We might not expect the emotional lives of 16th century Scottish Calvinists to be the most fertile territory for historical exploration.
Scots historically, and perhaps not just historically, do not enjoy a reputation for strong expression of feeling. Two funerals, one famous and one ordinary, reminded me of this over the summer of 2022.
When the late queen’s hearse was processing through the Scottish countr yside south of Balmoral, the BBC’s commentator – admittedly in great need of material to fill airtime – obser ved that people in this part of the world were not known for expressing much emotion. And at a regular memorial service in London, a speaker (who cannot have known there was a Scottish historian in the room) referred to the deceased’s family background of Scots Presbyterianism meaning that they had been expected to avoid showing emotion at a bereavement during wartime. The word ‘dour’ was not used on either occasion, but it often feels implicit in such situations. These stereotypes, closely reflected in my longer-term experience of telling English people that I am interested in the emotions of (early modern) Scottish people, must have some sort of relationship with reality. There are perhaps aspects of Calvinism which lend themselves to this representation of Scots, and of Scottishness even. But evidence from the immediate aftermath of the Scottish Reformation itself suggests a rather different picture.
One way to explore this is through the writings of one of the first Scots to leave us an extensive body of autobiographical material. James Melville (1556-1614) was a minister in the reformed Kirk, the nephew of the famous Presbyterian reformer Andrew Melville (1545-1622), and may even be known to some readers as a result of his Because he wrote about his life and career in great detail, it is one of the most-used sources for the ecclesiastical history and controversy of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, as well as other aspects of social and cultural life at the time. But it also contains a rich array of insights, scattered across its 800 pages, into Melville’s emotional experiences, and how he remembered
