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      Women before the kirk : godly discipline in canongate, 1640-1650

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      AliceGlaze_WomenBeforeTheKirk.pdf (16.06Mb)
      Date
      2009
      Author
      Glaze, Alice
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Level
      Masters
      Metadata
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      Abstract
      The burgh of Canongate, situated next to Edinburgh, was deeply affected by the British Civil Wars (1638-49). The Canongate kirk session records, the parish-based bureaucratic and disciplinary records of the Reformed (Presbyterian) Kirk, provide a detailed portrait of daily life in Canongate during that tumultuous period. The records are particularly revealing of early modern gender history as they show how both men and women interacted with the local kirk, and reveal key social trends in the burgh, especially relating to sex and marriage. Illicit sex and its issue – adultery, fornication and illegitimacy – were a common and serious concern for the Reformed Kirk, and their persecution was more of a national preoccupation than in England or other parts of Europe. This concern is reflected in the large number of fornication and adultery cases that came before the Canongate kirk session between 1640 and 1650. The marital partnership, as the economic and social cornerstone of early modern society, was also an important issue in Canongate, and the kirk session records provide a glimpse at the nature and significance of marriage in the parish. Scotland’s kirk session records offer one of few windows into the daily lives of early modern women, and they allow us to see some of the many ways in which women were active agents in the kirk’s system of ‘godly discipline’. Through the Canongate kirk session records, therefore, it is possible to glean understanding about Scottish women’s lives in relation to one of the most rigorous disciplinary systems of early modern Europe.
      Degree
      Master of Arts (M.A.)
      Department
      History
      Program
      History
      Supervisor
      DesBrisay, Gordon
      Committee
      Wright, Sharon; Kalinowski, Angela; Beardsall, Sandra
      Copyright Date
      2009
      URI
      http://hdl.handle.net/10388/etd-07072009-121517
      Subject
      early modern women
      Presbyterian Church doctrine
      fornication and adultery
      marriage
      British Civil Wars
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      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
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