper to survey the movement's development and indicate the many aspects of 'the Craft' that could prove rich subjects for research. Scottish lodges began as organisations of stonemasons but, at first slowly, began to admit men from other crafts and men of higher social status. This process accelerated fast after the foundation of a Grand Lodge in London in 1717: freemasonry became fashionable. But though many lodges came to be dominated by men of high status, many others remained - and remain - skilled working class in membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1738 and 1741 Scotland experienced one of the harshest harvest crises and depressions in the eighteenth-century. After at least two consecutive harvest failures (in 1739 and 1740 and perhaps also in 1738) agrarian and industrial output contracted, the price level doubled, and average incomes fell below subsistence. Due to an increase in mortality, there was also a considerable contraction in aggregate demand. Data drawn from both the micro- as well as the macro-level shows the disastrous economic impact such deficient harvests -- the depression's initial trigger -- would have upon Scotland, a pre-industrial economy dominated by agriculture. Such shocks in agrarian supply tended to work out as general adverse shocks in aggregate supply, as the economy's business cycle was to a large extent determined by movements in the harvest cycle. The implicit task of the paper also is to point out the variety of available sources for, as well as one possible strategy of, writing a quantitative macro-economic history of eighteenth-century Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scottish secondary education was radically extended in size and social reach in the first four decades of the twentieth century, bringing significant new opportunities in secondary schooling to girls, to children of the lower-middle and upper-working classes, and to Catholics. Most of the new secondary schools were based on those parish schools that had in the nineteenth century sent a few boys directly to university, and so this new secondary sector was a modernising of the mythological tradition of the lad o' pairts. The main reason it succeeded was that it sought to extend to new social groups the benefits of the version of liberal education that had come to be regarded as the foundation of professional careers. Thus the reforms also had the effect of transferring to the senior years of the secondary schools the old undergraduate curriculum that had been replaced by more specialist university courses in the late-nineteenth century. The paper offers an evidence-based critique not only of that strand of pessimism which has claimed that Scottish education was stagnant between the wars, but also of George Davie's influential view that the tradition of a broad general education was lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the character of Scottish book and trade in the field of printed book history. Influence of neighboring nations on Scottish national historiography; Protection of bookbinders by the 1533 statute against the importation of bound books; Role of the Company of Stationers, a body controlling the printing of books and entry to trade.

Industrialists, businesswomen and entrepreneurs worked in, managed and financed commercial concerns from the smallest to the largest inflecting the economies of towns and villages across Scotland and indeed Europe. Despite the research of numerous historians in Scotland and elsewhere, however, several factors have led to these women being virtually invisible to modern eyes. Gender-blindness from many business historians, with notable exceptions, has created a narrative of the heroic male entrepreneur. Historically also, recording practices informed by an acceptance that men's role was to support the family and women's was to create and maintain it often assigned the role in business to the presiding male. And yet women were present and active in business as wives, widows and singletons. They were not always 'holding the fort' until a suitable male arrived on the scene. This article therefore challenges this narrative making the case that Scottish women were not only involved in business but also dominated certain sectors and that they did not necessarily withdraw from business on marriage and motherhood. These were not isolated women but part of a much larger scene. The article begins by untangling the reasons for apparent invisibility of these women, moves to a discussion of the Scottish context and how women operated within it claiming spaces as businesswomen. It then considers the lifecycle of women and how this related to their business activities and opportunities. While the focus is on Aberdeen women, and on printing and textiles especially, there were many other women running small and large businesses across Scotland. There is no doubt that using all the tools at hand and applying their acumen and building trust in the community, Scottish businesswomen were active, not especially hidden, nor invisible in the urban setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laura Stewart's Rethinking the Scottish Revolution frequently noted the important role played by women in shaping, driving, and sustaining the covenanting revolution of 1638–1651, and established new ground for examining female involvement in its political, ideological, and cultural legacies. Indeed, following the 1660 Restoration, Scottish politicians charged with managing public order would bemoan the dominant influence of 'fanatick wives' and 'silly women' over those around them and lament their leadership in public petitions, rabblings, and other forms of protest. With few notable exceptions, however, scholarship concentrating on this later period has often paid only limited attention to female nonconformity; noting women's presence as tolerated wives or spiritual correspondents of male leaders without appreciation of their independent participation and leadership. Purposefully written out of – or sanctified – by many of the canonic sources relied upon by historians of the era and left unnamed in edited primary sources, secondary literature frequently depicts female activists as detached from male counterparts yet united by the prescribed piety and gendered expectations of past and present scholars alike. This article will use new archival evidence and revisit edited sources to rediscover the authoritative voices of female covenanters between 1637 and 1715. Moving discussion beyond 'agency' as a satisfactory explanation for female participation in conventicles and other expressions of dissent, it will conclude that these women's cultural authority must be appreciated and integrated within future scholarship if we are to fully appreciate the true legacies of the covenanting revolution as a major, paradigmatic moment in Scottish History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early modern period women's ownership of property was significantly constrained by the marital relationship. Scots law stipulated that much of a woman's property passed to her husband on marriage and that her ability to sell, control or dispose of much property without her husband's consent was severely restricted. Yet, despite such strict legal rules, jurists were aware that a married woman could be placed in a difficult position if her husband abused his position, with legal procedures introduced to mitigate a husband's extensive property powers. As a result, a husband could not sell land his wife brought to the marriage, or any land they held jointly, without her consent, indicated by her signature or mark on the deed and her declaration in a private examination that she acted under her own free will and not under coercion or pressure from her husband. This article interrogates the legal requirement of the wife's consent in Scots law from two conflicting positions: first, as a restraint on the husband's administrative powers in that she was entitled to openly challenge a mortgage or sale; and second, as an endorsement of the husband's superior position in that she was most likely unable to publicly challenge her husband's patriarchal authority during his lifetime. In doing so, it argues that women's legal authority in early modern Scotland was complex and, at times, contradictory, and that this legal ambiguity entitled the courts to make decisions that routinely looked beyond fixed rules when women's property rights and patriarchal rules overlapped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Liberal party dominated nineteenth century Scottish political life, but the Irish Home Rule crisis of 1886 inflicted damage from which it would never fully recover. This article draws on the author's study of the hundreds of constituency meetings at which the Irish question was discussed in the spring of 1886, the volume and intensity of which heightened and maintained the sense of crisis outside parliament, raised awareness of the policy locally and helped identify its supporters and opponents. These meetings are indicative of the imperative Scottish Liberals felt to discuss Home Rule and declare opinion thereon, and of the conflicting interpretations which emerged of what such opinion meant, what it was worth and who it represented. The crisis arrived at a time of intense Liberal disagreement over the purpose of party organisation and its relationship to 'Scottish opinion', and revealed both a remarkable degree of division within local party associations and a lively debating culture within the constituencies. Examining the relationship between Home Rule and party organisation prompts questions about the cohesion and coherence of 'Liberal Scotland' at both local and national levels. This article reveals the conditional character of party loyalty on Home Rule and the depth and breadth of the split in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical derivation, development and diffusion of the terms 'croft' and 'crofter' are explored in the light of the argument that their translation into Gaelic casts doubt on the existence of a 'crofting community' in the late nineteenth century. Tracing the use of the terms indicates transmission of the terms 'croft' and 'toft' into Lowland Scotland from England in the medieval period. Translated into the farming practices of Lowland Scotland, this saw the term 'croft' widely applied to the infield of the fermtouns. The early eighteenth century saw the rise of the term 'crofter' in the north-east of the country. The association with high-quality land and the place of the croft in the graduated farming system that emerged gave both terms a degree of status, with crofters in particular being part of a rich set of cultural practices. As Highland tenurial practices changed, so the terms 'croft' and 'crofter' were imported through the agency of those influenced by Lowland practices of agricultural improvement. However, the terms entered a very different material and cultural context. The association of both 'croft' and 'crofter' with the gulf between small tenant and sheep farmer and with terms which when translated into Gaelic might have less than favourable connotations suggests that they might not have provided to-hand resources for the construction of collective identity. Tracing the origins of the terms helps correct an imbalance in the historical account which tends to downplay the rich material and cultural practices of the crofters of north-east Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst the flood of unionist literature that followed the accession of James VI to the throne of England, Thomas Craig's De unione regnorum Britanniae stands out as the largest, at around 95,000 words, and the most sophisticated in terms of its argumentation. This article examines Craig's argumentation in detail and shows that he understood British history as a repeating cycle of internecine conflicts between the peoples of Britain followed by invasion and conquest by continental powers. For Craig, the existential threat to Britain was Spain, the dominant Catholic power of the day. While negotiations for an end to the long war between England and Spain were contemporaneous with union negotiations, the De unione can still be seen as a warning about the ongoing dangers of disunity among British Protestants. It is shown that Craig's solution to the lingering historical antagonism between England and Scotland and the unwillingness on either side to compromise their fundamental national identity lay in an idealised version of the feudal-legal relationship as the foundation for the union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to the debate about married women's legal position in pre-modern Scotland and how it compared with neighbouring countries, particularly whether married women could own property and of what that might consist. While many studies centre theoretical discussions and focus on the seventeenth century onwards, this article centres sixteenth-century records of practice by appraising the 14,664 testamentary documents that survive in court registers in the National Records of Scotland. The study of these records reveals that testaments made by married women outnumber those made by widows (having verified, for example, that those women indexed as 'sometime spouse' were married at the time of death). The nature of these records, which include inventories as well as last wills, allows insight into the material household and married women's role in the ownership and disposal of this property. The article demonstrates that many married women claimed more than paraphernalia (clothing and jewellery) and that some even tried to give away more than the third or half share routinely allocated to them. It also finds clear references to property being held in common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author introduces several of the articles published in this edition of the journal, including “Anglo-Saxon Law and Scots Law,” by Patrick Wormald, “Leges Scocie and the Lawcodes of David I, William the Lion and Alexander II,” by Alice Taylor, and “Early Scottish Monasteries and Prehistory: A Preliminary Dialogue,” by Martin Carver.

Ted was a cultural historian, public historian and global historian rolled into one, ahead of the curve in his adoption and amalgamation of these modern professional personae. One of those students, Karin Bowie, was given the opportunity first to teach on Ted's innovative early modern honours course on Scottish popular culture and then to take it over when Ted departed for Dumfries. Keywords: Scotland; historians; historiography; Edward J. Cowan EN Scotland historians historiography Edward J. Cowan 537 540 4 12/15/22 20221201 NES 221201 Ted Cowan was born in Edinburgh on 15 February 1944. [Extracted from the article]

Founding documents are parsed, revered and preserved but they can also be misread, mythologised and overlooked. This article examines the entangled fates of the Scots Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the US Declaration of Independence (1776) at a moment between the seven-hundredth anniversary of the one in 2020 and the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the other in 2026. It shows that the two 'declarations' were both diplomatic texts, rhetorically shaped, and part of sequences of similar documents that have otherwise been largely overlooked. Some recent commentators have suggested that Arbroath influenced the US Declaration; on the contrary, the article argues that the Declaration influenced Arbroath, at least in its reception and its construction as an alleged charter or 'declaration' of Scottish 'independence'. I conclude by presenting fresh evidence for the presence of Arbroath in Philadelphia in 1776, to reflect on the sometimes surprising ways in which documents become, or do not become, foundational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In that sense perhaps the true heirs of "Arbroath" are the five noble signatories who, only months later, were conspiring to murder Robert, the king they had sworn so magnificently to follow.[12] But the power of those tremendous words lies not only in "outcomes" but also in the changing myths they are emitting. From then on, and above all in the twentieth century, the Arbroath memory reverted to a trumpet-call reminiscence of Scotland's independence, bravely defended and now lost, rather than as a challenge to power. Keywords: Scotland; Declaration of Arbroath EN Scotland Declaration of Arbroath 532 536 5 12/15/22 20221201 NES 221201 Nothing more to be said about the "Declaration of Arbroath"?. [Extracted from the article]

This article reassesses Archie Duncan's seminal reconstruction of the events surrounding the writing of the Declaration of Arbroath and argues that the letter's date of 6 April 1320 represents the day on which a major political assembly at Newbattle abbey agreed the document's wording. This event was a continuation of an important royal gathering held around Easter. Abbot Bernard, the chancellor, probably spent the rest of April in Berwick, before returning to his home abbey of Arbroath in May, when he completed business enacted at Newbattle, including the letters to the pope. There is a good chance that the three-week royal assembly at Newbattle was a parliament. This article discusses attendance at this potential parliament. While most sealers of the Declaration were probably present, the number of earls was probably inflated for political reasons. This was vital to the letter's argument, which implied that there was little point in the pope opposing Robert's claim to kingship, since the community of the realm, led by the earls, would merely replace him with another figure. Thus events in the spring of 1320 reflect both the hard-nosed power for which the Bruce party was known, as well as an organic action by a large portion of the political community in an attempt to create a framework for Scottish independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the Arbroath celebrations, see J. N. G. Ritchie, 'Images of the Declaration: the Arbroath pageant", in Barrow (ed.), I Declaration of Arbroath i , 86-107; Laura Harrison, 'Commemorating the Declaration of Arbroath: https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2020/04/commemorating-declaration-arbroath/ (accessed 25 Aug. 2022). Keywords: Scotland; 14th century; 21st century; historiography; Declaration of Arbroath EN Scotland 14th century 21st century historiography Declaration of Arbroath 355 378 24 12/15/22 20221201 NES 221201 The History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom; a progress whose development according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate. Engaging with Scotland's "special fascination" The town of Arbroath and the college at Newbattle, of course, were by no means alone in paying attention to the Declaration in its septcentenary year. It was claimed that museums are places where we can try to "make sense" of "the debris of the past" and we asked whether Scotland was making sense of the Declaration of Arbroath.[74] Our answer, after surveying a plethora of contradictory views about it, was that, from the point of view of contemporary political consciousness, the Declaration 'has been forgotten about too often and for too long and is remembered now too inconsistently to be the "Euclidean" proposition with which Scotland's political future is bound up'. [Extracted from the article]

The journey to Scotland in August 1768 by Count Karl von Zinzendorf reveals the significance of Scottish socio-economic practices for the Austrian Habsburg lands in the mid-eighteenth century. Zinzendorf's travel came as the result of the Austrian-Habsburg desire to emulate foreign financial structures after defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756–63). His one-month stay in Scotland, supported by the Habsburg monarch Maria Theresa as part of several tours across Europe, was in effect an act of industrial espionage. It is also an illuminating example of eighteenth-century hospitality and sociability. Based on Zinzendorf's unpublished diary entries as well as his economic report on the British Isles compiled for superiors in Vienna, this article introduces Zinzendorf and his 'commercial tour' of Scotland to Scottish historians for the first time. It builds upon recent efforts to explore early modern Scottish connections with continental Europe and demonstrates how these connections projected beyond Zinzendorf's visit during his tenure as governor of Trieste and his later career within the Habsburg monarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on charitable provision for craft widows and the development of new ways of meeting the challenges of caring for them. The craft guild was an important part of Europe's urban social structures. It is popularly understood as having offered a safety net for members and their families through old age and the experience of bereavement. Taking for example the Edinburgh building trades, which incorporated ten distinct arts under the title of 'Incorporation of Mary's Chapel', important aspects of corporate charitable provision are brought to light. The incorporation referred to themselves as 'the House', laying claim to their place as one of the building blocks of a godly society, but were they always able to provide for their households? Previously underused sources give fresh insights into the difficulties faced by the House in meeting the needs of their widows. From the eighteenth century, innovative forms of provision were instituted, which were an entitlement rather than discretionary, but for most of the incorporation's history, charity depended on the state of their finances. This meant difficult decisions for those in charge, which raises questions about the assumption that membership of a craft guild guaranteed an economic safety net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]