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T ' 1 Uil ' V; T«J I S) T.. I I t ' 1 Uil ' v; t«J i s) t.. i i" 'i t S i h 17/» h j (//j < 7/j i || f ) f ) t ^ * ii • i i t ^ ( >Hl vi; y K >i! IM'ji.Y 7.0J7, The Perth Kirk Session Books 1577-1590 Edited by MARGO TODD Scottish History Society ’ 2012 SCS SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY SIXTH SERIES VOLUME 2 The Perth Kirk Session Books 1577-1590 The Perth Kirk Session Books 1577-1590 Edited by Margo Todd SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY 2008 THE BOYDELL PRESS © Scottish History Society 2012 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2012 A Scottish History Society publication in association with The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN 978-0-906245-31-6 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests FSC* C013604 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, QRt)l*>Y CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations viii Map of the Burgh of Perth, c. 1580 x INTRODUCTION 1 THE PERTH KIRK SESSION BOOKS: 1577-1590 67 1577 69 1578 84 1579 109 1580 143 1581 172 1582 205 1583 249 1584 275 1585 294 1586 332 1587 354 1588 387 1589 408 1590 437 APPENDICES I Perth Elders, 1576-1590 461 II Hospital Masters, 1577-1590 484 III Session Disciplinary Entries in the Parish Register, 1568 485 BIBLIOGRAPHY 489 GENERAL INDEX 497 INDEX OF NAMES 528 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for permis- sion to reproduce in this volume manuscript session minutes of the parish of St John the Baptist, Perth. Financial support for the research was provided by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the University of Penn- sylvania, and I benefited from a Visiting Fellowship in New College, in the University of Edinburgh. The staffs of the National Records of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, the Perth and Kinross Council Archive, and the Perth Museum and Art Gallery have been unfailingly helpful to the process of transcribing and the research for annotations, introduction, and appendices. At the latter two repositories, Steven Connelly and Mark Hall deserve particular mention for not only facilitating access to their manu- scripts, but also generously sharing their knowledge of Perth’s history, mate- rial culture, and environs. Marjory Howat, modern clerk of Perth’s session, guided me through the kirk itself, ushering me right up the tower to the steeple with its great bell; to her I owe my experience of how very small the tower chamber was where moral offenders were warded, how foreboding the stairs to that confinement. For good advice, expertise, and friendship, I am as always grateful to Jane Dawson, Elizabeth Ewan and Jenny Wormald, and I owe much to conversations with David Mullan and Jamie Reid- Baxter.The map owes much to advice from David Strachan of the Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust. Andrew Pettegree deserves the credit for launching me into this project, with his precept that each of us owes to the profession at least one edition of an important manuscript. These, he insists, will outlive our monographs, and he is surely correct. Consider how many generations of scholars have depended on the last edition of session minutes published by the Scottish History Society, those of St Andrews, produced by David Hay Fleming in 1889-90. Finally, as always, my greatest debt of gratitude is to my family. This volume is dedicated to the memory of a much-loved descendant of Scots emigrants to America, my father, James Edward Fraizer. ABBREVIATIONS APS Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, 1127—1707, ed.T. Thomson and C. Innes, 12 vols (Edinburgh, 1814-75) BUK Booke of the Universall Kirk: Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies of the Kird of Scotland, 1560-1618 (Edinburgh, 1839 Chronicle Chronicle of Perth, NLS ms Adv. 35.4.4 CP M. Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, 2002) CRB Records of the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland 1295-1614, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1866,1870) CSPS Calendar of State Papers, Scottish DOST Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, 12 vols (Chicago, 1937—), and www.dsl.ac.uk Fasti Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae: The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation, ed. H. Scott, 10 vols (Edinburgh, 1915-28) First Book The First Book of Discipline, ed. J.K. Cameron (Edinburgh, 1972) GB The Perth Guildry Book 1452—1601, ed. M. Stavert (Edinburgh, 1993) Milne The Rental Books of King James VI Hospital, Perth, ed. R. Milne (Perth, 1891) NRS National Records of Scodand, General Register House, Edinburgh NRS-NRH National Recordss of Scodand, New Register House, Edinburgh NRS-WRH National Records of Scodand, West Register House, Edinburgh NLS National Library of Scodand, Edinburgh PKCA Perth and Kinross County Archives, Bell Library, Perth PMAG Perth Museum and Art Gallery PSAS Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland RPC Register of the Privy Council of Scotland 1st ser. 1545-1626, ed. J.H. Burton and D. Masson, 14 vols (Edinburgh, 1877-98) RSCHS Records of the Scottish Church History Society ABBREVIATIONS SAKS Register of the Minister, Elders and Deacons of the Christian Congregation of St Andrews, Comprising the Proceedings of the Kirk Session ... 1559-1600, ed. David Hay Fleming, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1889-90) Second Book The Second Book of Discipline, ed. J. Kirk (Edinburgh, 1980) SHR Scottish Historical Review SHS Scottish History Society STS Scottish Text Society TFAJ Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal Burgh of Perth, c. 1580 INTRODUCTION The story of the Scottish Reformation is one oft-told from the top, as the outcome of actions by monarchs and regents, bishops and preachers, parlia- ment and the militant Lords of the Congregation.1 That traditional account is by no means false or unimportant, but it is a truncated version. The Reformers sought to change the hearts and minds of the Scottish people, to free them from what they regarded as popish superstitions and teach-them a new understanding of how they were saved — by grace alone, through faith, as they beheved the Scriptures taught. They were certain that what would emerge from a population thus enlightened would be a godly community, as free of immoral behaviour as of the old images, ceremonies, and festivities now condemned as idolatrous. The godly nation would be a praying and fasting people, devoted to sermons and strict sabbath observance, to Bible- reading and psalm-singing. They would be marked by concord, their behav- iour and conversation defined by rigorous disciplinary guidelines to reflect their gratitude for divine election. Their families would be well-regulated, their children literate and biblically informed, their poor nurtured. 1 The quickest way into the older historiography is provided by J. Kirk, ‘The Scottish Reformation and the reign of James VI: a select critical bibhography’. Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 23 (1989), 113-55. Newer work like that of A.R. MacDonald, The Jacobean Kirk: Sovereignty, Polity and Liturgy (Aldershot, 1998), A. Ryrie, Origins of the Scottish Reformation (Manchester, 2006), the Reformation essays in J. Goodare and A.A. MacDonald (eds). Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch (Leiden, 2008), and the essaysand Scotland, on Scotland 1550-1700 in E. (Aldershot, Boran and 2006) C. Gribben generally (eds). continues Enforcing the thetop-down Reformation tradition. in Ireland The regional(East Linton, studies 1997), of M. I. Cowan,Sanderson, Regional Ayrshire Aspects and ofthe the Reformation: Scottish Reformation People and (London, Change 1490-16001978), and J. McCallum, Reforming the Scottish Parish: The Reformation in Fife, 1560-1640 (Aldershot, 2010) tend to depart from this rule, but the regional study by L. Dunbar, Reforming the Scottish Church: John Winram (c. 1492-1582) and the Example of Fife (Aldershot, 2002) reverts to tradition with its focus on a divine. The recent survey of sixteenth-century Scottish history by J. Dawson, Scotland Re-formed 1488-1587 (Edinburgh, 2007) does incorporate into a general survey newer work on parochial religion, including my own The Culture of andProtestantism A.R. MacDonald in Early Modern (eds), ScotlandScotland: (New The Making Haven, and 2002 Unmaking - henceforth of the CP), Nation, as does c. 1100-1707 B. Harris folk(Dundee, during 2007); the Reformationhowever, much era. remains to be done on the religious experience of ordinary 2 THE PERTH KIRK SESSION BOOKS The Reformation thus understood was a parochial endeavour, one whose outcome can only be understood by close examination of what went on in parish and pew. The political shifts of the 1550s and the ensuing civil wars would be necessary for the converted clergy to pursue their aim, but the arena where religious Reformation would happen (or not) was local and lay. Ordinary people and their lived experience of religion must therefore be the focus of students who would fully understand the Scottish Reformation.
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