This text is a survey of Scots literary translations from the 15th to the 20th century. It argues that translation has played a central role in the development of literature in Scots, lending authority to the vernacular and extending the stylistic range open to writers in Scots.

The Scottish People, 1490-1625 is one of the most comprehensive texts ever written on Scottish History. All geographical areas of Scotland are covered from the Borders, through the Lowlands to the Gàidhealtachd and the Northern Isles. The chapters look at society and the economy, Women and the family, International relations: war, peace and diplomacy, Law and order: the local administration of justice in the localities, Court and country: the politics of government, The Reformation: preludes, persistence and impact, Culture in Renaissance Scotland: education, entertainment, the arts and sciences, and Renaissance architecture: the rebuilding of Scotland. In many past general histories there was a relentless focus upon the elite, religion and politics. These are key features of any medieval and early modern history books, but The Scottish People looks at less explored areas of early-modern Scottish History such as women, how the law operated, the lives of everyday folk, architecture, popular belief and culture.

The Scottish Reformation of 1560 is one of the most controversial events in Scottish history, and a turning point in the history of Britain and Europe. Yet its origins remain mysterious, buried under competing Catholic and Protestant versions of the story. Drawing on fresh research and recent scholarship, this book provides the first full narrative of the question. Going beyond the heroic certainties of John Knox, this book recaptures the lived experience of the early Reformation: a bewildering, dangerous and exhilarating period in which Scottish (and British) identity was remade.

This book offers a fundamental reassessment of the origins of a central court in Scotland. It examines the early judicial role of Parliament, the development of the Session in the fifteenth century as a judicial sitting of the King s Council, and its reconstitution as the College of Justice in 1532. Drawing on new archival research into jurisdictional change, litigation and dispute settlement, the book breaks with established interpretations and argues for the overriding significance of the foundation of the College of Justice as a supreme central court administering civil justice. This signalled a fundamental transformation in the medieval legal order of Scotland, reflecting a European pattern in which new courts of justice developed out of the jurisdiction of royal councils.

The first comprehensive study of this war helps us understand how each country to defend the frontier, and the political issues which drove the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1520s. The Anglo-Scottish War of 1522-1524 saw the mobilisation of tens of thousands of men and vast amounts of resources in both England and Scotland. Beyond its British context, the war had a European significance: it formed an element in the wider Valois-Habsburg struggles over Italy, with the complex systems of alliances spreading the repercussions of this struggle far across the continent and to the borders of England and Scotland. Recent years have seen the emergence of a renewed debate around the status of the Anglo-Scottish frontier and the wider political and social conditions which predominated in the borderlands of each kingdom. Although there has been a move to present the Anglo-Scottish border as a porous frontier where the populations on either side were closely connected, these neighbourly links imploded rapidly in wartime when frontier populations were co-opted into a national struggle. It is significant that borderers were responsible for inflicting the heaviest violence on each other during the war. Drawing on an unprecedented access to English and Sottish sources of the conflict, this book offers an important new contribution to both Scottish and English history as well as the wider military history of late medieval and early modern Europe. Aspects of military mobilisation, logistics, the defence of frontiers, the use of violence against civilians and wartime espionage feature prominently.

Illuminates how the ceremonial dimension of death and the succession reflected both Scottish royal identity and a broader culture of ceremony. To date, scholarly attention to royal ceremony in Scotland from the Middle Ages into the early modern period has been rather haphazard, with few attempts to explore how these crucial moments for the representation of royal authority. This monograph provides a long durée analysis of the ceremonial cycle of death and succession associated with Scottish kingship from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, including the final century of the Canmore dynasty, the crisis of the Bruce-Balliol conflict, and the emergence and consolidation of the Stewart family up to the funeral of last monarch buried in Scotland, James V, in 1543. Using a broad range of primary sources, including financial records and material culture, many of them previously untapped, it addresses key questions about kingship and power, the function of ceremony in legitimising royal authority, its significance in relation to the practical exercising of power, and evidence for Scottish similarities and distinctiveness within wider European contexts.

During the last twenty years there has been an explosion of new research into the development of Scotland from a small, backward country on the periphery of Europe to one poised to undergo industrialisation in step with England. This book provides an overview of key themes related to social change and economic development in early Modern Scotland aimed at demonstrating how this transformation occurred.

Extensively revised for this edition, these essays combine to build a picture of Scottish history from the time of the Picts and the Britons, through the Wars of Independence, the Reformation and the time of the Covenanters, to the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 and the impact of industrialization on Victorian Scotland.

In The Government of Scotland 1560-1625 Goodare shows how Scotland was governed during the transition from Europe's decentralized medieval realms to modern sovereign states. The expanding institutions of government - crown, parliament, privy council, local courts - are detailed, but the book is structured around an analysis of governmental processes. A new framework is offered for understanding the concept of 'centre and localities': centralization happened in the localities. Various interest groups participated in government and influenced its decisions. The nobility, in particular, exercised influence at every level. There was also English influence, both before and after the union of crowns in 1603. It is argued that the crown's continuing involvement after 1603 shows the common idea of 'absentee monarchy' to be misconceived. Goodare also pays particular attention to the harsh impact of government in the Highlands - where the chiefs were not full members of 'Scottish' political society - and on the common people - who were also excluded from normal political participation.