Book Description

"This book investigates public opinion in early modern Scotland, revealing how the crown and its opponents sought to shape opinion at large, the means and language by which collective opinions were expressed and the difference this made to political outcomes. From Scotland's 1560 Reformation to the 1707 Union of the English and Scottish kingdoms, extra-institutional opinion became more relevant as religious and constitutional tensions were exacerbated by the formation of a British composite monarchy in 1603. The reworking of protestations, petitions and oaths as vehicles for collective protest and the deployment of oral, written and printed forms of persuasive communication in Scots, English and Gaelic allowed contemporaries to recognise the opinions of the people and the nation outside of authorised assemblies, while stimulating state efforts to regulate and suppress opinion at large. Gains in literacy and printing aided, but did not determine, the practice of opinion politics, challenging dominant notions of the public sphere. As well as providing a new angle on the post-Reformation period in Scotland, this study outlines a new way of historicising public opinion, providing insights for historians of early modern Scotland, Britain and Europe and scholars concerned with public opinion as a political, social and cultural phenomenon"--