In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Scotland, if not as blood-soaked as sometimes portrayed in popular histories, was still a turbulent country. Inter-clan violence and raiding were widespread in parts of the Highlands, and reiving on the Borders was only checked after the Union of 1603, while a lingering though declining tradition of bloodfeud survived in the Lowlands. Paradoxically, eighteenth-century Lowland society, and society in the Highlands after the failure of the '45, have been depicted as remarkably douce and subservient. There was nothing in Scotland comparable, it has been claimed, with English grain riots, opposition to enclosure, or the Captain Swing uprising. The stability of Scottish rural society also seems striking in contrast to Ireland where peasant protests were sustained, widespread and well-organised.1 The work ofKenneth Logue has made us aware that several forms of protest including meal mobs, militia riots, industrial disputes and political disturbances occurred in Scotland in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.'2 Logue's pioneering research indicated a clear need to look in more detail at the nature of protest in Scotland in this period and to probe its origins. The case for a totally submissive society in Scotland may then have been overstated and under-researched. Rab Houston and I have gone on record as suggesting that eighteenthcentury Scotland had a 'relatively orderly, authoritarian society' within which levels ofunrest were lower than in most other European countries.3 But this proposition was formulated on the strength of general impressions and requires more rigorous testing with detailed studies. As early as 1973 Eric Richards made us aware that the Highlander was not invariably stoical