Allan Kennedy & Susanne Weston 
Life at the Margins in Early Modern Scotland [EPUB ebook] 

An exploration of the diverse lived experiences of marginality in Scottish society from the sixteen to the eighteenth century.



Throughout the early modern period, Scottish society was constructed around an expectation of social conformity: people were required to operate within a relatively narrow range of acceptable identities and behaviours. Those who did not conform to this idealised standard, or who were in some fundamental way different from the prescribed norm, were met with suspicion. Such individuals often attracted both criticism and discrimination, forcing them to live confirmed to the social margins.



Focusing on a range of marginalised groups, including the poor, migrants, ethnic minorities, indentured workers and women, the contributors to this book explore what it was like to live at the boundaries of social acceptability, what mechanisms were involved in policing the divide between ‘mainstream’ and ‘marginal’, and what opportunities existed for personal or collective fulfilment. The result is a fresh perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the stories of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers a deeper understanding of the ordering assumptions of society more generally. Specific topics addressed range from the marginalisation of people with disabilities in the domestic sphere to female sex workers, and the place of executioners in society.

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List of Illustrations

Contributors

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations


Introduction: Centring the Margins –
Allan Kennedy and Susanne Weston


Part I:
Social Margins

1. Disability and the Domestic Sphere in Early Modern Scotland –
Charlotte Holmes

2. Relieving the Poor in Mid-Seventeenth-Century East Fife –
Samantha Hunter and Allan Kennedy

3. The Marginalisation of Gypsies in Scotland, 1573-
c.1625 –
Thomas Tyson

4. Burgesses on the Edge –
Kevin Hall

5. Enslaved and Formerly Enslaved Young People in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Scotland –
Matthew Lee


Part II: Occupational Margins

6. Working on the Margins: Freemen, Unfreemen, and Stallangers in Early-Modern Scotland –
Aaron M. Allen

7. The Life of the Lockman –
Laura I. Doak

8. ‘Huirdom and Harlotrie’: Female Sex Workers in Early Modern Edinburgh, 1689-1760 –
Susanne Weston

9. Navigating Marginality: The Coal Mine Workers of Seventeenth-Century Scotland –
Robert D. Tree


Part III: Contemplating Marginality

10. Migrants, Itinerants, and the Marginality of Mobility in Seventeenth-Century Scotland –
Allan Kennedy

11. Seeking the Lord, Seeking a Husband: Navigating Marginality in the Diary of Rachel Brown (1736-38) –
Martha Mc Gill

12. Queering the Castalian: James VI and I and ‘Narratives of Blood’ –
Lucy R. Hinnie


Afterword

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SUSANNE WESTON is a Ph D candidate in History at the University of Dundee, Scotland.