Description: This book explores serious criminality in Scotland between 1660 and c.1700. Through in-depth analysis of the records of the Justiciary Court, Scotland's central criminal jurisdiction, it reconstructs the meaning of 'crime' as understood by seventeenth-century Scots, before moving on to assess patterns of prosecution, the causes of crime, the performance of criminality, and wider response to illegal behaviour, all with a view to reconstructing the social meaning of crime. The result is an unprecedentedly detailed and systematic account of criminal behaviour which adds a completely new perspective to our understanding of early modern Scotland.
Brief description: Allan Kennedy is Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Dundee. Previous books include Governing Gaeldom: The Scottish Highlands and the Restoration State, 1660-1688 (Brill, 2014), Serious Crime in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland (EUP, 2025) and Early Modern Scotland: Themes in Focus (Routledge, 2026).
Review Quotes: This books offers the first substantial intervention in the history of crime in seventeenth-century Scotland. It provides an important account of how Scots conceptualised, prosecuted, and punished criminal behaviour. It is a must read for historians of Scottish social, economic and criminal life.--Katie Barclay, Macquarie University, Sydney