The physical and ideological boundaries between public and private in early modern Scotland were constantly contested, resulting in a shifting reality of what was public and private. This fluidity has been recognized by historians, but how, when, and why the shifting took place is not as clear. The moral church courts (Kirk Sessions) of Reformation Scotland allow a unique opportunity to begin to understand the largely elusive boundaries between public and private in the early modern era.
Ecclesiastical Records: Selections from the Minutes of the Presbyteries of St Andrews and Cupar, M.DC.XLI.-M.DC.XCVIII (Edinburgh: Abbotsford Club, 1837), 15 March 1643, 10. Where possible quotations and names have been translated into modern English. Compere means to appear before a court of law or person of authority.
2.
Robert Shoemaker, Gender in English Society 1650-1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? (London: Longman, 1998), 10, 87; Amanda Flather, Gender and Space in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 2007), 42.
3.
Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent, ‘‘Introduction: Where is the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland?’’ in Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland, ed. Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent ( Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 8.
4.
Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1977), 3.
5.
Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 216.
6.
Rachel Weil, Political Passions: Gender, the Family and Political Argument in England, 1680-1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 11.
7.
Retha M. Warnicke, ‘‘Eulogies for Women: Public Testimony of Their Godly Example and Leadership,’’ in Attending to Women in Early Modern England, ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Adele F. Seeff. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994), 168.
8.
National Archives of Scotland [NAS], CC8/4/1.
9.
For an example of a marriage lintel see William Gray and Gidia Smith, Lady Stair’s House, Lady Stair’s Close, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, 1622. Image available on SCRAN, ID 000-299-992-807-C; for an example of a marriage window see John/Ian (Iohannes) Duncan and Margaret Innes at Braco’s Banking House, 7 High Street, Elgin, 1694. Image available in Finding the Family, ed. Ewan and Nugent, covering image.
10.
For challenges facing noble women due to their increased physical isolation see Emilyn Eisenach, Husbands, Wives, and Concubines: Marriage, Family, and Social Order in Sixteenth-Century Verona (Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2004), 194-195.
11.
NAS, CC8/4/587/4/1-16, 1580-1581.
12.
NAS, CH2/471/1, Lasswade Kirk Session, n.d., 2; Booke of the Universall Kirk of Scotland: Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland from the Year MDLX Collected From the Most Authentic Manuscripts [BUK] (Bannatyne Club, 1845), i: 105-106; Records of the Kirk Session of Elgin, 1584-1779, ed. W. Cramond (1897), 48; Ecclesiastical Records: Selections From the Registers of the Presbytery of Lanark 1623-1709 (Abbotsford Club, 1839), 40; Ayrshire Archives Centre, CH 2/809/1, Monkton Kirk Session, 4 October 1635, 89r; NAS, CH 2/718/1, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 11 March-22 April 1592, 84v-87v; NAS, CH2/718/2, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 26 June-17 July 1606, 234-239; NAS, CH 2/718/4, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 1 February 1627, 215r; NAS, CH2/122/181, Canongate Kirk Session, 31 September 1564, 5r. All dates have been converted to the Julian calendar.
13.
This was common amongst Protestant denominations see François Leburn, ‘‘The Two Reformations: Communal devotion and personal piety,’’ in A History of Private Life: Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Roger Chartier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 69-109.
14.
NAS, CH2/84/31, The Principal Acts of the General Assembly, Conveened at Edinburgh, Upon the first Wednesday of August, the 4 of that Moneth, in the year 1647 (Edinburgh: Evan Tyler, 1647), 24 August 1647, 13-14.
15.
BUK, 16 August 1616, iii: 1123.
16.
NAS, CH2/124/1, Corstorphine Kirk Session Records, 7 August 1645, 1r. The National Covenant was a political and religious document which committed its signators to support the Presbyterian church free from changes proposed by King Charles I.
17.
NAS, CH2/718/2, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 9 December 1602, 160.
18.
Jane Dawson, ‘‘‘The Face of Ane Perfyt Reformed Kyrk’: St Andrews and the Early Scottish Reformation,’’ in Humanism and Reform: The Church in Europe, England, and Scotland, 1400-1643, ed. James Kirk (Oxford: Ecclesiastical History Society, 1991), 431.
19.
Selections from the Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery and Synod of Aberdeen, ed. John Stuart (Spalding Club, 1846), 26 August 1604, 38; see also 9 March 1606, 50-51 and 13 August 1609, 68-69.
20.
BUK, 4 November 1574, iii: 108.
21.
NAS, CH 2/718/1, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 8 May 1591, 62r.
22.
NAS, CH2/471/1, Lasswade Kirk Session, n.d., 2.
23.
NAS, CH2/84/31, The Principal Acts of the General Assembly, 24 August 1647, 14.
24.
NAS, CH2/718/6, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 2-23 November 1648, 2-3.
25.
NAS, CH2/718/2, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 25 February 1608, 306.
26.
Churches and communities throughout Europe expected that people know the reputation and behaviour of their neighbours: Tommaso Astarita, Village Justice: Community, Family, and Popular Culture in Early Modern Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 184; Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 43; Keith Wrightson, English Society: 1560-1680 (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 54-55.
27.
Anne Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 3, 9 found that approximately 60 percent of all youth aged fifteen to twenty-four were in service and that all families, except the very poorest, brought servants into their own homes. As a result, many households contained lodgers, servants or other people who were not a part of the nuclear family.
28.
Register of the Ministers, Elders and Deacons of St Andrews 1559-1600, ed. David Hay Fleming (Edinburgh: Scottish Historical Society, 1889-1890), 16 March 1560, iv: 24.
29.
Register of the Ministers, Elders and Deacons of St Andrews, iv: 236-237.
30.
NAS, CH2/718/2, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 9 August 1604-11 July 1607, 170-200. Scailing means to ward off the mother’s milk from coming in.
31.
NAS, CH2/471/1, Lasswade Kirk Session, 2-23 August 1629, 37r-37v.
32.
NAS, CH2/141/1, Trinity College Kirk Session, 17 April-21 August 1628, 29v-32r. A cordoner is a shoemaker.
33.
NAS, CC8/4/587/2, 1591.
34.
NAS, CH2/424/3, Presbytery of Dalkeith, 23 March-20 July 1643, 42v-47v.
35.
NAS, CH2/718/2, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 21 April 1603, 163.
36.
Keith Wrightson , Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 70.
37.
NAS, CH2/424/1, Presbytery of Dalkeith, 28 November 1583, 72r-72v; NAS, CH2/84/1, St Nicholas Kirk Session, 1 May 1642, 6v and 20 October 1644, 18r and 23 March 1645, 21v.
38.
National Library of Scotland, MSS 4to LXXVII, document 5, 21r-24v.
39.
Flather, Gender and Space in Early Modern England, 42.
40.
Disreputable conduct was inherently harmful to the community. See Faramerz Dabhoiwala, ‘‘The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England,’’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th ser, vol. 6 (1996), 212.
41.
Glasgow City Archives [GCA], CH2/550/1, St Mungo’s Kirk Session, 11 July 1588, 97r and 8 June 1592, 174r-174v; NAS, CH2/171/1, Presbytery of Glasgow, 27 July 1596, 70v; NAS, CH2/171/2, Presbytery of Glasgow, 6 June 1610, 55v and 2 August 1614, 100r; Dundonald Parish Records: The Session Book of Dundonald, 1602-1731, ed. Henry Paton (1936), 8 September 1605, 89 and 7 September 1609, 197; NAS, CH2/718/1, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 27 February-21 August 1591, 57r-68v; NAS, CH2/718/2, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 5 August 1598, 79 and 7 November 1605, 214.
42.
NAS, CH2/141/1, Trinity College Kirk Session, 11 March 1630, 46v.
43.
NAS, CH2/562/1, Kirkoswald Kirk Session, 21 August 1642, 94-95.
44.
NAS, CH2/718/2, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 9 August 1604, 170. Ganging means to go to a place or person.
45.
Register of the Ministers, Elders and Deacons of St Andrews, 16 March 1560, 28.
46.
GCA, CH2/171/31, Presbytery of Glasgow, 2 July 1594, 30v.
47.
NAS, CH2/718/1, St Cuthbert’s Kirk Session, 17 May 1589, 27v.
48.
NAS, CH2/424/1, Presbytery of Dalkeith, 22-29 March 1583, 10r-11r.
49.
Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, 12 vols (London, 1814-1875), vi: 194.
50.
Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 71.
51.
David Cressy , ‘‘Response: Private Lives, Public Performance, and Rites of Passage,’’ in Attending to Women in Early Modern England, ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Adele F. Seeff ( Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994), 187-188.
52.
Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 85. For a lengthy discussion of the significance of men’s familial authority see Eisenach, Husbands, Wives, and Concubines, 24-38.
53.
Ecclesiastical Records: Selections from the Minutes of the Presbyteries of St Andrews and Cupar, 15 March 1643, 10.
54.
NAS, CC/8/4/1, 1610.
55.
NAS, CH2/171/1, Presbytery of Glasgow, 2 September 1603-7 August 1605, 247r-299v.
56.
Leah Leneman, Alienated Affections: The Scottish Experience of Divorce and Separation 1684-1830 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 299.
57.
NAS, CC8/6/12, 10 March-8 July 1624.
58.
David Garriochargues this point in Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740-1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 79-80.
59.
Patricia Crawford, Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England (Harlow: Pearson, 2004), 125; Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 71-72; Leah Leneman and Rosalind Mitchison, Sin in the City: Sexuality and Social Control in Urban Scotland 1660-1780 and Girls in Trouble: Sexuality and Social Control in Rural Scotland 1660-1780 (Edinburgh Scottish Cultural Press, 1998).
60.
Public pressure to control adultery was common throughout the early modern world see Capp, When Gossips Meet, 99.
61.
NAS, CC8/4/587, 1580-1581.
62.
Keith Wrightson, ‘‘The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England,’’ in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. Paul Griffiths et al (Basingstoke: MacMillan Press, 1996), 11-13. For further discussion of the significance of the parish see Steve Hindle, ‘‘A Sense of Place? Becoming and Belonging in the Rural Parish, 1550-1650,’’ in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Alexandra Shepard and Paul Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 96.
63.
Susan Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 129.
64.
J.A. Sharpe, ‘‘Disruption in the Well-Ordered Household: Age, Authority, and Possessed Young People,’’ in The Experience of Authority, 187.
65.
Amussen, An Ordered Society, 96; Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 24.
66.
David Cressy, ‘‘Response: Private Lives, Public Performance, and Rites of Passage’’ in Attending to Women in Early Modern England, ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Adele F. Seeff (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994), 188.
