Scottish society in the early modern era encompasses the social structure and relations that existed in Scottish society in Scotland between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. It roughly corresponds to the early modern era in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and Reformation and ending with the last Jacobite risings and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

Scotland in this period was a hierarchical society, with a complex series of ranks and orders. This was headed by the monarch and the great magnates. Below them were the lairds, who emerged as a distinct group at the top of local society whose position was consolidated by economic and administrative change. Below the lairds in rural society were a variety of groups, often ill-defined, including yeomen, who were often major landholders, and the husbandmen, who were landholders, followed by cottars and grassmen, who often had only limited rights to common land and pasture. Urban society was led by wealthy merchants, who were often burgesses. Beneath them, and often in conflict with the urban elite, were the craftsmen. Beneath these ranks, in both urban and rural society, there were a variety of groups of mobile "masterless men", the unemployed and vagrants.

Kinship was agnatic, with descent counted only through the male line, helping to build the importance of surnames and clans. The increased power of the state and economic change eroded the power of these organisations, and this process would accelerate as the government responded to the threat of Jacobite risings by undermining the power of clan chiefs in the eighteenth century. The Reformation had a major impact on family life, changing the nature of baptism, marriage and burials, leading to a change in wider relationships, sacramental status and burial practices and placing a greater emphasis on the role of the father.

Limited demographic evidence indicates a generally expanding population, limited by short-term subsistence crises, of which the most severe was probably that of the "seven ill years" of the 1690s. The urban centres of the burghs continued to grow, with the largest being Edinburgh, followed by Glasgow. Population growth and economic dislocation from the second half of the sixteenth century led to a growing problem of vagrancy, which was responded to by a series of Acts of Parliament that established what would become the "Old Poor Law", which attempted to ensure relief for the "deserving" local poor, but punishments for the mobile unemployed and beggars. The patriarchal nature of society meant that women were directed to be subservient to their husbands and families. They remained an important part of the workforce and some were economically independent, while others lived a marginal existence. At the beginning of the period women had little or no legal status, but were increasingly criminalised after the Reformation, and were the major subjects of the witch hunts that occurred in relatively large numbers until the end of the seventeenth century.

Social structure Aristocracy

Early modern Scotland was a hierarchical society, with a series of ranks and marks of status. Below the king were the great magnates, who by this period were no longer a feudal nobility, whose power was based on territorial landholding, but an honorific peerage, and land had become a commodity to be traded.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , p. 28. They were headed by a small number of dukes (usually descended from very close relatives of the king) and a larger group of earls. These senior nobles formed the political classes at the beginning of the period: sometimes holding major office, holding a place on the king's council and taking part in the major crises and rebellions of the period.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , pp. 12–22. They considered themselves the king's "natural councillors" and were also the heads of a system of local patronage and loyalty. This was often formalised through bonds of manrent that set out mutual obligations and allegiances.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , pp. 30–3.

Under the magnates were the barons, who held increasingly nominal feudal tenures of which an important vestige was the right to hold baronial courts, which could deal with both matters of land ownership and interpersonal offences, including minor acts of violence.R. Mitchison, Lordship to Patronage, Scotland 1603–1745 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), , p. 81. Also important were the local tenants-in-chief, who held legally held their land directly from the king and who by this period were often the major local landholders in an area. In this period, as feudal distinctions declined, the barons and tenants-in-chief merged to form a new identifiable group, the lairds.R. Mitchison, Lordship to Patronage, Scotland 1603–1745 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), , p. 79. This group was roughly equivalent to the English gentlemen.A. Grant, "Service and tenure in late medieval Scotland 1324–1475" in A. Curry and E. Matthew, eds, Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), , pp. 145–65. Just as the magnates saw themselves as the king's natural counsellors, so the lairds advised and exerted influence over the dukes and earls. The lairds were often the most important individual in a local community. They ran baronial courts, acted as sheriffs-depute, sat on local assizes and were called in as private arbitrators. In the course of the sixteenth century they would acquire a role in national politics, gaining representation in Parliament and playing a major role in the Reformation crisis of 1560. As a result of the Reformation and the creation of a Presbyterian Kirk, their position in local society was enhanced. They often gained the new status of elder and greater oversight of the behaviour of the local population through the disciplinary functions of kirk sessions.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , p. 138.

Middle ranks

Below the lairds were a variety of groups, often ill-defined. These included yeomen, later characterised by Walter Scott as "bonnet lairds", often owning substantial land. The practice of feuing (by which a tenant paid an entry sum and an annual feu duty, but could pass the land on to their heirs) meant that the number of people holding heritable possession of lands, which had previously been controlled by the church or nobility, expanded.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , pp. 51–2. These and the lairds probably numbered about 10,000 by the seventeenth century and became what the government defined as heritors, on whom the financial and legal burdens of local government increasingly fell.J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), , p. 331.

Below the substantial landholders were those engaged in subsistence agriculture, who made up the majority of the working population.A. Grant, "Late medieval foundations", in A. Grant and K. J. Stringer, eds, Uniting the Kingdom?: the Making of British History (London: Routledge, 1995), , p. 99. Those with property rights included husbandmen, lesser landholders and free tenants. Most farming was based on the lowland fermtoun or highland baile, settlements of a handful of families that held individual land rights, but jointly farmed an area notionally suitable for two or three plough teams.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , pp. 41–55. Below them were the cottars, who often shared rights to common pasture, occupied small portions of land and participated in joint farming as hired labour. Farms also might have grassmen, who had rights only to grazing. Eighteenth-century evidence suggests that the children of cottars and grassmen often became servants in agriculture or handicrafts.R. Mitchison, Lordship to Patronage, Scotland 1603–1745 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), , p. 82. Serfdom had died out in Scotland in the fourteenth century, but was virtually restored by statute law for miners and saltworkers.R. Mitchison, Lordship to Patronage, Scotland 1603–1745 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), , p. 80.

Society in the urban settlements of the burghs was headed by wealthier merchants, who often held local office as a burgess, alderman, bailies, or as a member of the burgh council.K. Stevenson, "Thai war callit knynchtis and bere the name and the honour of that hye ordre: Scottish knighthood in the fifteenth century", in L. Clark, ed., Identity and Insurgency in the Late Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), , p. 38. Below them were craftsmen and workers that made up the majority of the urban population.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , pp. 48–9. Both merchants and craftsmen often served a long apprenticeship, acquiring skills and status, before they became freemen of a burgh, and could enjoy certain rights and privileges. Major sources of trade included the export of wool, fish, coal, salt and cattle. Imports included wine, sugar and other luxury goods. Important crafts included metal working, carpentry, leather working, pottery and later brewing and wig-making.R. Mitchison, Lordship to Patronage, Scotland 1603–1745 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), , pp. 100–3. There were frequent disputes between the burgesses and craftsmen over rights and political control of the burgh, occasionally bursting into violence, as occurred at Perth in the first half of the sixteenth century.M. Verschuur, "Merchants and craftsmen in sixteenth-century Perth", in M. Lynch, ed., The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London: Taylor & Francis, 1987), , p. 39.

The poor