http://hdl.handle.net/1893/52 Electronic theses of History and Politics Students. 2026-09-29T03:46:53Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38351 Title: ‘According to Justice’: Women’s interactions with the Inverness Sheriff Court, 1777-95 Author(s): Henry, Lucy Victoria Abstract: This thesis examines the Inverness sheriff court criminal processes and assesses their documentary value for historians of gender, Scots law, and social history. The sheriff court represented a locus for Inverness civic life but was not solely an urban institution. Over the period under study, the court made significant efforts towards improving and cementing access to law throughout Inverness-shire, appointing various court personnel throughout rural parishes. This was primarily an attempt to counteract entrenched pockets of resistance to state authority in various areas, particularly Lochaber. It is clear that lower-order Inverness-shire residents were aware of their rights and ability to access the law, and frequently utilised the sheriff court system to adjudicate disputes and to obtain justice in response to experienced harm. This thesis will first examine the institution of the Inverness sheriff court, its place in civic society, and the men who wielded the state power instilled in the inferior court system. It will then analyse a range of crimes for what relevant cases reveal about women’s interactions with this court system, including lawburrows, resistance to judicial authority, and sexual violence. It concludes that while the surviving criminal processes of the Inverness sheriff court are vital sources of information regarding women’s lives in the late eighteenth century Highlands, analysing women in isolation does not reveal the full picture of lower-order legal interactions at this time. Women very frequently collaborated with or were supported in their attempts to gain justice by men in their communities and kinship groups. Therefore, by considering what these documents reveal about community actions and familial support in relation to the law, we gain a fuller understanding of both how the law was administered in the Highlands at this time, and how women’s lives were lived within their communities. 2026-01-03T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/36922 Title: "The Ecstatic and the Bilious": To be a Methodist in Nineteenth Century Provincial England Author(s): Allin, John Ernest Abstract: The history and impact of Methodism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been debated by academics. Its role in the lives of ordinary people has not, however, been fully explored and comparative studies are few and far between. This thesis sets out, therefore, to examine Methodist significance for those closely associated with it. It teases out similarities and differences for urban and rural dwellers. Simultaneously this allows for comment in relation to the development of Methodism itself and also the wider secularisation debate. The nineteenth century is the focus. The agricultural Wolds of Yorkshire's East Riding and the Black Country of the industrial Midlands are the chosen areas. Both Wesleyan and Primitive Methodism are scrutinized with their distinctive contributions acknowledged. Extensive archival research has made this possible and a spatial approach has been adopted to add fresh insight. Primarily a work of cultural history, much is gleaned from sociologists, theologians and geographers. Particular attention is given to four Victorian novelists. A spatial and Methodist analysis of works by Eliot, Bennett, Hocking and Thorneycroft Fowler contribute to the study. Methodism was ubiquitous and unique: the novels imply and the history confirms. It created communities within communities in both rural and urban settings and the implications for members were profound. Methodist use of space emphasises this. Methodists migrated knowing that something familiar awaited them. Identities were forged and respectability, with both positive and negative connotations, became a possibility for urban Methodists. It is argued that an analysis of how both outdoor and indoor space was used is essential to an understanding of Methodist fortunes over time. Sacralisation, the turning of space into religious place, is important here but so, too, is desacralisation. As chapel usage changed, there were implications, more widely for secularisation. 2025-02-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/36602 Title: Jura Majestatis, or The Rights of Sovereignty: The Privy Council and Government Administration in Scotland, 1689-1708 Author(s): Tree, Robert David Abstract: This thesis has two main aims. It is firstly an administrative history of the Scottish Privy Council in its final years, from the Revolution of 1689 until its demise in 1708 following the Anglo-Scottish parliamentary union. Secondly, and through the prism of the first, it is a study of religion and politics in Scotland during this tumultuous and complex period of history which has often escaped sustained interrogation. Except for Derek Patrick’s authoritative doctoral thesis in 2002, the last full-length political history of the 1690s in Scotland was Patrick Riley’s trenchant, but deeply researched and valuable, analysis from 1979. In the time which has elapsed since its publication little has changed on this front with historians preferring to focus on the Revolution moment or union. Indeed, in 2003 Clare Jackson lamented the lack of any detailed study of politics in 1690s Scotland. And, more recently, Amy Blakeway and Laura Stewart have noted that post-Revolution Scotland in terms of government and politics has suffered a ‘strange neglect’. Also, despite the recent increase in scholarly interest into the church and religion after 1689, the Privy Council’s role in church government has never been fully scrutinised. It is therefore high time for such a study to be undertaken in earnest, and by integrating the council’s role in church and civil government after the Revolution, a fuller picture of Scottish government will become clear. The thesis will begin by introducing the historical and historiographical context of the Scottish Privy Council and the Williamite Revolution which began in Scotland in 1689. It also aims to define the term sovereignty – which is a key theme – especially with reference to the contemporary idea of jura majestatis, or the rights of sovereignty, which explained that there were separate realms of sovereign authority wielded by different institutions. In this sense, the council held executive power within jura majestatis and exercised sovereign authority as the crown-in-council. The first chapter will assess the constitutional settlement of 1689 to 1691 through a close analysis of the Privy Council’s political and religious functions and policies in that period. In the second chapter, the council’s role in civil government in the 1690s will be the focus, with particular attention paid to intergovernmental relations. Thirdly, the thesis will turn to the consolidation of the church settlement, its ongoing negotiation, and campaigns for an alternative throughout the 1690s. The council’s relationship with the Kirk was tested at several points here but it remained a linchpin of church government, which at times embodied a conciliar Erastianism which provoked the ire of some in church circles, but which was praised by others. A changing relationship with the Protestant churches and different policy approaches under Queen Anne brought new challenges and the continuation of others. Chapter four assesses the impact of Anne’s accession on the relationship between Kirk and council and sketches the implications for religious minorities such as Episcopalians, Quakers, and Catholics. Following this, the fifth and penultimate chapter will investigate how the council responded to new political challenges in the early eighteenth century. These included the fallout from the failed Darien venture, the 1702-3 elections campaign, the Worcester affair, monetary matters, internal administrative issues, and growing tension between the Scottish and English administrations. Finally, chapter 6 acts as an epilogue which looks into the council’s residual executive powers from around 1706, before turning to its role in the debates for and after the union of 1707 until its inauspicious abolition in May 1708. The thesis aims to provoke a fundamental re-assessment of both the Privy Council in early modern Scotland and the impact of the Scottish Revolution of 1689 on politico-religious ideas, practices, and institutions. 2024-08-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/36567 Title: The Politics of Reading at the Subscription Library in Britain in the Age of Reform, 1789-1832 Author(s): Smith, Joshua J Abstract: This thesis integrates a study of the politics of reading and political reading into an analysis of the politics of Georgian Britain between the French Revolution in 1789 and the passage of the first Reform Act in 1832. It does so by examining a type of reading association that was widespread across the English-speaking Atlantic world, the subscription library. These libraries played a substantial role in the politics of Georgian Britain, and their political significance was multi-faceted. It was intellectual, by enabling the spread of printed material amongst a politically active membership; social, by providing a space within which members could connect with each other; and finally ideological, in the sense of the civic identity it imparted to a politically active middling class. Two libraries, the Bristol Library Society and the Leighton Library, Dunblane, are examined as case studies to demonstrate the political importance of the subscription library within different contexts. This thesis uses the books and manuscript records of both libraries, alongside a range of other sources, to examine the roles the subscription library and political reading played as instigators of political thought and action. It engages in a study of political reading and political readers through a series of different methodological approaches, examining the subscription library within the wider context of associational culture, as well as its use by the individual reader, a community of readers and reading during a time of crisis. Individuals turned to books throughout this period to make sense of the changes occurring around them, and their use of the subscription library partly constructed the intellectual and ideological context in which they read and participated in political events. These libraries were also venues of social politics themselves, their administration combining both democratic and constitutionalist features. Participation within the managed and ordered library space was socially prestigious and provided a sense of worthiness and respectability for a political class, as well as practical experience in the bureaucracy of committee governance and the art of politics. 2024-09-30T00:00:00Z