As Superintendent of Fife, John Winram played a pivotal role in the reform of the Scottish Church. Charting his career within St Andrews priory from canon to subprior, Linda Dunbar examines the ambiguity of Winram's religious stance in the years before 1559 and argues that much of the difficulty in pinning down Winram's views stems from the mis-identification of John Knox's un-named reforming sub-prior with Winram. In fact, as the book shows, this early reformer was probably Winram's own sub-prior, Alexander Young. The various reforming influences on Winram, and the gradual change in his religious stance is charted, together with his robust attempts at Catholic reform with St Andrews and his profound effect upon John Knox during the siege of the castle. In 1559, Winram eventually decided to side with the Protestants. The book concludes with an analysis of the difficulties experienced by Winram and the preponderance of accusations against him which led to his final relinquishing of office in 1577. In his transition from a Catholic to a Protestant reformer, Winram's experience is typical of that of many of his contemporaries in Scotland and in Europe.

Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland analyses narrative accounts of public theatricality in late medieval and early-modern Scottish culture (pre-1645). Literary texts such as journal, memoir and chronicles reveal a complex spectatorship in which eye witness, textual witness and the imagination interconnect. The narrators represent a broad variety of public actions as theatrical: included are instances of assault and assassination, petition, clerical interrogation, dissent, preaching, play and display, the performance of identity and the spectatorship of tourism. Varying influences of personal experience, oral tradition, and existing written record colour the narratives. Discernible also are those rhetorical and generic forms which witnesses employ to give a comprehensible shape to events. Narratives of theatricality prove central for understanding early Scottish culture since they record moments of contact between those in power and those without it; they show how participants aimed to influence both present spectators and the witness of history; they reveal the contested nature of ambiguous public genres, and they point up the pleasures and responsibilities of spectatorship. McGavin demonstrates that early Scottish culture is revealed as much in its processes of witnessing as in that which it claims to witness. Although the book's emphasis is on the early modern period, its study of chronicle narratives takes it back from the period of their composition (predominantly 15th and 16th century) to earlier medieval events.

The volume covers many of the most significant themes in pre-industrial Scottish society.