A Kindly Place?: Living in Sixteenth-century Scotland

How did people survive in an age of private wars, foreign invasion and political uncertainty, of economic hardship and insecurity, of dislocation in religious and cultural life? How did they cope from day to day – lairds and tenants, merchants and craftsmen, rural labourers, urban-dwellers in service jobs, wives, widows and unmarried women? This book focuses on the people of 16th-century Scotland as individuals, families and communities, the people in the crowd-scenes of Scottish history. Using evidence from everyday life, it looks at ways in which they coped with the business of living and working together. A deep-rooted belief in a kin-based – kindly – right to possess the means of survival, together with hard-won survival skills, enabled many of them, despite the very real odds, to maintain a certain level of stability in their lives and the more prosperous among them to enjoy a comfortable standard of living.