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Poor Relief and the Church in Scotland, 1560-1650

This book analyses poor relief in the century or so after the Scottish Reformation of 1560. In doing so it challenges the assumption that Scottish poor relief was weak, informal and haphazard because it was run by the Protestant church rather than the state, as in England (all too often the yardstick against which Scotland is measured). Instead, the book explores the substantial welfare work carried out by Scottish parishes, and examines in detail how the system operated as well as those who benefitted from it. The rich but under-utilised parish records which are the focus of the study reveal not just the relief efforts themselves, but also provide a rare insight into the lives of poor Scots whom pre-modern historians often struggle to glimpse. The book will therefore appeal to a wide range of scholars of early modern Scotland, of poverty and its relief, and of the Reformation.