Modern Scotland Research Articles

The final plague outbreak in Scotland 1644-1649: Historical, archaeological, and genetic evidence.

This paper has several aims: to determine if Yersinia pestis was the causative agent in the last Scottish plague outbreak in the mid-17th century; map the geographic spread of the epidemic and isolate potential contributing factors to its spread and severity; and examine funerary behaviours in the context of a serious plague epidemic in early modern Scotland. Results confirm the presence of Y. pestis in individuals associated with a mid-17th century plague pit in Aberdeen. This is the first time this pathogen has been identified in an archaeological sample from Scotland. The geographic spread of the plague from 1644 through to 1649 is generally, with some key exceptions, restricted to the central lowlands of Scotland. The role of administrative responses to the epidemic in managing its spread and distribution is unclear. Finally, normative funerary practices tended to co-exist with mass burial scenarios. In conclusion, the distribution of the epidemic is arguably a function of population density/distribution, transportation networks, and the chaos associated with the concurrent civil war. Administrative responses to the epidemic likely had a variable, albeit limited, effect in the central lowlands. More peripheral cities, such as Aberdeen, while also employing sophisticated plague prevention measures, were perhaps initially spared simply due to their distance from the central plague belt. It is unclear if a general fear of the dead and contracting the Pest from plague victims can be used to characterise mid-17th century Scottish public opinion. Mass burial appears to have been a practical approach to the logistical problems mass mortality presented, while many instances of normative burial treatment can also be seen.

Writing the Law in Late Medieval and Early Modern Scotland: Regiam maiestatem, the Marchmont Manuscript (now St Andrews MS 39000), and its Scribe Robert Ewyn, Notary

This article extends knowledge of sixteenth-century Scottish textual production by exploring the range of writing activities undertaken by Robert Ewyn, scribe, chaplain and notary. Ewyn made a copy of Regiam maiestatem in Scots in 1548. This manuscript was held in a private collection until 2016 and is comparatively unknown: a full codicological description and account of its provenance history is offered here. A biographical profile of Robert Ewyn is constructed from references in wills and other public records, revealing his family connections and his links to the Edinburgh crafts community; his career as a notary, pre- and post-reformation, is investigated and documents prepared by him are identified. Ewyn's scribal hand is traced across three very different writing contexts (literary book production, legal documentation and secretarial note-taking); as a result, evidence emerges of the different kinds of handwriting a professional scribe could produce, and of the multiple forms of employment that pre-modern notaries might undertake.

Globalisation Occurred in Loch Craignish in 1720

The arrival of a pirate ship in Loch Craignish in 1720 was an episodic occurrence, which introduced a local community in Argyllshire to the process of globalisation, a process marked by the transoceanic movements of people, goods and ideas. For literate Scots, the wider horizons of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were opened up by novels, travel literature and newsprint. While reading material stimulated the mind and promoted discussion about matters of global interest, actual commodities from overseas variously engaged all the senses. Globalisation became an active rather than a passive experience. Sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste affected all, from the social, commercial and intellectual elites to the woman in the field and the man in the street in early modern Scotland. Nevertheless, public knowledge of where colonial commodities came from became distanced by time. A global awareness of place was retained in families and communities overtly engaged in mercantile and military adventuring, especially when accompanied by death whether through natural causes, misadventure or mortal combat. Illicit activities had a no less profound impact. Indeed, covert people trafficking, enslavement, smuggling, shipwrecking and piracy had a more local immediacy.

The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland, ed. Chris R. Langley, Catherine E. McMillan and Russell Newton

<i>The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland</i>, ed. Chris R. Langley, Catherine E. McMillan and Russell Newton

Controverted Elections, Electoral Controversy and the Scottish Privy Council, 1689–1708*

AbstractBoth the privy council and elections in early modern Scotland are understudied. The council itself has largely been described as a tool for crown management of elections. But it was fundamentally a court and standing committee charged with government administration, which was often supplicated to deal with cases of electoral impropriety and controversy. As elections became increasingly contested throughout the later 17th century, so the council's role developed into a form of elections committee which adjudicated over controverted elections. This, in some ways, reflected the business conducted by parliament's own elections committee, although the council was largely concerned with elections in the royal burghs while it also dealt with other electoral issues. This article explores the privy council's engagement in a complex range of electoral business between the Revolution of 1689 and its abolition in 1708.

Guest Editorial

Women have played a pivotal role in the development of modern Scottish society, but as the BBC Series, Women Who Changed Modern Scotland illustrated, they have not always been recognised, acknowledged nor celebrated for their achievements. Much like the series itself, this Special Edition seeks to expand on the issues and successes, exploring new themes while revisiting others. Above all else, as we mark International Women's Day 2024, we celebrate all of those whose shoulders we stand upon while also sounding the alarm as Scotland stands at the crossroads of progress. We have come such a long way, but there is so much further to go.

Chris R. Langley, Catherine E. McMillan, and Russell Newton, eds. The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland. St Andrews Studies in Scottish History. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2021. Pp. 271. $99.00 (cloth).

Chris R. Langley, Catherine E. McMillan, and Russell Newton, eds. The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland. St Andrews Studies in Scottish History. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2021. Pp. 271. $99.00 (cloth).

Robert Burns and Modern Ulster-Scots Poetry

Robert Burns’s influence on Scottish culture and literature is well attested, though in recent years bardology has been counterbalanced by a rising fashion for “bardoclasm”. In Ulster too Burns has featured prominently in official presentations of Ulster-Scots by the Ulster-Scots Agency and other public bodies. High-profile Burns Night concerts are now a staple and TV programmes have been commissioned to mark the occasion. Burns’s image also features prominently on the Ulster-Scots Agency websites and promotional materials. This essay will explore how Burns’s increased visibility in Ulster is replicated in the work of modern poets who use Ulster-Scots in their work. Modern writers from Ulster who use Ulster-Scots tend to have a slightly different relationship to the work of Burns than their predecessors, or modern Scottish writers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Ulster-Scots writers would have been intimately familiar with the poetry of Robert Burns. In modern Scotland, Scots writing, and Robert Burns especially, features prominently in school curricula. Despite some efforts to incorporate more Scots and Ulster–Scots literature into the school curricula in Ulster, these do not generally feature. This means that Burns and Scottish poetry is introduced, if at all, through less formal channels. Modern Ulster-Scots poetry began in the 1990s with the Ulster-Scots Language Society’s Ullans magazine. The major writers to emerge from this revival were James Fenton and Philip Robinson. The early 2020s has witnessed an upsurge in writing in Ulster-Scots. This essay will explore Burns’s complex influence on this corpus of work. A strand of Ulster-Scots poetry is fairly traditional, with a focus on nostalgic, rural themes and concerns. It may be intuitive to think, therefore, that Burns may feature as part of this. However, it is perhaps in the work of the most self-consciously literary of modern Ulster-Scots writers where Burns’s work is most tangible. There are traces of Burns’s influence in several areas: in the forms and themes used, and in the way in which voice is created. Burns also at times functions as a sort of symbol for the vernacular itself, and provides a source of vindication for writers using a tongue which still often attracts opprobrium and ridicule in popular discourse.

:The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland

:<i>The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland</i>

Coercion or Consent? Women, Property and Legal Authority in Early Modern Scotland

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.

“Demoralised Drunkards” and “Respectable Lunatics”: Alcohol and Psychiatry in Late Victorian Scotland

Next article No Access‘Demoralised Drunkards’ and ‘Respectable Lunatics’: Alcohol and Psychiatry in Late Victorian ScotlandIain David SmithIain David Smith Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs Just Accepted A journal of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/725555 HistoryAccepted April 19, 2023 © 2023 Alcohol and Drugs History Society (ADHS). All Rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Tom Nairn: A man with qualities

Nations and NationalismEarly View SYMPOSIUM Tom Nairn: A man with qualities David McCrone, Corresponding Author David McCrone [email protected] University of Edinburgh Institute of Governance, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Correspondence David McCrone, University of Edinburgh Institute of Governance, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author David McCrone, Corresponding Author David McCrone [email protected] University of Edinburgh Institute of Governance, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Correspondence David McCrone, University of Edinburgh Institute of Governance, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 08 June 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12968 The allusion is to Robert Musil's 1929 novel ‘The Man Without Qualities’. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL REFERENCES Carruthers, G. (2009). Scottish literature. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748633104 Craig, C. (1996). Out of history: Narrative paradigms in Scottish and British culture. Birlinn. Johnson, R. W. (1988). Pallas. In London review of books, 7th July (p. 6). Nairn, T. (1977). The break up of Britain. Verso. Nairn, T. (1988). The enchanted glass: Britain and its monarchy. Verso. Nairn, T. (1997). Faces of nationalism: Janus revisited. Verso. Paterson, L. (1994). The autonomy of modern Scotland. Edinburgh University Press. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue ReferencesRelatedInformation

Clerical Old Age and the Forming of Rites of Passage in Early Modern Scotland

This article investigates the rites that marked the end of a clerical career in early modern Scotland. It discusses what would take place when a minister had accepted that he was too old for his charge. It explores the ways in which ministers described their aging bodies, the impact of age on their vocation and how parishioners observed them. The article argues that the bureaucratic machinery devised to address the challenges of clerical old age created personal and professional rites of passage.

Imputed genomes and haplotype-based analyses of the Picts of early medieval Scotland reveal fine-scale relatedness between Iron Age, early medieval and the modern people of the UK.

There are longstanding questions about the origins and ancestry of the Picts of early medieval Scotland (ca. 300-900 CE), prompted in part by exotic medieval origin myths, their enigmatic symbols and inscriptions, and the meagre textual evidence. The Picts, first mentioned in the late 3rd century CE resisted the Romans and went on to form a powerful kingdom that ruled over a large territory in northern Britain. In the 9th and 10th centuries Gaelic language, culture and identity became dominant, transforming the Pictish realm into Alba, the precursor to the medieval kingdom of Scotland. To date, no comprehensive analysis of Pictish genomes has been published, and questions about their biological relationships to other cultural groups living in Britain remain unanswered. Here we present two high-quality Pictish genomes (2.4 and 16.5X coverage) from central and northern Scotland dated from the 5th-7th century which we impute and co-analyse with >8,300 previously published ancient and modern genomes. Using allele frequency and haplotype-based approaches, we can firmly place the genomes within the Iron Age gene pool in Britain and demonstrate regional biological affinity. We also demonstrate the presence of population structure within Pictish groups, with Orcadian Picts being genetically distinct from their mainland contemporaries. When investigating Identity-By-Descent (IBD) with present-day genomes, we observe broad affinities between the mainland Pictish genomes and the present-day people living in western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Northumbria, but less with the rest of England, the Orkney islands and eastern Scotland-where the political centres of Pictland were located. The pre-Viking Age Orcadian Picts evidence a high degree of IBD sharing across modern Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Orkney islands, demonstrating substantial genetic continuity in Orkney for the last ~2,000 years. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA diversity at the Pictish cemetery of Lundin Links (n = 7) reveals absence of direct common female ancestors, with implications for broader social organisation. Overall, our study provides novel insights into the genetic affinities and population structure of the Picts and direct relationships between ancient and present-day groups of the UK.

‘Fit for Purpose in Today's Society?’: Reflecting on Provocation Pleas in Modern Scotland

Provocation has been the subject of long-term, international scrutiny and is currently under consideration by the Scottish Law Commission as part of their review of homicide and defences to murder. This article reflects on how provocation is used in practice in Scottish courts and considers two aspects of potential reform in particular: where the basis of the plea is infidelity and where the plea is used in the context of someone killing an abuser. It is recognised that reform of the plea now appears inevitable (and required) but this article cautions against complete abolition or expansion of the plea. The discussion is informed by critical feminist analysis of both reported and unreported cases and seeks to better illuminate how the plea is currently operating in practice.

Juvenile Justice in Victorian Scotland by Christine Kelly

Reviewed by: Juvenile Justice in Victorian Scotland by Christine Kelly William S. Bush Juvenile Justice in Victorian Scotland. By Christine Kelly. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. viii + 246 pp. Scotland is one of only a handful of countries today that maintains a largely decriminalized, welfare-driven approach to juvenile justice. In place of juvenile courts and secure detention facilities, Scotland utilizes children's hearings and community-based interventions for all but the most serious cases of youth offending. Many observers trace this system to a "revolution" fifty years ago, promulgated by Scottish judge Lord James Kilbrandon. In 1964, the Kilbrandon report decried Scotland's overuse of prison-like residential reformatories and industrial schools. As a result, Scotland abandoned its existing system for a community-based justice model that remains distinctive, both within and beyond the United Kingdom.1 Juvenile Justice in Victorian Scotland argues that the Kilbrandon reforms represented a culmination of, rather than a radical departure from, the previous century. Compassion fueled the Victorian-era reformers who founded Scotland's first juvenile justice programs in response to rampant child poverty in its industrializing cities (43–8). In the "pre-statutory" first half of the nineteenth century, explains author Christine Kelly, city governments developed policing practices that ensnared growing numbers of children and youth. The problem of children jailed with adults quickly elicited a humanitarian response from a generation of reformers in the 1840s, led by Sheriff William Watson of Aberdeen, "the most eminent reformer of juvenile justice in Victorian Scotland" (65). Watson invented and popularized the industrial day school, which fed and cared for neglected, destitute, and nonserious youth offenders. Funded locally, these schools offered academic and vocational training but, importantly for its leaders, also sought to inculcate middle-class habits of "respectability" (66). Unlike the influential reformatory in Mettray, France, emulated across England, the Scottish industrial day schools not only allowed their charges to return to their families each evening but also sought to uplift the family unit through its children. By the 1850s, other towns and cities were launching industrial day schools with Watson's guidance. This generation of reformers embraced an emergent notion of protected childhood that called for a shared social responsibility to [End Page 307] care for rather than punish impoverished and delinquent youth. "If society leaves them knowingly in the state of utter degradation," asserted Watson's contemporary, English reformer Mary Carpenter, "I think it absolutely owes them reparation, far more than they can be said to owe reparation to it" (74). This philosophy soon gave way to more punitive and carceral approaches, largely imported from England. Kelly guides us through complex legislative developments in Scotland and the United Kingdom that by the 1870s resulted in the expanded use of secure, residential training schools for youth increasingly viewed as "the dangerous classes" (80). The growth of imprisonment departed from Watson's approach, separating children from their families while billing parents for the expense of their children's incarceration (87–88). Between 1864 and 1884, the number of children held in industrial schools throughout the United Kingdom exploded from 1,668 to 18,780 (188), while the daily regime of those schools shifted from education to prison-style labor. Kelly intersperses her policy discussions with brief case studies of individual children that illustrate her larger points. She also recounts struggles into the twentieth century to restore the original humanitarian vision of Scotland's early reformers, with some local judges resisting pressure to abandon an individualized approach to juvenile cases. By the passage of the Children's Act of 1908, which established Scotland's first separate juvenile courts and removed most children from prisons, Scottish children were being "criminalized" on "an immense scale" through extended incarceration for nonserious offenses (166). This law ended widespread use of imprisonment, introduced juvenile probation, and acknowledged the special place of children within the criminal justice system. However, it did not significantly alter the individualized approach first introduced by the Victorian-era reformers. Moreover, overincarceration and neglect persisted, culminating with the Kilbrandon inquiry and report in the 1960s. The twentieth century receives much less attention here, as it falls beyond the scope of this study; however, non-experts on this...

The Roots of Scottish Baronial: Drawings for David Bryce’s Book Project, 1827–36

ABSTRACTThis article re-evaluates an unfinished book project by the celebrated Edinburgh architect David Bryce (1803–76). It demonstrates that a group of drawings in the British Architectural Library hitherto attributed to Bryce’s employer William Burn (1789–1870) was in fact the work of the young Bryce, who executed them between 1827 and 1831. This corpus emerges as the first stage of Bryce’s book project, of which only one volume, ‘Sketches of Scotch and Old English Ornament’ (c. 1831–36), was compiled but not published. Bryce’s initiative, in turn, emerges as the preparatory effort for one of Victorian Scotland’s great sourcebooks, The Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland (1845–52) by Robert William Billings. In itself, Bryce’s unpublished work represents a notably early engagement with the architecture of early modern Scotland; in its relation to the work of Billings, it played an appreciable role in the revival of Scotland’s national architecture.

The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland, edited by Chris R. Langley, Catherine E. McMillan, and Russell Newton

<i>The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland</i>, edited by Chris R. Langley, Catherine E. McMillan, and Russell Newton

Price Convergence and Market Efficiency in Early Modern Scotland

This article examines Scottish commodity market integration from 1630 to 1815. The Scottish economy developed rapidly in this period, with expansion driven by specialisation in agricultural production and the development of markets. We test for price convergence and market efficiency using grain prices from Scotland's fiars courts records. Our results suggest that in the long run price convergence increased across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but experienced temporary declines in times of famine and war. The civil war and Cromwellian occupation of the Scottish Lowlands in the 1640s and 1650s, famine in the 1690s, the American War of Independence, and the Napoleonic Wars all caused declines in price convergence. Using a dynamic factor model, we find that market efficiency increased substantially in Scottish markets from the late seventeenth century. This analysis shows that price changes followed distinct regional trends in the east and west of the country in the late seventeenth century but had become strongly integrated at a national level by the eighteenth century.

The clergy in early modern Scotland. Edited by Chris R. Langley, Catherine E. McMillan and Russell Newton. (St Andrews Studies in Scottish History.) Pp. xviii + 271 incl. 2 ills. Woodbridge–Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2021. £70. 978 1 78327 619 6

The clergy in early modern Scotland. Edited by Chris R. Langley, Catherine E. McMillan and Russell Newton. (St Andrews Studies in Scottish History.) Pp. xviii + 271 incl. 2 ills. Woodbridge–Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2021. £70. 978 1 78327 619 6 - Volume 73 Issue 4