Sixteenth Century Scotland

A Kindly Place?: Living in Sixteenth-century Scotland How did people survive in an age of private wars, foreign invasion and political uncertainty, of economic hardship and insecurity, of dislocation in religious and cultural life? How did they cope from day to day - lairds and tenants, merchants and craftsmen, rural labourers, urban-dwellers in service jobs, wives, widows and unmarried women? This book focuses on the people of 16th-century Scotland as individuals, families and communities, the people in the crowd-scenes of Scottish history. Using evidence from everyday life, it looks at ways in which they coped with the business of living and working together. A deep-rooted belief in a kin-based - kindly - right to possess the means of survival, together with hard-won survival skills, enabled many of them, despite the very real odds, to maintain a certain level of stability in their lives and the more prosperous among them to enjoy a comfortable standard of living.

Satan's Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth-century Scotland The evidence for magic and witchcraft in 16th century Scotland lies scattered in unpublished manuscripts, 19th- and early 20th-century transcriptions, and passing remarks in the histories of shires and burghs. The author's object in this study is to lay the material in front of the reader and make some preliminary suggestions about how it can be interpreted, in the hope that future scholars of Scottish witchcraft in particular will be able more easily to construct their theories with the bricks he has provided. He does not claim to have uncovered all the existing material on this subject, for there are certainly caches of papers and further references still to be found, but by using previously unpublished material, he aims to produce a different picture of Scottish witchcraft. The evidence for magic and witchcraft in 16th-century Scotland lies scattered in unpublished manuscripts, 19th- and early 20th-century transcriptions, and passing remarks in the histories of shires and burghs.

Essays on Timothy Pont's Maps of Late Sixteenth-century Scotland Around 1583-1596 Timothy Pont, a young graduate of the University of St Andrews, undertook his remarkable task of mapping Scotland - the first person to do so in any detail, as far as is known. He spent 13 years during the post-Reformation period travelling around Scotland drawing and naming every hill, loch, and building in miniature sketches. Little is known of Pont's life and the reasons for his initiative are still obscure. Many of Pont's documents were destroyed in a fire in 1673, but at least 77 have survived. Now held by the National Library of Scotland, this collection provides an insight into the history, geography, landscape and architecture of 16th-century Scotland. All the fragile manuscript maps attributed to Pont have now been scanned, revealing details previously invisible to the naked eye. They show natural features such as rivers, coasts, lochs and trees, as well as settlements, towns, bridges, mills and churches. In one 18 inch by 12 inch drawing of Lanarkshire, Pont included 1,385 names. The smallest map is a two-inch square drawing of the islands in Loch Maree.

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