The union of the crowns in 1603 appeared to offer Scotland the prospect of peace, security, prosperity and a powerful voice in British and even European affairs. Instead there followed a century of warfare, instability, economic vulnerability and international marginalization. Yet in 1707 the Scottish estates voted to strengthen the relationship with England in a union of the parliaments.In this book the author sets out to explain how the regal union operated both at a British level and in terms of its impact on Scottish domestic politics. This is not a 'road to 1707' account of Scottish politics and Dr. Brown underlines just how peripheral the issue of union was for most of this period. It is an investigation into a form of early modern federal government, and its impact on politics. Events like the revolution against Charles I, Montrose's campaigns, the struggles of the covenanters and jacobitism are placed firmly in a British context without ever losing sight of their Scottish dimension.While there is no escaping the fact that executive power was now centred in London, the very great importance of the local authority of the aristocracy and the enduring strength of native political institutions and political ideas leads the author to reject the notion of an inevitable slide into anglicization and further union.As one of a number of multi-kingdom states in early modern Europe this analysis of Scottish politics should be of interest to a wide range of students of Scottish, British and European History. It will also answer many of the topical questions the more general reader might have about why Scotland surrendered her sovereignty to the English in the early eighteenth century.

Kingdom or Province?: Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603-1715 (British History in Perspective)

Brown, Keith M

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Kingdom or Province?: Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603-1715

History

Europe

Macmillan Press

Noble Power in Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution

The period between the Reformation and the Covenanting Revolution has generated much historical debate on issues of political authority and power. In this volume Keith M Brown builds on his previous book, Noble Society in Scotland, to argue that in spite of the changes brought about by the Reformation, by the recovery of crown authority and by the regal union between England and Scotland, the huge power exercised by the nobility remained fundamentally unaltered. Hence when political crisis did surface in 1637-8 the crown lacked the means to oppose a noble-led revolution.Noble Power in Scotland is constructed within a framework that discusses the nobility's political relationship with the crown in chapters at either end of this volume, taking the regal union of 1603 as the crucial dividing point. The remainder of the book addresses in turn themes that analyse the various roles nobles inhabited in exercising power. There are chapter on nobles as chiefs of the remarkably strong and durable kindreds or clans, as lords over extensive territorial networks of dependants, as warriors and soldiers in domestic and foreign service, as men whose notions of honour often determined political behaviour, as magistrates presiding over a system of private local jurisdictions while also colonising central law courts, as parliamentarians and royal councillors, and as courtiers in attendance on the king in Scotland and after 1603 in London. Brown places this discussion firmly within a wider debate about the enduring power of European nobilities, showing that the Scottish nobility successfully adapted to political change, just as it did to economic and cultural change, to retain its dominant political position throughout the period.

Edinburgh University Press

Even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was conventional for humanist writers and their Enlightenment successors to regard the nobility which dominated early modern Scottish society and politics as violent, unlearned, and backward - at best conservatively bound to feudal codes of behaviour; at worst, brutal, corrupt and anarchic. It is a view that prevails still. Keith Brown takes issue with this.The author draws on extensive research in the rich archives of the Scottish noble houses to demonstrate that the conventional view of the Scottish nobility is wrong. He shows that the nobility were as steeped in contemporary European debates and movements as they were rooted in local society. Far from holding back Scotland's economic and cultural development, they embraced economic change, seized financial opportunities, led the way in the pursuit of Renaissance ideals through their own learning and in the education of their children, and were partners in religious reform. Professor Brown makes extensive comparisons with the noble societies elsewhere in Europe to reveal how the differences and above all the similarities between the lives of Scottish nobles and their peers abroad.Elegantly written and illustrated with a wealth of contemporary incident and anecdote, the book presents an intimate and vivid picture of noble life in Scotland. It challenges and will change perceptions of early modern Scotland. Noble Society in Scotland is the first of two related books on the subject. The second, on noble power and the relations between the nobility, state and monarchy, will be published by EUP in 2003.

Noble Society in Scotland

Americas

<p>Partly because it had largely disappeared at an early stage in the development of literacy in Europe and partly because it has never been a fashionable topics for historians, the bloodfeud has been subject to more research from anthropologists than historians. The result is that more is known about feuding amongst the tribes of 20th-century Sudan or between the warlords of Lebanon than about the feuding in pre-modern Europe. The bloodfeud was a late survival in Scotland and this has ensured that it is better documented than in other European societies. This study of the Scottish evidence shows its relevance to the wider European community to which the Scots belonged; reveals much about the nature of the bloodfeud in general; and explores the changes in the community which brought about its suppression. -- "This is one of the most important books to have been written on the history of early modern Scotland in recent years. [..]. Dr. Brown's conclusions rest on the analysis of some 365 feuds drawn from the period 1573-1625, though most occurred before 1610 [..]. The most common causes of individual feuds were disputes over landownership - especially over boundaries, fishing rights, peats, teinds and church seating - yet these are more significant as reflections of the broader destabilizing influences at work in the fabric of Jacobean society, and particularly in the changing character of landownership. [..] [The thesis] represents a major contribution to the dialogue about the two pairs of symbiotic but double-edged relationships which underpinned early modern Scottish society - court and country, lordship and kinship - and their vital intermingling in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. It strikes at the root of one of the most secure myths of Scottish history - the reassertion of monarchy under James VI - but also restates it, in more sophisticated terms." (Michael Lynch, University of Edinburgh)</p>

Bloodfeud in Scotland 1573-1625: Violence, Justice and Politics in an Early Modern Society

John Donald

The merry mariner: During World War II and after, a travelogue

Vision Books International

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