Serious Crime in Late-Seventeenth-Century Scotland

Studies the nature of serious criminality in Scotland, 1660-c.1700.

• Most comprehensive, in-depth study available into serious criminality in Scotland before 1700
• Uses crime and criminality to offer fresh perspectives on the ordering ideas and structures of the early modern period
• Systematic and comprehensive analysis of the work of the Justiciary Court in the period 1660-1700

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.