No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the effect of the changing constitutional relationship between Scotland and England on the Scottish approach to conflicts of law with an English element (i.e., competitions of jurisdiction between Scots and English courts; cases in which both Scots and English law have a claim to application; and recognition and enforcement of English court orders in Scotland). A historical perspective is obtained by brief study of the period prior to parliamentary union. Once united in one political state, the constitutionalising of conflicts, the internalising of conflicts, and the use of international private law rules, are three ways in which conflicts of law within that state might be handled. The extent to which each of these methods has influenced the Scottish approach to intra-UK conflicts, and the effect of devolution on each, is examined. The availability to Scots courts of public policy objections in respect of English law is also investigated. The context of the Anglo-Scottish relationship changed with UK entry into the (now) European Union, and the effect of that on intra-UK conflict rules is considered. The conclusion is that the nature of the constitutional relationship between Scotland and England impacts upon the handling in Scotland of conflicts of law with an English element. The parliamentary union may not have resulted in wide-spread constitutionalisation of conflicts, but there has been a degree of internalisation of conflicts. In general, however, the interaction of the constitutional relationship between Scotland and England and its private law consequences has permitted, indeed sometimes necessitated, the use (in certain areas) of Scottish international private law rules without differentiation between intra-UK, and international, conflicts.

The research is an in-depth, empirical study of the political behaviour of the Church of Scotland; it is primarily intended as a contribution to the territorial field of Scottish politics. The most important aim of the thesis is to assess the overall effectiveness of the Church of Scotland when it takes part in political activities. More generally, the research has three key themes: first, it examines the place of religion in politics by analysing churches as political pressure groups rather than simply looking at voting behaviour; second, it looks at the development of the new Scottish political system, post-devolution; third, it explicitly compares the political behaviour of the Church of Scotland with the Scottish Catholic Church. Chapter two focuses on the political behaviour of the Church and Nation Committee of the Church of Scotland and concludes that its effectiveness is limited, primarily due to a shift in societal values. Chapter three focuses on the political behaviour of the Board of Social Responsibility of the Church of Scotland and concludes that is possesses more potential for influence than the Committee, due to the nature of the issues it is concerned with. Chapter four compares and contrasts the political behaviour of the Church of Scotland with the Scottish Catholic Church, and concludes that the latter is often more effective than the former when they act as political pressure groups. Chapter five analyses the results of the elite survey questionnaires and interviews; one of its main conclusions is that while most Scottish politicians believe the Church of Scotland to be influential, they do not perceive themselves to be personally influenced. The thesis argues that the political influence of the Church of Scotland is varied, depending on which area of policy is being addressed, and the place of religion generally in Scottish politics is becoming increasingly peripheral.

This Thesis sets out to examine in its eighteenth century context a Scottish Calvinist sectarian group of churches deriving the main features of their faith and practice from the writings of John Glas and Robert Sandeman. It proceeds by way of a description of the milieu out of which they came to describe the birth and spread in Scotland of these groups, the Glassites, the Scotch Baptists and the Old Scots Independents, and a similar group, the Bereans. Using some manuscript evidence and other sources, it looks at the social origin of the churches, and the composition of the groups. Some main theological distinctives are outlined, and the social and religious life of the groups illustrated, from contemporary sources. With this material as the evidence, an attempt is made to place the group in a wider setting, by comparison with other sectarian movements, and the conclusion drawn that the eighteenth century Independent movement in Scotland can be classified as a variety of the Revolutionary type of Sect, although other characteristics occur. That both social change and deeply held theological and ecelesiological beliefs contributed to the special shape of the groups is demonstrated.

The thesis explores the reception of the works of the Scottish Enlightenment in provincial Scotland, broadly defined, aiming to gauge their diffusion in the libraries of private book collectors and 'public' book-lending institutions, and to suggest the meanings and uses that contemporary Scottish readers assigned to major texts like Hume's History of England and Smith's Wealth of Nations. I thereby acknowledge the relevance of more traditional quantitative approaches to the history of reading (including statistical analysis of the holdings of contemporary book collections), but prioritise the study of sources that also allow us to access the 'hows' and 'whys' of individual reading practices and experiences. Indeed, the central thrust of my work has been the discovery and interrogation of large numbers of commonplace books, marginalia, diaries, correspondence and other documentary records which can be used to illuminate the reading experience itself in an explicit attempt to develop an approach to Scottish reading practices that can contribute in comparative terms to the burgeoning field of the history of reading. More particularly, such sources allow me to assess the impact that specific texts had on the lives, thought-processes and values of a wide range of contemporary readers, and to conclude that by reading these texts in their own endlessly idiosyncratic ways, consumers of literature in Scotland assimilated many of the prevalent attitudes and priorities of the literati in the major cities. Since many of the most important and pervasive manifestations of Enlightenment in Scotland were not particularly Scottish, however, I also cast doubt on the distinctive Scottishness of the prevailing 'cultural' definition of the Scottish Enlightenment, arguing that such behaviour might more appropriately be considered alongside cultural developments in Georgian England.

Recent Scottish Government policy has increasingly emphasised lifelong learning as the means of developing the nation’s skills and employability. Colleges are frequently presented as the key driver of widening access to lifelong learning in Scotland and are expected to provide effective responses to both social and economic problems. This research focuses on the balance struck in government policy in relation to Scotland’s colleges with regard to social and economic objectives and how this policy is mediated in three diverse colleges. Utilising case studies of three colleges in Scotland, this study found that the economic focus of the Scottish Government, coupled with the market values of the college sector following the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 1992, has resulted in some colleges emphasising economic priorities at the cost of social objectives. College education is presented as the bridge to the labour market and this has resulted in students equating college learning with acquiring the necessary qualifications to obtain employment. In the larger colleges (both the result of recent mergers) social network development is treated as a by-product rather than a central objective and the connections made by students tend to be confined to narrow subject areas. Learning at these colleges is compartmentalised, so that students develop ‘bonding’ rather than ‘bridging’ social capital, which may narrow rather than widen their horizons (Putnam, 2000). Pursuit of funding initiatives and performance indicators at the larger colleges led to tensions amongst staff members over the loss of community focus and, in the case of one college, a significant increase in learners under 16. The smaller college exhibited a clear community focus, allowing for greater levels of social interaction. It is suggested that colleges need to develop further their role as generators of social, as well as human, capital.

This study concentrates on the scientific writings of Thomas Chalmers, David Brewster, John Fleming and Hugh Miller. All belonged to the Evangelical party in the Church of Scotland and all joined the Free Church of Scotland at the Disruption in 1843. The thesis begins with a brief history of natural theology between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. It also reviews previous work on science and belief in the first half of the nineteenth century, pointing out that much of the emphasis in studies of Christian natural theology has been on the Anglican Broad Church. Chapter two describes the divisions in the Church of Scotland and the events which led to the formation of the Free Church of Scotland. It also indicates the particularly favourable circumstances for Evangelical intellectuals at the start of the nineteenth century by charting the rise and decline of the Moderate party during the second half of the eighteenth. Chapter three documents interactions amongst the four Evangelical scientists and describes their roles in the Disruption and in the formation of the Free Church of Scotland. Chapters four and five trace common threads in their natural theologies and in their views about the reconciliation of science and Scripture. Comparisons are made with opinions expressed within the Evangelical party as a whole. Chapter six describes Evangelical reactions to the dissemination of materialism and deism, concentrating especially on the activities of George Combe and his circle. Combe's natural theology is shown to have been specially threatening to Evangelicals in the Established Church because of the potency of the Book of Nature metaphor in challenges to the clerical supervision of education. Chapter seven examines similarities and differences in the geological work of Miller and Fleming and examines the role of rival natural theologies in the development of theories about the Earth's origin, history and development. Particular attention is given to the astronomical nebular hypothesis and to the transmutation theory put forward in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chapter eight summarises the various functions of natural theology for the Evangelicals and for the Combeists.

The title- "James Hog of Carnock (1658-1734), Leader in the Evangelical Party in Early Eighteenth Century Scotland" -has been the limiting factor in the development and scope of this thesis. It is not without significance that Hog is described as "Leader in the Evangelical Party": the claim is not that he was the leader of that school; but he is presented herein as one of the leaders in the Evangelical party. This means that the share of Thomas Boston, the Erskines, and others of that group in Evangelical leadership is by no means denied, but it is not the scope of this thesis to give an exhaustive study of these particular men, of their party, or even of the various controversies herein discussed. Their contributions are for the most part not included in the thesis, or are included only insofar as is necessary to establish Hog's function in the various scenes, to balance the discussion, or to throw light upon the overall picture. In other words, the various subjects presented in the thesis are developed as James Hog impinged upon them, or as they impinged upon James Hog. The words "Evangelical Party" are intended to apply in a broad way, for it is an accepted fact that there was, during the period under consideration, no hard and fast Evangelical--as opposed to Moderate--party. It was more properly an Evangelical school and as such the words are understood and developed. It is the early eighteenth century with which the thesis is concerned primarily, but as it is impossible to plunge into the current of events and thought in ecclesiastical and theological studies without a retrospective presentation of the contextual situation preceding the immediate problem, an introductory section, rooted in the seventeenth century background, is placed at the beginning of each chapter. The decision to take this approach was taken after consultation with my principal adviser, Principal Emeritus Hugh Watt, whose wise counsel has led the writer clear of many Charybdian hazards. In thus presenting the introductory sections, each chapter serves as a setting for that which follows, climaxing in the crucial chapter on the controversy concerning The Marrow of Modern Divinity.