Religion, politics and society in Aberdeen:1543-1593

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to examine the impact of the Reformation on a close-knit, intensely conservative urban community. Aberdeen embraced religious change slowly and reluctantly. The pace of events was tightly controlled by the merchant oligarchy which had installed itself at the centre of burgh affairs, concentrating most of the economic and political resources of the burgh in its own hands. The key to their power lay in their domination of the council chamber and their manipulation of the burgh's constitution in their own favour,, * The arrival of the Reformation in the burgh enabled this oligarchy to extend its control over ecclesiastical life. The prominent place given to laymen in the life of the new Kirk allowed the merchant oligarchs of Aberdeen to dominate the Kirk session and influence decisively the process of Protestantisation of the burgh.

During these years Aberdeen had to face a number of external threats to its liberties and independence. In the first half of the century the burgh was subjected to attacks from local lairds, who constantly sought opportunities to increase their power at the burgesses' expense. Aberdeen's resistance to such expansionist ambitions consolidated the burgh's sense of identity and community. As a result the burgesses of Aberdeen came to prize their direct relationship with the crown; in successive conflicts between centre and locality Aberdeen always remained loyal to the crown, even though such loyalty involved the hostility of the Earl of Huntly, the most powerful local noble.

In the decades after the Reformation, as Protestantism grew in confidence and as memories of Catholicism began to fade, the merchant oligarchy of Aberdeen came under increasing pressure from those who desired social and religious change. The political balance within the town had begun to shift as the members of the governing elite became progressively more isolated from the community they represented. During the course of the sixteenth century the wealthier merchants had identified more closely with the local lairds. Many of the most prominent burgesses owned country estates in the vicinity of the burgh. As time passed their interests in Aberdeen declined, both economically and politically. In the. last decades of the sixteenth century pressure from the craft guilds and the powerful, but unrepresented. lawyers in the burgh, resulted in ä drastic change in town government. The notion of the burgh community was expanded to include the members of the craft aristocracy and the legal establishment. The language and ideology of the new Kirk was useful in this process of re-alignment of political forces in Aberdeen. The fall of the Menzies family, who had dominated the burgh for almost a century, marked the beginning Of the end of traditional government in Aberdeen and the gradual retreat of Catholicism from the town to the country.