Family in early modern Scotland

After the Reformation there was an increasing emphasis on education, resulting in the growth of a parish school system, but its effects were limited for the children of the poor and for girls.

Most children left home for a period of life-cycle service, as domestic or agricultural servants or as apprentices before marriage.

Divorce developed after the Reformation and was available for a wider range of causes and accessed by a much larger section of society than in England.

The elaborate funerals and complex system of prayers for the dead that dominated in late Medieval Scotland were removed at the Reformation and simpler services adopted.

[1] In the Borders, on both the English and Scottish sides, there were extensive bonds of kinship, often reflected in a common surname.

A shared surname has been seen as a "test of kinship", proving large bodies of kin who could call on each other’s support.

[2] From the reign of James VI (r. 1567–1625), systems of judicial law were enforced, aided by the Union of Crowns in 1603 that dissolved much of the political significance of the border.

In the early modern era they usually took the clan name as their surname, turning it into a massive, if often fictive, kin group.

[6] Economic change and the imposition of royal justice had begun to undermine the clan system before the eighteenth century, but the process was accelerated after the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Within a generation, these factors reduced most clan leaders to the status of simple landholders, without independent military power.

[13] Among the elite of Highland society, there existed a system of fosterage that created similar links to godparenthood, with children being sent to the households of other major families to facilitate the creation of mutual bonds, that often endured into later life.

For older children, the major duty of parents was, according to the Kirk, to ensure the spiritual development of the child, with fathers leading daily family prayers, but it is not clear how widely these practices were adopted.

For many the early teens were marked by moving away from home to undertake life-cycle service, which was necessary so that they could build up skills and capital that would enable them to marry and create a separate household.

[19] By the late seventeenth century there was a largely complete network of parish schools in the Lowlands, but in the Highlands basic education was still lacking in many areas.

[30] Unlike in England, after the Reformation, "Irregular marriage", without a church ceremony or any residence qualifications, remained valid if promises were made between the couple in front of witnesses.

In the Highlands they may have been even more significant as workers as there is evidence that many men considered agricultural work to be beneath their status and in places they may have formed the majority of the rural workforce.

Scottish women in this period had something of a reputation among foreign observers for being forthright individuals, with the Spanish ambassador to the court of James IV (r. 1488–1513) noting that they were "absolute mistresses of their houses and even their husbands".

These included Catherine Campbell (d. 1578), who became the richest widow in the kingdom when her husband, the ninth earl of Crawford, died in 1558.

[38] Lower down the social scale the rolls of poor relief indicate that large numbers of widows with children endured a marginal existence and were particularly vulnerable in times of economic hardship.

[39] In the late Middle Ages, Scottish people, like most of Catholic Europe, were increasingly concerned with prayers for the dead, necessary to speed passage from Purgatory to Heaven.

Those lower down in society paid for shrines, priests and masses, leading to a proliferation of altars, clergy and services within existing churches.

After the Reformation, the Mass and Purgatory were rejected by the Kirk, along with the efficacy of good works and prayers for the dead.

From the seventeenth century burials were increasingly marked by gravestones, often including inscriptions that indicated affection for and the virtues of the deceased.