The Historical Research of Families in the Modern British Gentlemen's Societies.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This Research reconsidered the significance of family and marriage in the eighteenth century Britain, especially in Scotland.During the eighteenth century, women of Lowland parishes married on average in their mid-20s, like most women in north-western Europe. In traditional Scottish society, the married women retained her father's surname. Among the middle classes, however, the convention of adopting the husband's surname began in the late seventeenth century and became the norm by the later eighteenth. Upward mobility did occur but it may have been less easy than has sometimes been suggested.Inter-clan marriages in the Highlands during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were arranged by families rather than by the individuals concerned. Many clans were united not just by kinship but by common interests and the preference for endogamous marriage was heavily outweighed by the advantages to be gained by making alliances through marriage with Lowland dwellers. The clan had been virtu … More ally destroyed by commercialisation, During the first half of the eighteenth century, the traditional role of the tacksman came increasingly under threat.The Union with England completed the rise of the lairds by turning the ambitions of the aristocracy to London. The aristocrats moved from Scotland and left effective power there to the lairds who were owners of moderate sized estates.In Scotland before the Industrial Revolution, illegitimacy was low primarily because the system of social control was strong. These figures are lower than those of English parishes. -e should not assume that the native marriage law rested upon a tradition of respect for lovers or had ever led to libertarian tendencies among the young. It was possible to rebel against Church discipline, but the striking thing is that, except in the south-west, few did so. It is interesting that the south-west, the base area of Covenanting sentiment and the only area of resistance to agricultural improvement, should have resisted the sexual discipline of the Church. Less