Mapping the Scottish Reformation

FAIN: PW-264004-19

Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA 24450-2116)
Michelle D. Brock (Project Director: July 2018 to April 2025)

A collaborative planning project to develop a database documenting the lives of members of the Scottish clergy from 1560 to 1689, based on manuscripts held at the National Records of Scotland.

A digital prosopography that traces the careers of two centuries of Scottish clerics, Mapping the Scottish Reformation (MSR) will be one of the largest databases of Protestant thinkers, theologians, and preachers in the world. Built with data from manuscripts held at the National Records of Scotland (NRS), this is the first project to ever comprehensively chart the growth, movement, and networks of the Scottish clergy between 1560 and 1689. For scholars and students of this era, such a resource will provide crucial framing for inquiries into religious beliefs, political conflicts, and institutional change. For those interested in family history on both sides of the Atlantic, MSR will provide unprecedented information on individuals whose outsized archival footprints make them critical figures for genealogical research. We are requesting an NEH HCRR Foundations Grant to support the essential pilot phase of this multi-stage project.