Clergy Widows in Early Modern Scotland

Abstract

This article explores the way that widows of Scottish ministers negotiated the legal structure of the Presbyterian church courts in the seventeenth century. Making extensive use of presbytery records it locates clerical widows in relation to their kin and community networks and explores their ability to assert rights established in civil and ecclesiastical laws. This offers important insights into the experience of women, and particularly the widows of ministers, within the structures of church governance in early modern Scotland.