Response: Old Games and New

Abstract

Professor Macinnes has established a wide-ranging critique and pro posed a clearly signposted agenda with much to commend it. There is little point in covering the same ground in the many areas where most historians of the period would broadly agree with him: amongst these are the need for more work on Scotland's continuing links with northern Europe (although such history is difficult to excavate other than in small, manageable portions1); and on the related issues involving landownership, social mobility, demography, social and economic structures, price inflation, and debt and credit. Also, the need for further study of popular belief and culture, witchcraft (neglected since Christina Larner's pioneering work), and the position of women of various sorts is obvious. And there are still several lacunae ? none more striking than the 'black hole' in the Restoration period, although the Revolution of 1688-90 comes a close second. On the other hand, I wish to take issue with a number of points which he raises and to ask whether his picture of the early modern period is sufficiently rounded. Noticeably, he has chosen to concen trate on the period between the Reformation and 1707. That not only omits half a century or so, including topics such as the Rough Wooing and themes such as royal minorities, not to speak of the debate about the state of the Church and the nature of early Protestantism; it also alters perspectives. The early modern historian needs to use long lenses, which, I suggest, give a different focus on several issues. Interdisciplinary study is rightly commended as a way forward, but his remarks, which mostly deal with linkages between history (generally socio-economic) and archaeology or historical geography, could be extended to other disciplines, including architecture, fine art, philosophy, music and literature ? all part of the contemporary humanist agenda. Some other important themes are not mentioned, including the rise of a 'middling sort'; others are underplayed, including the changing inter-relationship between centre and the localities, which is linked to the vital question of the nature of power within what most contemporaries still called their 'country' ? their