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This paper reviews documentary and pictorial evidence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries concerning the wearing of plaids by men. Initially, sixteenth-century sources that specifically use the term 'plaid' are examined, in order to build a working definition, and this is then applied to earlier sources in languages other than Gaelic, where the terminology is uncertain. The early sources provide insight regarding the origins of traditions associated with plaid wearing. It is suggested that the origins of Highland military dress lie in the west Highlands and Islands in the mid-sixteenth century with the adoption of tartan plaids by local warriors. The article also draws attention to an apparent long running belief that plaids were derived from ancient Greek or Roman dress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

22 C. E. Lutz, I Essays on Manuscripts and Rare Books i (Connecticut, 1975); M. D. Reeve "Manuscripts copied from printed books", in J. B. Trapp (ed.), I Manuscripts in the Fifty Years after the Invention of Printing i (London, 1983), 12-23; David McKitterick, I Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830 i (Cambridge, 2003). Manuscript versions of this text include BnF fr. 5750 and fr. 14116; BL, Stowe 582; Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library, ms 1491; Paris, École national supérieure des Beaux-Arts, ms 491; and Blois, Musée du château, inv 73.7.90. Keywords: Scotland; France; 16th century; diplomacy; Morgan Library & Museum; MS M. 42 EN Scotland France 16th century diplomacy Morgan Library & Museum MS M. 42 109 128 20 04/02/21 20210401 NES 210401 This paper examines a manuscript (New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.42) which was produced in France for a member of the Scottish royal family. [Extracted from the article]

Sixteenth-century discourse is filled with criticisms about the ambition of women and the proletariat. This article explores the connection between gender, ambition, authority, reputation, and the language of condemnation at the Jacobean court. It argues that the prevailing rhetoric vilifying female ambition reflects contemporaneous anxieties about female dominance and authority. In turn, male invective, libel, and slander, directed toward politically active elite women, represent men's attempts to re-exert their authority over women perceived to be subverting established hierarchies of power. By tracing the use of invective in letters, court poetry, and moral essays, this paper reveals the ways in which abusive language was used to damage women's reputations in order to establish and maintain male authority over women and other men in the court of James VI/I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to the debate about married women's legal position in pre-modern Scotland and how it compared with neighbouring countries, particularly whether married women could own property and of what that might consist. While many studies centre theoretical discussions and focus on the seventeenth century onwards, this article centres sixteenth-century records of practice by appraising the 14,664 testamentary documents that survive in court registers in the National Records of Scotland. The study of these records reveals that testaments made by married women outnumber those made by widows (having verified, for example, that those women indexed as 'sometime spouse' were married at the time of death). The nature of these records, which include inventories as well as last wills, allows insight into the material household and married women's role in the ownership and disposal of this property. The article demonstrates that many married women claimed more than paraphernalia (clothing and jewellery) and that some even tried to give away more than the third or half share routinely allocated to them. It also finds clear references to property being held in common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage was a prominent 'life-stage' ritual linked to achievement of the hegemonic manly state in the early modern period: it was associated with self-control and was seen as a stabilising force against the 'follies of youth'. James IV (1488–1513), James V (1513–1542) and James VI (1567–1625) came to the throne as minors and their weddings provided particularly potent opportunities for shaping their identity both at home and abroad. Clothing was a crucial element of the social dialogue performed by both men and women in late medieval and early modern Europe. Dress, of the royal person and of others, was a mode of display in which all three monarchs invested heavily at the moment of their weddings. By offering a comparative analysis of the investment in sartorial splendour and the use of dress and personal adornment through a gendered lens, this article demonstrates how clothing and adornments were used to make statements about both manhood and royal status by three sixteenth-century Stewart kings attempting to secure their place in the homosocial hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Scottish royal household participated in the wider development of mourning traditions in the late fifteenth century and employed mourning dress as a political tool from at least the turn of the sixteenth century, surviving evidence is extremely limited. Records for the funerals of Queens Madeleine de Valois (d. 1537) and Margaret Tudor (d. 1541) yield the earliest extensive material details for the employment of mourning displays in Scotland. These two funerals both honoured foreign-born queens, they took place only four years apart and they were organised within the same household—yet their use of mourning dress and material display diverged notably. Variations in the design and display of both formal and everyday mourning dress were used to transmit distinct messages and themes, in order to address the particular political circumstances and needs of each death. Comparison between the details of these Scottish funerals and examples from England, France and the Low Countries helps to place Scottish practice within wider traditions and highlights a common emphasis on mourning displays as a central aspect of political discourse and diplomacy at key moments of change and loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1638 the National Covenant deliberately looked backwards, as well as forwards, by incorporating the text of the Negative Confession (1581). Its authors utilised the patchwork of sixteenth-century covenant ideas by drawing upon religious bonding, confessions of faith and the coronation oath. Deeply familiar actions and gestures were used alongside the words, and especially the emotional ritual of taking a vow with hands upraised. This resonated with the broader identity and culture of protestants as a godly people, who, like the Old Testament Israelites, upheld their covenantal relationship with God by the 'purity'of their reformed worship and discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]