University of Dundee MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY Change and Transition in a Professional Scots Family 1650-1900 Cook, Diana Helen Award date: 2013 Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY Change and Transition in a Professional Scots Family 1650-1900 Diana Helen Cook 2013 University of Dundee Conditions for Use and Duplication Copyright of this work belongs to the author unless otherwise identified in the body of the thesis. It is permitted to use and duplicate this work only for personal and non-commercial research, study or criticism/review. You must obtain prior written consent from the author for any other use. Any quotation from this thesis must be acknowledged using the normal academic conventions. It is not permitted to supply the whole or part of this thesis to any other person or to post the same on any website or other online location without the prior written consent of the author. Contact the Discovery team ([email protected]) with any queries about the use or acknowledgement of this work. Change and Transition in a Professional Scots Family 1650 -1900 Diana Helen Cook Master of Philosophy University of Dundee July 2013 Table of Contents Introduction 2 Chapter 1 Literature review and methodology 8 Literature review 8 Approaches to the history of the family 12 Chapter 2 Survival and prosperity in seventeenth century Fife 18 Foundations in Pittenweem 19 Merchant burgesses and shipmasters in early-modern Fife 26 Relative family wealth and social position 36 Chapter 3 Change and transition in early modern Scotland 40 Early family entry into the professions 40 Problems with relationships and finance 43 Witchcraft in Pittenweem 46 Breakdown of burgess structure 48 Drivers for change in the next generation 50 Comparisons with other families 53 Chapter 4 Professional life in eighteenth century Fife 58 Changes in the Kirk 58 Training for the ministry 60 Finding work as a minister 62 Life as a minister 65 Development of patronage in eighteenth century Scotland 68 Initial family entry into patronage networks 70 Career progression 73 Changes in patronage 76 Chapter 5 Cook family practices 1650 - 1800 81 Women and economic history 81 Cook family marriage practices from around 1650 to 1800 82 Mortality, widows and orphans in the early-modern period 91 Mortality, widows, and orphans in eighteenth century Fife 98 Chapter 6 The Cook family and the British Empire 104 Scots and the British Empire 104 Analyses of career choices 105 The lure of the military 106 Entering the military 111 Identity, values, and beliefs 115 Cook women and the British Empire 119 Conclusion 131 Appendix 1 Cook family 17th -19th centuries 143 Appendix 2 Cook family archive 144 Appendix 3 Photographs of Pittenweem 145 Appendix 4 Relative Cook family wealth and social position, late seventeenth 147 century Appendix 5 Persons in Cook family network who became honorary burgesses 148 of St Andrews, early eighteenth century Appendix 6 Gillespie family of Elie 149 Appendix 7 Relationship between the core Cook family and ‘Cousin James’ 152 Cook Appendix 8 Cook - Hill family connections 154 Appendix 9 George Hill patronage connections 155 Appendix 10 Cook - Shank family connections 157 Appendix 11 Differences between the survival of girls and boys to adulthood 160 in seven Fife families, late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries Appendix 12 Cook family migration within Scotland, pre-1800 161 Appendix 13 Summary of methodology used to analyse career choices of 162 boys attending Edinburgh Academy, mid-nineteenth century Appendix 14 Professional connections between the Cook and Miller families, 164 nineteenth century Appendix 15 Photographs relating to Major John Cook V. C. 167 Appendix 16 Nineteenth century Cook family photographs 169 Bibliography 176 List of maps and figures Map of eastern Scotland showing places relevant to the study 1 Figure 1 Securing succession: Cook, Pittenweem and Arnot of Balcormo 85 Figure 2 A tale of debt and kinship: Cook, Allan and Binning c.1700 88 Figure 3 John Cook Curators, c.1755 99 Figure 4 Edinburgh Academy: per cent choosing the military as a first career 106 choice Acknowledgements The author would like to thank supervisors Dr Billy Kenefick and Professor Callum Brown for their support, encouragement, and feedback throughout this study; also Dr Alan MacDonald for detailed and very helpful comments on chapters two and three. The author would also like to thank the helpful and knowledgeable staff of the National Library of Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland, University of St Andrews, Special Collections, Duns Public Library, Perth and Kinross Council archive, and Girton College Library, Cambridge. Thanks also to the Ashcroft Trust V. C. Collection and the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge for permission to use material from their collections and to Edinburgh Academy and the Edinburgh Academical Club for the long-term loan of relevant volumes. I am indebted to all family members, past and present; this study was only possible because of them. Signed Declaration I declare that I, Diana Helen Cook, am the author of this thesis. Unless otherwise stated, all the references cited have been consulted by myself, that the work of which the thesis is a record has been done by myself, and that it has not been previously accepted for a higher degree. Signed ……………………………………….. Summary This study examined the evolution of a family from their foundations as well- placed and successful burgesses and merchants-skippers in seventeenth century coastal Fife to professionals in Scotland and the British Empire. Whilst the necessary generalisations around much of the writing of Scottish history usually refer to the particular as a source of illustration, the methodology of this study reversed that focus and linked the family experience to the high level narrative. The research examined what factors drove the significant changes in family occupations and found that whilst family decisions were influenced by the prevailing economic, social, and political environment, personal choice and intangible benefits could be the deciding factors. Many professional family members migrated within Scotland or as temporary ‘sojourners’ in the British Empire, driven by the ‘push’ from the lack of appropriate opportunities at home balanced by the ‘pull’ of better earnings elsewhere. The family was generally successful in accessing the patronage that was essential to obtaining appropriate employment in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the women of the family were agents of change. Girls from merchant backgrounds began to marry professional men, making it easier for their menfolk to enter new occupations by creating contacts and role models. Whilst by the mid-nineteenth century, some of the women were fully engaged with the British Empire through their husbands’ employment, for others the empire was of minor significance as they pursued their goals of higher education for women. Although the families enjoyed a relatively comfortable lifestyle, they suffered, like their contemporaries, significant early mortality amongst both adults and children and used family networks and re-marriage to look after under-age children. As the families increasingly became involved in the British Empire, they, like many Scots, managed a dual identity as both Scots and citizens of the British Empire. Their strong religious beliefs reflected the norms of Scottish society and sat quite comfortably with the value they placed on establishing social status, respectability, and achieving upward social mobility. Overall they were broadly representative of contemporary Scots families of similar occupation and social background and thus provide a more personal insight into Scottish history. 1 Map of eastern Scotland showing places relevant to the study ●Dalmarnock ●Dunkeld Dundee Forgan Perth St Andrews Kingsbarns FIFE Carnbee Crail Kilconquhar E/W Anstruther Pittenweem St Monans Elie Firth of Forth Kirkcaldy Bo’ness Aberlady Dunbar Queensferry Leith ●Cockenzie Haddington ●Edinburgh Scale: 1~750,000 2 Introduction Whilst there is academic literature on the generic history of the family in Europe at the macro level and considerable interest in individuals researching their genealogy at the micro level, there are no known studies that aim to analyse the history of individual related professional Scottish families within the context of the contemporary Scottish and British history.1 The period of this study saw Scotland’s economy transformed from subsistence agriculture, minimal manufacturing, and the export of primary products to the export of sophisticated technological goods world- wide