Council, Kirk, and Guild in Early Modern Perth

FAIN: FA-54683-09

Margo Todd
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205)

The history of the royal burgh of Perth from the generation before Protestantism (ca. 1500) through the Civil Wars and Cromwellian occupation of the 1650s permits a close study of the interaction of political, economic, environmental, and religious forces in an important and multicultural population center on the broad border between the Scots Lowlands and the Gaelic Highlands. Available data for a cultural history of the town includes both textual sources (especially guild, council, and church court records) and extant artifacts and other material survivals, including discoveries of archaeologists who have been excavating Perth sites since the 1970s. The problem of communal identity construction in an era of drastic change will be central to the study, as will the remarkable cooperation of magistracy, guild leadership, and lay church elders in effecting a degree of moral and social discipline arguably unequalled in any western European town outside of Scotland.