In her approach to the history of early modern Scotland, Jenny Wormald, who has died aged 73, challenged the parochialism of many earlier accounts of the rule of the Stuart kings. She placed the northern kingdom, and the writing of its history, in the European mainstream, and argued that it was in many ways better governed than Tudor England.
The research for her dissertation led her into many of the stately homes of Scotland, in pursuit of nearly 800 bonds of service agreed between lesser and greater nobles in the 15th and 16th centuries. This provided a lifelong vein of anecdotes about castle owners, and crucially it led her to a new understanding of political and social relationships. She argued against the traditional narrative of Scotland as an under-governed, “primitive” kingdom given to local violence and disorder. Instead, she argued, the loyalty to clan and kin, and even the feuds that sometimes resulted, were on the whole a source of stability, and cooperation between lords and king was the norm.
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