FINDING THE FAMILY IN MEDIEVAL

AND EARLY MODERN SCOTLAND

 Women and Gender in the
Early Modern World
Series Editors: Allyson Poska and Abby Zanger

In the past decade, the study of women and gender has offered some of the most vital
and innovative challenges to scholarship on the early modern period. Ashgate’s new
series of interdisciplinary and comparative studies, ‘Women and Gender in the Early
Modern World’, takes up this challenge, reaching beyond geographical limitations to
explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe,
the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Submissions of single-author studies and edited
collections will be considered.

Titles in this series include:

Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England

Illicit Sex and the Nobility
Johanna Rickman

Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe

Edited by Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall

From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris

Gender, Economy, and Law
Janine M. Lanza

Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas

Nora E. Jaffary

Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology

The Uses of a Sixteenth-Century Compendium
Helen King
Finding the Family in Medieval
and Early Modern Scotland

Edited by

ELIZABETH EWAN
University of Guelph

and

JANAY NUGENT
University of Lethbridge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

˜™¢›’‘ȱ © Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent 2008

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Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent have asserted their moral right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Finding the family in medieval and early modern Scotland. – (Women and gender in the early
modern world)
1. Family – Scotland – History
I. Ewan, Elizabeth II. Nugent, Janay
306.8’5’09411’0902

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Finding the family in medieval and early modern Scotland / edited by Elizabeth Ewan and
Janay Nugent.
p. cm. — (Women and gender in the early modern world; 2046)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6049-1 (alk. paper)
1. Family—Scotland—History. I. Ewan, Elizabeth. II. Nugent, Janay. III. Title.

HQ618.E83 2008
306.8509411’0902—dc22
2008003934
ISBN KEN
For Emma Louise Howard (1903–1990)
and
Janna and Keith Nugent
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xiv
Abbreviations and Conventions xvi

Introduction: Where is the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland? 1

Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent

Part 1 Sources

1 Finding the Family in the Charters of Medieval Scotland, 1150–1350 11

Cynthia J. Neville
2 ‘And Four Years Space, being Man and Wife, they Loveingly Agreed’:
Balladry and Early Modern Understandings of Marriage 23
Katie Barclay
3 ‘I have now a book of songs of her writing’: Scottish Families, Orality,
Literacy and the Transmission of Musical Culture c.1500–c.1800 35
Dolly MacKinnon
4 The Crucible: Witchcraft and the Experience of Family in
Early Modern Scotland 49
Scott Moir

Part 2 Family Roles

5 The Name of the Father: Baptism and the Social Construction

of Fatherhood in Early Modern Edinburgh 63
Melissa Hollander
6 Parents and Children in Early Modern Scotland 73
David G. Mullan
7 Crediting Wives: Married Women and Debt Litigation in the
Seventeenth Century 85
Gordon DesBrisay and Karen Sander Thomson
8 Lapidary Inscriptions: Rhetoric, Reality and the Baillies
of Mellerstain 99
Barbara C. Murison
viii Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland
Part 3 Family, Kin and Community

9 The Spiritual Ties of Kinship in Pre-Reformation Scotland 115

Mairi Cowan
10 ‘Inressyng of kyndnes, and renewing off thair blud’: The Family,
Kinship and Clan Policy in Sixteenth-Century Scottish Gaeldom 127
Alison Cathcart
11 A Family Affair: Households, Misbehaving and the Community
in Sixteenth-Century Aberdeen 139
J.R.D. Falconer
12 The Famine of the 1690s and Its Aftermath: Survival and Recovery
of the Family 151
Karen Cullen
13 The Disorder of Comrie, Perthshire After the ’45: A Leg
in a Cornfield 163
Deborah A. Symonds

Guide to Further Reading 175

Glossary 181
Index 185
 List of Figures

3.1 James Erskine, Lord Alva and his Family, 1780, by David Allan.
By permission of the National Galleries of Scotland. 36

3.2 Muses Ceiling, Crathes Castle, c.1596. By permission of the

National Trust for Scotland. 40–41

3.3 Frontispiece to John Forbes, Cantus, Songs and Fancies, to three,

four or five parts, both apt for voices and viols, with a brief
introduction to musick. As is taught in the musick–school of Aberdeen.
Reproduction of the 3rd edn. Aberdeen: J. Forbes, 1682. The New
Club Series, Paisley: A. Gardner, 1879. By permission of
Archives and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library. 47

7.1 Court Record, ACA, Baillie Court Register, xiv, 14 Aug. 1688.
By permission of Aberdeen City Archives. 91
 List of Tables

7.1 Percentage of debt cases involving one or more women in

Aberdeen and five English towns 93

7.2 Litigants before the Aberdeen Baillie Court, 1687/88 95

10.1 Family tree – the Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan 132

 Notes on Contributors

Katie Barclay holds a postdoctoral fellowship from the Economic History Society
and Institute of Historical Research at the University of Glasgow, Scotland for
2007–2008. She has recently completed a PhD on Marital Relationships in Scotland
1650–1850. An article, ‘Negotiating Patriarchy: the marriage of Anna Potts and Sir
Archibald Grant of Monymusk, 1731–1744’, based on her thesis is forthcoming in
the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies.

Alison Cathcart is Lecturer in History at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow,

Scotland. She is author of Kinship and Clientage: Highland clanship 1451–1609
(Leiden, 2006). Her current and future research interests lie in contacts and
communication between Ireland and Scotland during the sixteenth century within a
broader, archipelagic context.

Mairi Cowan teaches history and writing at the University of Toronto, Ontario,
Canada. Her publications include work on saints’ cults, Yule celebrations at the
court of James IV, the music of Thomas Tallis, and the early ownership of a copy of
Copernicus’ De revolutionibus. She is currently working on the book Lay religion in
Scottish Towns c. 1350-1560: from medieval to early modern Catholic Scotland.

Karen Cullen is Lecturer in Scottish History at the Centre for History in Dornoch,
Scotland at the University of the Highlands and Islands. She is author of a number
of chapters and articles including a recent article in the Scottish Historical Review
on the subject of famine in Scotland in the 1690s. Her current research interests lie
in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish social, economic and demographic
history.

Gordon DesBrisay is Associate Professor of History at the University of

Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. He studies seventeenth-century Scottish urban
social history, and has published on topics including Aberdeen in the civil wars,
Scottish Quakers, women under godly discipline, wet-nursing, poor relief and the
poet Lilias Skene.

Elizabeth Ewan is University Research Chair and Professor in History and Scottish
Studies at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. She works on women, gender
and crime in late medieval/early modern Scotland. Her publications include the co-
edited Women in Scotland c.1100–c.1750 (East Linton, 1999) and The Biographical
Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh, 2006).

J.R.D. Falconer received his PhD from the University of Guelph, and currently
lectures in early modern history at Grant MacEwan College, Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada. He has co-authored articles on medieval English economies and early
xii Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland
modern British identities. Currently, Rob is working on a study of crime in sixteenth-
century Aberdeen and the use of misbehaviour as a means of negotiating power.

Melissa Hollander has recently completed her PhD with the University of York,
England, ‘Sex in Two Cities: the formation and regulation of sexual relationships
in Edinburgh and York, 1560–1625’. Her research interests lie in the comparative
history of the family and gender in early modern England and Scotland. She currently
teaches with the Open University.

Dolly MacKinnon is a Lecturer and Honorary Fellow in Historical Studies, and

Music at University of Melbourne, Australia. She is author of Revealing the Early
Modern Landscape: Earls Colne, Essex (Aldershot, forthcoming), and has co-edited
with Catharine Coleborne Madness in Australia: histories, heritage and the asylum
(Queensland, 2003). Her varied research interests are interdisciplinary.

Scott Moir is Assistant Professor of History at Cape Breton University, Sydney,

Nova Scotia, Canada. His research interests lie in community interactions with the
law and ‘courts’ in early modern Scotland. He is currently working on a study of
acquittals in Scottish witchcraft cases.

David G. Mullan is Professor of History at Cape Breton University, Sydney, Nova

Scotia, Canada. He is author or editor of six books on religion in early-modern Scotland
including Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot, 2003). For the
past number of years he has engaged in a study of religious narrative.

Barbara C. Murison is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Western

Ontario, London, Canada. Among her numerous articles and book chapters, the most
recent is ‘The Talented Mr Blathwayt: his empire revisited’, in English Atlantics
Revisited (McGill–Queen’s, 2007). She is currently working on cultural transfer
between Scotland and England and Scotland and British North America.

Cynthia J. Neville is Professor of History at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova

Scotia, Canada. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters that
examine the encounter between Gaels and Europeans in Scotland in the period
between 1150 and 1400, and of a full-length study of this subject entitled Native
Lordship in Medieval Scotland: the earldoms of Strathearn and Lennox, c.1140–
1365 (Dublin, 2005). She is currently preparing a volume of essays that further
explores this topic.

Janay Nugent is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Lethbridge,

Alberta, Canada. She is the editor of the special edition on family history in Scottish
Tradition (2002) and author of articles on Scottish family history. Her current
research explores the role that marriage and parenting played in asserting social and
religious control in Reformation Scotland.

Deborah A. Symonds is Professor of History at Drake University in Des Moines,

Iowa, USA. She is the author of Weep Not for Me: women, ballads, and infanticide
 Notes on Contributors xiii
in early modern Scotland (Pennsylvania, 1997), and Notorious Murders, Black
Lanterns, and Moveable Goods: the transformation of Edinburgh’s underworld in
the early nineteenth century (Akron, 2007). Her current research is on the collapse
of Highland society in the eighteenth century.

Karen Sander Thomson is an archivist in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. She

recently completed her MA thesis on women and credit in seventeenth-century
Scotland at the University of Saskatchewan.
 Acknowledgements

The idea for this book took shape in 2004. A call for contributions was sent out in the
spring of 2005 and the final scope of the project was confirmed when the editors met
on a sunny day in Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh to read over the wide breadth
of proposals. Since then, its creation has become a true family affair with several
babies being conceived to contributors to the collection. One of the editors, Janay
Nugent, produced not only this book, but also Jasper (born 2006). Jasper has helped
keep things in perspective and reminded us that family is a central issue in people’s
everyday lives. The help and support of Jasper’s grandparents have been vital for the
completion of this project.
The topic of the Scottish family was first explored at a Scottish Studies Colloquium
at the University of Guelph in 2000 and then in 2002 in a special guest issue of
Scottish Tradition (now The International Review of Scottish Studies) on the family,
edited by Janay Nugent. Both the Colloquium and the journal highlighted the lack of
work on the period before 1750 and provided the impetus for the present collection.
Two medieval essays had to be withdrawn due to extenuating circumstances, and
we thank those contributors for their initial efforts. All essays included here are
original studies which have been submitted and refereed for this publication. We
thank our anonymous reviewers and the external assessors who read the manuscript
for Ashgate for their very constructive advice and suggestions.
Ashgate has been very supportive of this project and we are grateful to Erika
Gaffney for her diligence and resourcefulness throughout this endeavour. We are
particularly pleased to be included in the ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modern
World’ series and thank the series editors, Allyson Poska and Abby Zanger for
encouraging this collection.
A great debt of appreciation and thanks is owed to the staff at the National Archives
of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, the National Museum of Scotland,
the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh University Library, Aberdeen City
Archives, and the University of Guelph Archives for aiding the research conducted
for this collection. The editors and individual contributors are grateful to Sir John
Clerk and Sir Robert Clerk of Penicuik for permission to publish material from their
family papers. The administrative support of Charlene Sawatsky in the Department
of History at the University of Lethbridge has been invaluable. Thanks also to
Cathyrn Spence for checking references even when jet-lagged.
Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada made research for a number of these articles possible. Further funding was
provided by the University of Guelph Research Office for editorial meetings and the
Universities of Lethbridge and Guelph contributed to the costs of illustrations.
Thanks to spouses are traditional, but such appreciation seems especially
appropriate in a volume dedicated to the family. We therefore want to offer special
 Acknowledgements xv
thanks to our husbands, Jason Moulton and Kris Inwood, whose support went
beyond the call of duty, especially when we spent the evening of Valentine’s Day
2007 at a restaurant with our editing (much to the amusement of the staff), leaving
our husbands at home, with Jason literally holding the baby.
 Abbreviations and Conventions

ACA Aberdeen City Archives

JFH Journal of Family History

JSH Journal of Social History

LPS Local Population Studies

NAS National Archives of Scotland

NGS National Galleries of Scotland

NLS National Library of Scotland

NMS National Museum of Scotland

NS Northern Scotland

P&P Past and Present

PSAS Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

ROSC Review of Scottish Culture

SHR Scottish Historical Review

SHS Scottish History Society

SRS Scottish Record Society

ST Scottish Tradition

All dates are given in modern form.

All monetary amounts are given in Scots unless otherwise noted. The value of the
Scots pound relative to the English pound declined in the later Middle Ages. From
1603 £12 Scots was equivalent to £1 sterling. One merk was equal to 13s 8d.
 Introduction

Where is the Family in Medieval and

Early Modern Scotland?
Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent

In 1986, one of Scotland’s leading historians, T.C. Smout, commented that ‘[t]he history
of the family, and of child upbringing and the place of women within and without
the home, is so neglected in Scotland as to verge on becoming a historiographical
disgrace.’1 Although scholars of the modern era have answered the call,2 the study of
the medieval and early modern family3 is still in its infancy. There is a certain irony
in this scholarly omission as within the popular mind belonging to a clan, based on a
shared family name, has come to represent ‘Scottishness’, especially to those in the
Scottish diaspora. Perhaps it is the very popularity of the concept that has led most
Scottish historians to shun the family as a topic of serious historical study.
The growth of family history has also been hampered by the relatively late
development of social history in Scotland, especially for the pre-industrial period.
Despite the publication of Smout’s pioneering work, A History of the Scottish People
1560–1830 in 1969, Scottish history in the following decade remained primarily
concerned with issues of national identity and politics. Few historians followed
Smout’s lead, although English population studies inspired the work of Michael
Flinn and other demographers.4 Karen Cullen’s study in this volume builds on these

1 T.C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People (London, 1986), p. 292.

2 Examples include Lynn Abrams, The Orphan Country: children of Scotland’s broken
homes from 1845 to the present day (Edinburgh, 1998); Andrew Blaikie, ‘Unhappy After
Their Own Fashion: infant lives and family biographies in southwest Scotland, 1855–1939,’
Scottish Economic and Social History 18:2 (1998), pp. 95–113; articles in a special family
history issue of ST, ed. Janay Nugent, 27 (2002). For an illustration of how the history of
the family can enrich modern Scottish history, see Eleanor Gordon, ‘The Family,’ in Gender
in Scottish History Since 1700, eds Lynn Abrams, Eleanor Gordon, Deborah Simonton and
Eileen Yeo (Edinburgh, 2006), pp. 235–67.
3 Within the present volume, ‘family’ incorporates a number of relationships. The
household is a group of people who live under one roof. The family is a group of people,
usually co-resident, who are connected by blood. And kinship comprises relationships between
people who usually do not live together but are biologically related or who are ascribed the
status of relatives by society.
4 M. Flinn, Scottish Population History: from the seventeenth century to the 1930s
(Cambridge, 1977); R.A. Houston, The Population History of Britain and Ireland 1550–1750
(Cambridge, 1995); essays in Scottish Society 1500–1800, eds R.A. Houston and I.D. Whyte
(Oxford, 1989).
2 Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland/Ewan & Nugent
works by using Scottish demographic sources to assess the impact of the 1690s
famine on rural families. More such work is needed to assess the extent to which
Scottish families fit the northwest European model of family formation.5 Some
preliminary work has raised the question of whether there might be differences
between the characteristics of family formation in the Highlands and Lowlands,6 an
issue considered in Alison Cathcart’s essay, but further study is necessary.
Demography has opened up important areas of examination for family history;
these include illegitimacy. In a comparative exploration ranging across Europe, Peter
Laslett called Scotland ‘the classic country of illegitimacy’.7 Lacking the sources
used by English historians, Rosalind Mitchison and Leah Leneman examined the
largely untapped kirk session (local church court) records from 1660 to 1780 for this
topic.8 Recent work on earlier surviving kirk session records demonstrates the rich
details about family life that can be unearthed from these sources.9
Family history is slowly beginning to be recognised as significant to the study of
medieval and early modern Scotland.10 The family has been the theme of a number
of conferences and conference panels.11 A special issue on family appeared in the

5 J. Hajnal, ‘Two Kinds of Pre-Industrial Household Formation,’ in Family Forms in

Historic Europe, eds R. Wall et al (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 65–104. This model is characterised
by high rates of youth in service and a late age of marriage which created a small independent
household.
6 Houston, Population History, pp. 2–3, 26.
7 Peter Laslett, ‘Introduction,’ in Bastardy and Its Comparative History, eds P. Laslett
et al (London, 1980), p. 41.
8 Rosalind Mitchison and Leah Leneman, Sexuality and Social Control: Scotland 1660–
1780 (Oxford, 1989); Sin in the City: sexuality and social control in urban Scotland 1660–
1780 (Edinburgh, 1998); and several articles. See also Andrew Blaikie, Illegitimacy, Sex and
Society: northeast Scotland, 1750–1900 (Oxford, 1993). For connections between infanticide
and illegitimacy see: Deborah Symonds, Weep Not for Me: women, ballads and infanticide in
early modern Scotland (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1997); Anne-Marie Kilday, ‘Maternal
Monsters: murdering mothers in south-west Scotland, 1750–1815,’ in Twisted Sisters: women,
crime and deviance in Scotland since 1400, eds Yvonne Galloway Brown and Rona Ferguson
(East Linton, 2002), pp. 156–79; Lynn Abrams, ‘From Demon to Victim: the infanticidal
mother in Shetland, 1699–1899,’ in Brown and Ferguson, 180–203.
9 Michael Graham, The Uses of Reform: ‘Godly Discipline’ and popular behavior in
Scotland and beyond, 1560–1610 (Leiden, 1996); Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism
in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, 2002); Janay Nugent, ‘Marriage Matters: evidence of
the kirk session records c.1560–1650’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Guelph, 2004).
See also the essays by Scott Moir and Melissa Hollander in this collection.
10 Helen Dingwall, Late Seventeenth-Century Edinburgh: a demographic study
(Aldershot, 1994); Lauren Martin, ‘Witchcraft and Family: what can witchcraft documents
tell us about early modern Scottish family life?,’ ST 27 (2002), pp. 7–22; Lauren Martin, ‘The
Devil and the Domestic: witchcraft, quarrels and women’s work in Scotland,’ in The Scottish
Witch-hunt in Context, ed. Julian Goodare (Manchester, 2002), pp. 73–89; Symonds; Todd,
chapter 6 ‘Church and Family’; The New Penguin History of Scotland, eds R.A. Houston and
W.W.J. Knox (London, 2001).
11 Scottish Studies Fall Colloquium, University of Guelph, 2000; Scottish Women’s
History Network, Edinburgh 2002; North American Conference on British Studies panel,
2003.
 Introduction 3
journal Scottish Tradition in 2002, but the fact that only one article on the pre-
industrial family was submitted demonstrates that the field needs to be cultivated
further. The dearth of work on the medieval era is particularly clear and has only just
begun to be addressed in this collection.
If medieval and early modern family history is to be established as a field, it is
essential that effective sources be identified.12 This is a priority of the collection and
is the main theme of Part I. The challenge of sources exists for all social historians
of pre-industrial Europe because the most intimate of human relationships leave
few records for the historian;13 several of our contributors address the issue of how
to uncover the emotional and affectionate ties of pre-modern families. Revealing
primary sources do exist and have much to contribute to the broader fields of
Scottish history and European family history. Showcasing useful sources for Scottish
families is particularly timely as a number of projects are currently underway to
make important records more accessible, through the digitisation of such sources as
testaments and kirk session records.14
As families were interconnected with all other community institutions (a theme
explored more fully in the essays in Part III), our contributors have used a range
of interdisciplinary approaches to tap into a wide variety of sources. These include
cultural sources such as music, art, ballads and literature. Katie Barclay demonstrates
how balladry, a tradition especially associated with women, can uncover popular
ideas concerning concepts of love, the construction of gender relationships, authority
and control within marriage, household economies and community influence over
marriages. Dolly MacKinnon analyses family papers, print culture, images and
material culture including wall paintings, carvings, painted panels and musical
instruments to assess how music making can shed light on gender and household
relationships in early modern Scotland.
Legal records are used by historians of the family throughout Europe. Cynthia
Neville explores medieval land charters to reconstruct the strategies of local families
as they tried to ensure the continuity of their patrimony across generations. The
importance of lineage to a family’s identity is a theme explored further in other
essays in the collection. Civil and ecclesiastical court records are also important.
Scott Moir uses both kirk and criminal court records to build upon recent work on
witchcraft sources which demonstrates their usefulness for revealing aspects of the
domestic.15 He is able to tease out the complexities of how witchcraft accusations
simultaneously revealed the intense bonds of blood, kinship structures and economic
ties while tensions, fissures and rivalries threatened to break them apart. Other
contributors also demonstrate how much can be learned about the family by seeing
how it reacted to times of stress and crisis, such as famine or increasing church or
state interference in its inner workings.

12 Martin, ‘Witchcraft and Family.’

13 Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling,
1525–1700 (Oxford, 1995), p. 94.
14 See digitised wills and testaments c.1500–1900 at http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
15 Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours: the social and cultural context of European
witchcraft (New York, 1996); Martin, ‘The Devil and the Domestic’.
4 Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland/Ewan & Nugent
Identifying and applying significant sources is also an important aspect of the
essays appearing in Parts II and III. Our contributors make use of a variety of
court records, including debt litigation and assault cases which appeared in local
courts and criminal cases from the justiciary court, to examine such issues as the
economic roles of household members, family networks in the local community, and
the impact of social change on individual couples. The ecclesiastical kirk session
courts of the post-Reformation era give insight into such issues as the construction
of fatherhood and the central importance of reputation to families in a community.
Earlier religious sources such as records of medieval urban guilds and church altars
as well as papal letters shed light on the medieval family and its broader social
connections. Records produced by families themselves, particularly noble families in
both Lowland and Highland society, reveal a great deal about how family strategies
shape social, economic, religious and political relationships. Seventeenth-century
religious narratives and autobiographies provide a rare glimpse into private family
relationships, underlining the close interconnection between family life and religious
experience and belief in the pre-industrial period.
In addition to identifying relevant and revealing sources, the contributors also
focus on expanding the developing interest in Scottish women’s and gender history,
through examining the gendered experiences of family members. Rosalind Marshall
highlighted the importance of women’s roles with her overview of women in Scotland
in 1983. Specific aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century women’s history were
explored by the Glasgow Women’s Group in a pioneering collection of essays and two
additional important collections edited by Eleanor Gordon and Esther Breitenbach.16
However, for the period before 1750, work did not really begin until the later 1990s.
A study of women and work in eighteenth-century Edinburgh included the work
of married women, Leah Leneman produced studies on divorce and marriage and
Women in Scotland, c.1100–c.1750 provided a collection of essays on various aspects
of women’s lives, including some on women’s family roles.17 A sustained examination
of the role of gender in modern Scottish history from 1700 appeared in 2006, but there
has as yet been no similar study focused on the earlier period.18
Gender history and family history have had a somewhat fraught relationship.19
Early work on women’s history tended to see the family as the source of women’s

16 Rosalind Marshall, Virgins and Viragos: a history of women in Scotland 1080–1980

(London, 1983); Glasgow Women’s Studies Group, Uncharted Lives: extracts from Scottish
women’s experiences, 1850–1982 (Glasgow, 1983); The World is Ill Divided: women’s work
in Scotland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Edinburgh, 1990) and Out of Bounds:
women in Scottish society 1800–1945 (Edinburgh, 1992), both edited by Eleanor Gordon and
Esther Breitenbach.
17 Elizabeth Sanderson, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh (Houndmills,
1996); Leah Leneman, Alienated Affections: the Scottish experience of divorce and separation
1684–1830 (Edinburgh, 1998); Promises, Promises: marriage litigation in Scotland 1698–1830
(Edinburgh, 2003); Women in Scotland c.1100–c.1750, eds Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M.
Meikle (East Linton, 1999). See also articles in Twisted Sisters. For an extensive bibliography
of Scottish women’s history see http://www.uoguelph.ca/wish.
18 Gender in Scottish History Since 1700, eds Abrams et al.
19 Megan Doolittle, ‘Close Relations? Bringing Together Gender and Family in English
History,’ Gender & History 11:3 (Nov. 1999), pp. 542–54; Gordon, ‘The Family,’ pp. 235–7.
 Introduction 5
oppression and as a result many feminist historians prioritised women’s lives outside
the family. This largely excluded the study of women’s domestic lives. Studies of
masculinity have similarly tended to focus on men’s extra-familial roles – it is only
very recently that fatherhood has begun to be analysed as part of the construction of
masculinity.20 This collection bridges some of these gaps by illustrating how gender
and family history can interact. Within these essays, strong-willed women repeatedly
emerge from the shadows, allaying concerns that family studies relegate women to
a subordinate position.
In addition to assessing gender, exploring families from a wide variety of social
backgrounds has also been an important goal of this collection. Scotland has a
tradition of individual ‘family histories’, ranging from clan histories to the beautifully
produced and expensive histories of individual aristocratic families written by Sir
William Fraser in the nineteenth century. This focus on the elite is not surprising as
such families have left the most records, but, as a result, the little work done on the
medieval and early modern family has tended to focus on the nobility,21 although this
is gradually changing.22 Several contributors examine families from the middling
rank, while others study people from across the ranks of society. However, much
more remains to be done for rural society, especially the peasantry, as well as the
populations of the Highlands and Islands.
Analysing the roles of family members is central to the objectives of this
collection. Exploration of such roles within the structure of the patriarchal family23
is the organisational principle of Part II. Melissa Hollander examines the social
construction of parenthood, especially fatherhood, through the lens of baptism,
as revealed in the kirk session records of St Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh. The theme of
parenting is picked up by David Mullan who uses the deeply personal religious
autobiographies and narratives of the seventeenth century to explore not only the
religious construction of parenting, but also the emotional bonds that connected
children to their mothers and fathers. Gordon DesBrisay and Karen Sander Thomson
explore the economic contributions of wives in a legally patriarchal family system as
revealed in debt litigation cases before the burgh court of Aberdeen, while Barbara
Murison uses the papers connected with the noble family, the Baillies of Mellerstain,
to illuminate the significance of both husband and wife in the creation of a successful
household, as well as the changing perceptions of what these roles should be.

20 JFH 24:3 (July 1999) special issue on fatherhood. See also Alexandra Shepard,
Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003), Chapter 3; Lynn Abrams,
‘Introduction: gendering the agenda,’ in Gender in Scottish History, pp. 4–8. This collection
only begins the process of redressing this situation for pre-industrial Scotland; further study is
necessary.
21 Maurice Lee Jr, The Heiresses of Buccleuch: marriage, money and politics in seventeenth-
century Britain (Edinburgh, 1996); Keith Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: wealth, family and
culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), Part 2 Family.
22 See note 12; Margaret Sanderson, A Kindly Place? Living in Sixteenth-Century Scotland
(East Linton, 2002); Ian Whyte, Scotland before the Industrial Revolution (Harlow, 1995).
23 For a discussion of the different ways in which historians use the term patriarchy,
see Judith Bennett, History Matters: patriarchy and the challenge of feminism (Philadelphia,
2006), pp. 54–6.
6 Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland/Ewan & Nugent
The family of course was not static; the structure of individual families changed
over the life course as roles shifted when children were born, grew up, and left
home. New families were created when marriages were contracted and then altered
substantially with marital breakdown or more commonly when spouses died, leaving
a widowed partner.24 Mullan traces the changing relationship of parents and children
as they grew older and left home to form new families. Murison follows the varying
fortunes of the Baillies as they left their Scottish home for a new one in England
and moved from a period of religious and political upheaval in the later seventeenth
century to a period of relative calm in the early eighteenth century. Other contributors
explore changes caused by larger forces such as famine, shifting clan dynamics,
religious change, evolving gender roles and developing legal practices. Indeed, the
historical question of change and continuity shaped the parameters of this collection.
Within the minds of historians the Reformation usually provides a divide between
the medieval and early modern eras. This collection embraces studies of the entire
pre-industrial era in an attempt to explore change and continuity in family life prior
to the modern period.
Explorations of the relationships of family members covered in Part II lead into
the broader connection of family, kin and community explored in Part III. Many
quasi-family institutions used the language of family, and both the immediate locality
of one’s community, as well as the broader political, social, economic and religious
communities looked to family relationships for organisational principles.25 Mairi
Cowan shows that the medieval church was especially significant in providing such
ties through spiritual kinship and religious fraternities, although such connections
never supplanted blood ties. Alison Cathcart argues that to understand the Highland
clan system of kinship and the political actions of clan chiefs, the role of marriage,
procreation, fosterage and bonding must all be taken into account. Rob Falconer’s
study of assault cases which came before the Aberdeen town courts illustrates the
network of kinship ties that shaped the bonds of loyalty, as well as the actions and
concerns of late medieval and early modern townspeople. That disputes often broke
down along alliances based on kinship clearly demonstrates the significant role played
by the extended family. Karen Cullen’s essay explains how when economic crisis
caused widespread disruption to family structures, the effects were felt far beyond
the individual family. In examining two murders in Perthshire, Deborah Symonds
demonstrates how the wider community could be drawn into the complications
ensuing from one failed relationship.
Each essay makes a significant contribution to the main themes prevalent in the
particular section to which it is assigned, as well as engaging with issues that arise
throughout the collection. It is a mark of the vitality of the field that the contributors
do not always agree and that the evidence sometimes leads to differing pictures of
‘the family’. For example, some essays emphasise the extent of women’s agency
more than others – such disagreements are ultimately fruitful as they press us to
examine what we mean by such a concept. Contributors differ in their assessment
of the extent to which patriarchal structures and ideologies constrained the lives

24 Tamara K. Hareven, ‘The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change,’
American Historical Review 96:1 (Feb. 1991), pp. 95–124.
25 For Europe generally, see Merry Wiesner, Early Modern Europe 1450–1789
(Cambridge, 2006), pp. 70–76.
 Introduction 7
of individual women and men or the extent to which gender influenced the power
relationships between individual family members.26 The importance of the natal
family to women appears greater in some essays than in others, raising questions
about the multiple familial identities of both men and women. Scottish wives kept
their own surnames – did this reinforce ties to the family of their birth? Other issues
for which different interpretations are offered include the extent of parental control,
as well as the motivations of both parents and children in contracting a marriage.
These could vary, ranging from economic calculation to the promptings of the heart
(and perhaps most often, a blend of the two).
The diversity of interpretations and methodologies present in this volume
demonstrates the importance of studying the family in pre-industrial Scotland. Each
contributor consciously crafts their essay to demonstrate how Scottish family history
can contribute to both Scottish historiography27 and studies of the European family.
The contributors to this collection present a new layer of nuanced interpretations of
Scotland’s complex past. Cathcart’s examination of the role of the chief’s family and
kin in establishing clan policy brings new dimensions to studies of Highland society.
Mullan’s study of parenting sheds light on the important issue of how reformed
principles were internalised by individuals. Falconer bridges medieval and early
modern Aberdonian society in his study to illustrate the role that kinship played in
community alliances. Neville’s examination of medieval land charters reveals the
role of memory, women’s inheritance rights, and family identity in patterns of estate
management. The shape of donations to religious foundations examined by Cowan
challenges historians to re-evaluate the perspective that kin groups consisted entirely
of bonds between male relatives with women being added or removed through
marriage. The individual impact of broader historical forces is also illustrated in
this collection. Symonds demonstrates how the double homicide of a mother and
daughter can reveal family struggles as the result of broader social, political and
economic trends in a society influenced by the aftermath of political rebellion.
Similarly, Murison demonstrates how one family benefited from the adaptation of
the roles of wife and husband during the exceptional historical circumstances of
religious rebellion and political union.
Scottish research also contributes insights to European pre-industrial family
studies. DesBrisay and Thomson’s work on the appearance of wives in debt litigation
makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the role of married women in the
family economy. Aberdonian debt litigation records differed from those in much of
seventeenth-century Europe as married women were not cloaked by their husbands,
and their role in the urban debt nexus was clearly visible. Neville’s study explores
Scottish women’s strong legal rights with respect to land ownership in the high
Middle Ages and argues that native Gaelic custom influenced the development of

26 See discussion of patriarchy and power relations in Bennett, chapter 4; Lynn Abrams
and Elizabeth Harvey, ‘Introduction: gender and gender relations in German history,’ in
Gender Relations in German History: power, agency and experience from the sixteenth to the
twentieth century, eds L. Abrams and E. Harvey (London, 1996), pp. 3–9, 53–4.
27 For how studies of the household economy can deepen historians’ understanding
of economic change, see A. Gibson and T.C. Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland
1550–1780 (Cambridge, 1995). For the wider potential impact of Scottish gender history, see
Abrams, ‘Gendering the Agenda,’ pp. 6–11.
8 Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland/Ewan & Nugent
the common law in this particular part of Europe. Studies of distressed families such
as Moir’s accused witches and Cullen’s victims of the 1690s famine demonstrate
how early modern families were able to cope with crises and still manage to survive.
Hollander’s use of the revealing kirk session records to assess the social construction
of fatherhood expands our understanding of this familial role within early modern
society. Distinctively Scottish ballads are also an important source for family history
as shown by Barclay’s essay which highlights the gendered roles of courting and
married couples. Equally, work on the family in other European countries frames the
questions of many of our contributors. Recent investigation of such diverse topics as
spiritual kinship, the economic roles of family members, the role of the household in
constructing the domestic language of witch narratives, and the nature of masculinity
informs several of the essays.28
The variety of topics covered here is broad, yet this volume is simply a starting
point. Some other areas of research that are only touched upon briefly and deserve
further examination include childhood, sibling relations, widowhood, pregnancy and
childbirth, sexuality, servants, stepparents, familial violence and youth culture. The
Guide to Further Reading points interested readers to studies which address some of
these topics. The Glossary provides definitions for terms which may be unfamiliar to
readers. By demonstrating the feasibility and historiographical richness of this area
of inquiry, we have suggested some answers to the question posed in the title of this
introduction. We hope that by bringing together the following studies, this volume
will encourage further historical research in the quest to find the family (or families)
in medieval and early modern Scotland.
The family provided the foundation for order in pre-industrial Europe.
Households were the basic social unit where values were taught, learning initiated,
spiritual well-being nourished, bodily health cared for and social order established.
Historians have emphasised the pivotal role of families by suggesting that within
western history the family was the building block of all other social institutions.29
What happened in individual households had direct consequences for the political,
economic, social and religious development of medieval and early modern Europe.
Moreover, the divide which has often been drawn by historians between the private
life of the family and the public world beyond the household does not work for this
society.30 This collection seeks to develop the field of pre-industrial Scottish family
history and, as individual authors engage in debates involving both Scottish history
and European family history, demonstrate its potential for furthering these areas of
research.

28 See individual essays for references to the European literature.

29 Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987 (Oxford, 1990), p. 15; Mary
S. Hartman, The Household and the Making of History: a subversive view of the western
past (Cambridge, 2005). The importance of the family to society is not confined to Western
civilization. See Anne B. Waltner and Mary Jo Mayne, ‘Family History as World History,’
in Women’s History in Global Perspective, ed. Bonnie G. Smith (Chicago, 2004), pp. 48–91.
Contemporaries also recognised the fundamental importance of the family to society. See
Sarah Hanley, ‘Engendering the State: family formation and state building in early modern
France,’ French Historical Studies 16:1 (1989), pp. 4–27.
30 For the problems of applying the concept of a public/private divide to early modern
European history, see Abrams and Harvey, pp. 16–27.