Glasgow Necropolis, which opened in 1833, is celebrated as the first garden or ornamental cemetery in Scotland and as a ‘Victorian Valhalla’ that remembers and represents the makers of Glasgow as the so-called Second City of the British Empire. What few studies there have been have repeated the popular version of its genesis provided by the Merchants’ House of Glasgow, and have not looked beneath this tidy encapsulation of the origin of its new cemetery. This thesis uses the unpublished archives of the Merchants’ House, in particular the records of its Necropolis Committee, as well as numerous related sources, to examine and discuss the more complex interactions that lay behind the House’s investment. The thesis begins with a discussion of the physical and intellectual contexts of the origins of the Necropolis: the first chapter examines the new cemetery in the context of civic improvements in Glasgow in the first third of the nineteenth century, and the second discusses it in the context of cemetery development in Great Britain and western Europe. Chapters three and four offer a detailed account of the production of the Necropolis and its early years as an on-going business. The fifth chapter examines the public reception of the Necropolis, using a variety of contemporary sources, including the published accounts of visitors to the city. The sixth chapter discusses the early funerals and monuments of the Necropolis, and examines how these differed form the practices of previous generations. Methodologically, this thesis adopts a cultural historical approach, with a theoretical basis in the work of Ashplant and Smyth, which focuses on three key concepts in the creation of any cultural product: production, signification and reception.

published_or_final_version / History / Master / Master of Philosophy

Feud is a recurrent theme in Scottish history, but it is a subject which has received scant regard in its own right until fairly recently. Sources for an exarrlirwtion of the Scottish blood-feud are also voluminous and accessible, particularly in the early modern period, a period which coincided with the demise of the feud throughout most of the kingdom. The material evidence and course the feud itself took during the reign of James VI are the, principal reasons for concentrating on these years, though in omitting the civil war of 1567-73 one has not entirely covered that long reign. While the title of this thesis dra\-ls attention to the extent and nature of the feud, it is the latter 'lhich receives by far the greater emphasis. In the "Introduction" the place of the Scottish feud in the wider debate on the blood-feud is considered, a debate which involves historians of different centuries and societies" and those like anthropologists and sociologists who have approached the subject from the perspective of other disciplines. Here the extent of the feud in late sixteenth century Scotland is discussed, with questions of typology, origins, geographic and social distribution, length and incidence being included. Following this, the first chapter "Ideals, Violence and Peace" examines the pature of the feud in the context of these thr ee themes. ii. However, the political m. ture of the Scottish feud necessitated that considerable attention be paid to the relationship between politics and the feud. One chapter, therefore, looks at the many issues which caused feuding both in the rural community and in an urban environment. This is followed by a very detailed analysis of the course of one blood-feud in one relatively small locality throughout the entire period, from royal minority to the implementation of a crown policy which uprooted feuding. After discussing politics and the feud in a local context, the focus of attention then moves to the politics of the court ana central government, but without losing sight of the very real connection between events at the centre and in the localities. Again one chapter is devoted to a more general disc!JSsion of court politics and the impact of feuding there, before being followed by another in depth analysis of the major political feud of the reign between the earl of Huntly and his rivals in the north of Scotland. The highland nature of much of this feud, and the lowland envi~onment of the CunninghamMontgomery feud which forms the subject matter of chapter three, made it almost obligatory to also devote some time to a border feud. This is done, therefore, in chapter six, within the context of a discussion of the government of the west march and the international sensitivity of the region. The remaini.ng two chapters attempt to explain how the feud was uprooted from most of Scotland before the end of James' reign. In chapter seven the Jacobean legislation iii. against feuding and the violent environment in which it bred is the principal theme. Here the laws, their enforcernent and their success in reducing feuding, controlling the use of guns, restricting retinues, punishing outlaws, imrpoving the efficiency of the administration of law and order and other areas of related concern to James and his government are detailed and assessed. Finally, the last chapter turns to the question of who initiated and carried through this crack down on feuding and lawlessness. The king himself, the nobility, crown officials and the church are all evaluated and their individual contribution is analysed. A short conclusion simply suggests some possibilities for future research which might be taken up as a continuation of this thesis.

The following pages are devoted to Members of Parliament - Labourites, Liberals, Nationals, Independents - who expressed dissent at the National Government's handling of foreign and defence affairs. Each of these groups was studied separately, but care was taken to view the Opposition in toto, so that similarities of view or approach were ascertained. Any efforts made to effect a united opposition were traced, as were the inter-party movements that originated in these years. Finally, research was undertaken to discover what factors - sociological, economic, electoral - differentiated dissidents from loyalists in the governing coalition or rival factions within the Opposition Parties. It appeared that the Government's opponents, despite divergencies, began to move towards a common goal of limited collective security. Nevertheless, so divided were they by rival creeds and calculations that little co-operation was affected until the outbreak of war. Separately, however the dissidents achieved little, primarily because each group was crippled by a lack of cohesiveness within its own ranks. The end result was that the Government had a freer hand than it would otherwise have had. The counsel offered by the Opposition looked to the fortification of peace to deter the dictators or to overawe them if aggression occurred. Although insufficient thought had been given to how the allies would have fared in the event of war, the grand alliance policy was - and was recognised by the public to be - an alternative to appeasement. As to the flimsy dividing line between both Coalition loyalists and dissidents and groupings within the opposition Parties it would seem that the only significant difference was that of aggregate experience. In effect, dissent or specialism in foreign or defence matters was found to be primarily connected with members being placed in close relations with overseas interests or serving either in the Forces or in a related department.

This thesis examines how primary sources were used to build conceptualisations of the Scottish past during the nineteenth century. To achieve this it focuses on the work of the record scholar and legal antiquary Cosmo Innes (1798-1874). Innes was a prolific editor of source material relating to parliament, the burghs, the medieval church, family history and the universities. He was also an authority on Scotland‘s legal history, an architectural antiquary, a practising lawyer, a university professor and one of Scotland‘s earliest photographers. Through an investigation of these activities, this thesis explores the ways in which Scots perceived their own history during the period of what Marinell Ash calls the 'strange death of Scottish history‘. What differentiates this study from previous investigations is its emphasis on the presentation and associated interpretation of primary sources, as opposed to institutional frameworks or secondary narratives. Innes put particular types of source to specific uses in an attempt to rehabilitate the tarnished reputation of Scottish history. However, he was not a radical operating on the intellectual fringes, but a respected mainstream figure who worked within the traditions of Enlightenment and the boundaries of Romanticism. He relied upon an institutional interpretation of history which placed abbeys, bishoprics, burghs, universities, families and the apparatus of law and government within broader narratives of national progress. Yet he also used both documentary and architectural sources as the basis for an imagistic and imaginative evocation of the textures of the past. Whilst Innes‘s work illustrates how conflicted Scottish historiography was in the period, it also shows how a prominent antiquary sought to heal those historiographical wounds. The thesis will demonstrate that many of his attempts met ultimately with failure, particularly those which tried to imbue the Scottish past with an ideological validity derived from Whiggism and Enlightenment. However, it will also argue that Scottish historical Romanticism, to which Innes was an important contributor, provided the basis for a broad consensus about the value of Scottish history in the later decades of the century. The significance of this romantic consensus has been neglected by recent scholarship, and the study therefore sheds new light on the 'strange death‘ that occurred in the 1840s and 1850s.

This thesis analyses the origins, development and impact of British army recruiting in the Scottish Highlands in the period from 1739-1815. It examines the interaction of government, landlords and tenantry using estate papers, notably the Macleod of Dunvegan and Gordon Castle Muniments, the Forfeited Estates papers and Campbell of Breadalbane collection. Recruiting is analysed within the context of rapid socio-economic change. The emphasis is on tenant reactions to recruiting, and the study concludes that the upward pressure released by this process was a vital factor in bringing about change in the tenurial structure in the region. Both the decline of the tacksman and the emergence of crofting are linked to the process of regiment raising. Military recruiting involved a clear recognition on the part of Highland landlords and tenantry that the empire and the 'fiscal military state' offered alternative sources of revenue. Both groups 'colonised' various levels of the state's military machine. As a result of this close involvement, the government remained a vital influence in the area well after 1745, and a major player in the region's economy. Recruiting was not merely a residue of clanship, rather it was a form of commercial activity, analogous to kelping.

This thesis proposes that the Scottish past lived a double-life, both as history and as memory. This is archived through an analysis of the discourse of commemoration in Scotland, focusing on the commemorative representation of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, John Knox and the Scottish Reformation, as well as the seventeenth-century Covenanters. In common with other nations in Europe and further afield, Scottish civil society was adept at commemorating its past as a means of proving its national legitimacy in the present. Analysis of these practices shows that, far from the Scottish past being elided from discourses of Scottish national identity in the nineteenth century, collective memories of Wallace, Bruce, Knox and the Covenanters were invoked and deployed in order to assert Scotland’s historic independence and ‘nationality.’ Furthermore, whereas until recently, the tension between Scottishness and Britishness was seen as having undermined attempts to express a coherent and viable Scottish nationality at this time, collective memories of the legacies of Scotland’s national heroes were used to assert Scotland’s role as an equal, partner nation in the enterprise of Great Britain and the British Empire. At the core of this national memory was the concept of ‘civil and religious liberty,’ whereby the Scottish past was defined by the struggle for and achievement of civil and religious deliverance from the hands of tyranny. As each period had its own set of heroes whose efforts had returned Scotland to its true path of civil and religious liberty, so each hero had faced his or her own despot intent on undermining Scottish nationality: for Wallace and Bruce it had been the Plantagenet monarchy, for Knox and his fellow Reformers it was the Roman Catholic Church, and for the Covenanters it was the later Stuart kings. These victories were woven, implicitly and explicitly, into an unbroken narrative of civil and religious liberty, sustaining Scotland’s historic nationality.

The stated purpose of the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge was the establishment of charity schools which were complementary to statutory parochial schools in the Highland parishes of Scotland. The parochial schools were demonstrably unsuited for these parishes due to terrain, weather, infrastructure, the nature of settlement, and their vulnerability to the Catholic mission. Historians and commentators have tended to see the society through a cultural and linguistic lens, imputing to it the weak condition in which Gaelic finds itself today. A ban on teaching Gaelic literacy, which was not lifted until the 1760s, has been considered part of an overall strategy to eliminate Gaelic in the hopes of greater civilization in the Highlands. This perspective overlooks a broader significance of the society, which, as a corporation, extended charity beyond the landed classes and nobility, to the rising professions and also common labourers and tenants, through its use of the parishes to collect donations. It was also a sustained effort at establishing a joint-stock company in the wake of the Bank of Scotland and the Company of Scotland, and instituted transparent business practices to foster a reputation for financial probity. The moral aspect of its mission required good and pious behaviour from its teachers, for them to serve as an example for the schools’ communities and to persuade, rather than coerce, children to attend. The society was also very much of its time, with a role in a completion of the Reformation which was a common theme in contemporary religious and social circles. This completion was structural, with the Church of Scotland trying to secure its presbyterian establishment throughout the country, but also moral, with the Societies for Reformation of Manners in England and Scotland, and the Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge in England, building the legacy of the Reformation and the providential revolution through an encouragement of moral behaviour. These were private groups, however, and while the SPCK developed a channel for charitable activity for the rising professional and middle classes, the SSPCK worked to produce a national corporate effort to support reformation and education in the Highlands.

The institution of kingship was a fundamental feature of medieval Irish society; if we can better understand kingship, we can similarly gain a greater appreciation of the distinctive features of that society. This thesis investigates the practices of Irish kings and dynasties in the Central Middle Ages (roughly, the ninth to twelfth centuries) as represented by the sources. Several kingdoms and dynasties of medieval Ireland are closely studied with reference to different aspects of royal practice. There are two particular elements of this methodology. The first is to trace the practices employed by the kings of those dynasties over time; this gives us a greater sense of how kingship changed through the centuries, and enables us to move away from the static and synchronic models of kingship which have informed much previous scholarship. The second is to focus closely on these kingdoms so that we may gain a better sense of regional variation within Ireland. The investigation proceeds with the belief that Irish conditions may be better understood by reference to parallels drawn from the wider European context. This thesis demonstrates that the nature of Irish kingship and the practices of its kings are more sophisticated and varied matters than has been realised. The ‘dynamic’ model of kingship is validated, but it has become clear that we must allow for a greater degree of variation in the strategies and styles of Irish royal practice, both regionally, and as time progressed. Many features were common to the whole Irish polity; this is not surprising, for pre-Norman Ireland, as mediated to us through the sources, appears to possess a remarkably uniform culture. However, in different ways, the ruling dynasties of Mide, Ailech, Munster, Bréifne and Osraige innovated and contributed to the development of Irish royal practices, and arguably to the nature of Irish kingship itself. The thesis also re-examines the arguments which have been advanced that the nature of kingship had profoundly changed by ca 1200.

The aim of this thesis is to re-examine the history, architecture, and archaeology of Paisley Abbey. Paisley's history must be looked at anew for modern research, especially into the Vatican Archives, has clarified the sequence of events surrounding the abbey. Since the OPUS DEI was the raison d'etre of the monastic life, I have discussed the architecture of the abbey church in chapter II, while the discussion of its cloistral and out-buildings follows in Chapter III. My conjectural reconstructions of different aspects of the church, are important to its architectural history; and close observation of the triforium suggests it was the work of the master mason who designed the nave. On account of the lack of actual archaeological evidence, I have had to reconstruct Paisley's cloistral layout from observations made at other British Cluniac houses. Also, an examination of the windows at Paisley's north aisle suggest that they can only be the work of John Morrow. Church records, and the collections of David Semple, have produced new evidence into the eighteenth and nineteenth century restorations. Also, the collection of papers held at Paisley, together with those of Sir John Stirling Maxwell, explain better the problems emanating from Rowand Anderson's uncompleted restoration.