Beyond the Kirk Session: Mixed Economies of Relief

While the focus in the previous two sections is on the formal relief system operated by the church in the localities, on the poor who received relief, and on the relationship between them, the final chapter of the book turns to consider the wider context of relief. Recent European research has demonstrated the significance of mixed economies of relief, as well as developing growing attempts to trace the lives and survival strategies of the poor on their own terms, and not merely as recipients of charity. This section applies these two trends to the Scottish experience, and contextualises the church’s relief work through an examination of the relief provided by secular authorities; hospitals; and private individuals; and the informal survival strategies employed by the poor themselves. The chapter argues that the kirk session was at the centre of the mixed economy of relief, and was by far the most significant source of support for early modern Scots in need of assistance, and furthermore that the kirk session was often instrumental in supporting, working with, and developing these other forms of relief (hospitals, testamentary charity and foundations).

Who Was Deserving? Decision-making and Discrimination

Post-Reformation approaches to the poor, and in particular the Calvinist system in Scotland, are traditionally seen as harsh, condemnatory, and discriminating. There is much truth in this. However, this chapter reveals that we need to be much more careful about defining exactly where the lines between deserving and undeserving lay for religious and social elites after 1560. It assesses the ways in which kirk sessions discriminated between those they deemed worthy and unworthy, demonstrating that kirk session relief was not as harshly discriminating as has been suggested, and does not resemble the later application of Poor Laws where the only excuse for poverty was physical inability, and the mobile or able-bodied poor were penalised. Kirk sessions did not tend to exclude the poor from outside their parish, and nor did they exclude the able-bodied, unemployed or underemployed poor. The real dividing line was instead between the idle and the willing to work, and equally importantly, along moral lines between the sinful and the well-behaved poor.

Who Were the Poor? The Recipients of Relief

This chapter analyses the poor themselves. Although recent literature has made valuable attempts to study the poor in their own right rather than simply through the prism of relief (and therefore elites), welfare records remain the richest source of information on the poor, especially in an area such as Scotland where very little previous work has been undertaken. Therefore the chapter opens up the subject of who received relief and why, shedding light not just on the internal dynamics of this most neglected group within Scottish society, but also on the agenda and priorities of the relief system itself. The chapter draws attention to variations in the demographics of relief recipients, and argues that there was no fixed model or ‘type’ of recipient, and that kirk sessions were responding to local patterns of need. The chapter also emphasises the complexity and range of (overlapping) reasons why early modern Scots might find themselves in need of welfare.

Poor Relief Under Stress

This chapter examines the performance of relief systems during times of particular challenge or crisis. The book’s approach as a whole is critical of the tendency to judge relief systems primarily by their ability to cope with periods of dearth, but it is also essential to explore the responses of the system evaluated in chapters 2 and 3 to times of particular pressure. Kirk sessions sometimes struggled during the dearth of the early 1620s, although both then and during the conflicts of the 1640s there was also evidence of impressive responses under the circumstances, and sessions also tended to be very responsive to more localised or short-term emergencies. The chapter thus provides an important note of balance to the book’s thesis, while further confirming that the sessions’ relief work has been under-estimated by historians

The Mechanics of Relief

This chapter analyses the key features of the relief system whose establishment and extent was traced in the previous chapters. It focuses on the fundraising mechanisms used by kirk sessions as well as their approach to the distribution of resources. It also provides a detailed analysis of the people involved: although deacons were theoretically in charge of relief there was some flexibility, and the treasurer was shown to have a particularly important role (as did the minister). The chapter demonstrates the seriousness and organisation with which sessions approached relief, and argues that they were careful and sometimes innovative in acquiring resources for relief, and flexible and responsive in distributing them to the needy.

Poor Relief Beyond the Main Burghs, c. 1590–c. 1650

This chapter assesses the spread of relief provision beyond the large towns which led the way, considering both rural parishes and parishes containing smaller burghs. The chapter demonstrates that while the situation in rural parishes was far from rosy, especially in the early decades, most rural relief systems had developed strongly by the 1620s and 1630s, especially in international comparative terms. The kirk session was a uniquely effective institution in rural areas, providing personnel and regular administrative procedures in areas which would have otherwise lacked them. The scale of fundraising and range of poor assisted was often smaller than in urban parishes (unsurprisingly), but they did not operate closed or narrow systems of relief, or work in fundamentally different ways to urban parishes.

Ideas, Attitudes and Ambitions

The first chapter analyses early modern Scottish thinking on the poor, their condition, and their relief. While emphasising significant continuities from late medieval attitudes, it argues that improving provision for the poor was a key concern of the Protestant reformers and their successors, and other elites in post-Reformation Scotland. It considers desires to reform and improve relief (and to penalise unworthy beggars and their ilk), and also explores more personal and individual attitudes to the concept of charity across the period. There remained a strong religious imperative for relief. Charity was no longer technically good for one’s soul in the Protestant world, but it remained a key element in religious life, and a great concern to many.

Introduction

The church that emerged from the Protestant Reformation of 1559–60 influenced the lives of Scots in countless ways. One of the most striking and novel ways in which it made its presence felt was through its kirk sessions. These new parish courts came to represent the local face and authority of the church, and we have come to learn a great deal about their impact on ordinary people’s religion and personal lives – not least through their punishment of ‘ungodly’ behaviour, and the inculcation and mediation of new religious ideology. This book is about an aspect of the church’s role in Scottish communities which is much less familiar. The kirk sessions were also the principal providers of poor relief. This mission reflected some of the foundational aspirations and rhetoric of the Reformation’s leaders, but more than that, it became a duty which they undertook over the long term with much consistency, effort, and resilience. This relief has not been studied in any depth, especially for the first phase after the official and legal establishment of Protestantism in 1560 up until the mid-seventeenth century....

Conclusion

The problem of poverty was not a new one after 1560, and the desire to improve the treatment of the deserving poor (and to exclude and control the undeserving) was not an invention of the Protestant Reformation, nor of the sixteenth century. The Scottish Protestant reformers certainly wanted to improve welfare provision. But far more important than their rhetorical statements on the issue, or those of their opponents, were the institutional mechanisms they created as part of their new church. Through the kirk session, the Reformation of 1559–60 created the possibility for a localised and routine system of poor relief that was entirely unprecedented in Scotland. In the following decades, local ministers, elders and deacons began to put that possibility into practice....

Urban Beginnings and Developments, c. 1560–c. 1610

This chapter explores the earliest evidence for post-Reformation poor relief, in the urban kirk sessions which led the way in Scotland’s parochial Reformations. The chapter argues that substantial, diligent and well-organised relief systems were established in Scottish towns during the years and decades after 1560, variations in speed and formality notwithstanding. A strong system was common by the early seventeenth century, and the chapter also challenges the view that this system was undermined by its formal status as ‘voluntary’ rather than compulsory. It was certainly not the case that the church stepped in to provide informal relief once the statutory option had failed.