Women’s activities in seventeenth-century St Andrews: the evidence of the Kirk Sessions

In this blog, masters student Elizabeth Beattie shares some of her research into the women of St Andrews, supported by funding from the St Andrews Local History Foundation, administered by the Burnwynd Trust.

It is often said that women are ‘invisible’ in the archival records of early modern Scotland because their lack of legal capacity camouflaged them behind the names of husbands, fathers, and male employers. With the generous support of the Burnwynd Trust’s St Andrews Local History Foundation, I have spent the last year investigating women’s activities in seventeenth-century St Andrews using a broad range of archival sources including wills, guild records, court books, and church records. This investigation has revealed that women are far from invisible.

Here, I focus on two Kirk Session records: St Leonard’s (CH2/1561/1) and Holy Trinity (CH2/316/1/5-13), covering the period from 1663 to 1700. The Kirk Sessions were a church administrative body that was responsible for, among other things: poor relief, school maintenance, marriage contracts, sexual offences, and sabbath-breaking.[1] The Sessions were significant bodies of community administration and are therefore the most robust of the sources studied as part of this project. Although details on areas like women’s property ownership, work, and convictions for serious crimes (including murder) are rare in the Session records, they provide more detailed information about various events that brought women to the attention of the Session.

Poverty
Nearly 70 per cent of all references to women in the St Leonard’s and Holy Trinity Sessions were related to poor relief. Most relate to amounts disbursed directly to women, either as confirmation of a weekly or monthly allowance to be received, as payment for specific services they were entitled to as a result of their poverty (such as school fees for their children), or as extra support granted as a result of a sudden hardship. Sudden hardships could include illness, injury, loss of a husband or essential belongings, or unspecified distress. Sophia Hay, “ane distressed ministers wyfe”, received 58 shillings from the Holy Trinity Session in January 1665 – a significant sum when typical relief was between six and twelve shillings. On three occasions, shoes were purchased for Margaret Henryson (a regular recipient of poor relief since arriving in St Andrews in 1665). The Holy Trinity Session also purchased Henryson a new plaid in 1672, as did the St Leonard’s Session for Margaret Hean in 1696 after her plaid and clothes were stolen.

For the most part, the female recipients of poor relief were named, with just nineteen unnamed widows featuring in this context. This offers a unique opportunity to trace the lives – and often deaths – of poor women in St Andrews. It also suggests that the majority of women receiving poor relief had not been married and so lacked the support of a husband of family, thereby depending on the Session’s support to survive. When these poor women died, often after months or years of receiving poor relief, the session paid for their burial – Elspeth Tosh received a regular allowance of money and bread from 21 August 1673 to 4 June 1674, and the Session paid for her coffin and burial in September 1674.

Misconduct
After poor relief, instances of misconduct – including slandering, fornication, and adultery – make up the largest number of references to women at around 20 per cent. These cases are a particularly interesting lens into interpersonal relationships within St Andrews. They also show how difficult it could be to be a woman in trouble with the Kirk Sessions.

Euphemia Parker, daughter of the deceased John Parker and an unnamed mother, was accused of “loud and clamorous reproaching” by Agnes Geddie in April of 1674. When Parker alleged that Geddie had provoked her, Geddie additionally accused Parker of being in the company of scholars (students of the University) at the home of another woman, Jean Watson. At this point, Parker was “sharplie rebooked” and “if shee be seen w[i]t[h] any other scholler in any suspect place heer after […] shee will be put to the cross with the branks[2] and removed from [th]is congregane.” Her conduct was now firmly under the microscope of the Session.

Jean Watson, denying that Parker was ever in Watson’s own home, claimed to have seen five scholars go into Parker’s house and witnessed one man kiss Parker. Days later, an unnamed witness reported to have seen Parker on West Sands beach in the company of two scholars. Perhaps sensing that she was about to face the Session’s extremely public punishment, Parker fled to Edinburgh to work as a servant in August 1674. Her escape from church discipline did not last long; by October 1674, Parker had returned to St Andrews, pregnant and unmarried. Unfortunately, the Holy Trinity Session records between mid-October 1674 and March 1683 have not survived, so what became of Parker after this point is lost to history.

In other localities including Edinburgh and Aberdeen, most cases of fornication involved servant women.[3] But in seventeenth-century St Andrews, just 1.4 per cent of women cited for fornication were explicitly referred to as servants. The remainder, like Parker, had no employment status recorded. That does not exclude employment as servants for these women; rather, it suggests that women’s employment was not a significant enough consideration for the Session clerk to bother recording in these cases.

Employment
In general, women’s employment is infrequently referenced in the Session records. Christine Birstone is called a fisherwoman when the Session records the return of her husband and the ending of her weekly allowance. Despite her work, Birstone clearly depended on Parish financial support to survive in her husband’s absence. Dorothy Dishintone, cited for “light and uncivill behavior” and for her “scandalous carriag and intyseing of gentlmens sons”, was recorded to be keeping her father’s shop – although the nature of the shop was not noted.

The most significant record of women’s employment is that of St Andrews’ schoolmistresses. Of the twelve schoolteachers mentioned by name, all but one were female. On 23 March 1673, the St Leonard’s Sessions hired schoolmistress Alison Reid in response to the lamentable absence of a school for the Landward (rural) children of the parish. Reid was paid 12 pounds Scots each year for her trouble. Over the next decade, the “schoolmistress in Landward” – Reid is listed by name frequently enough to confirm that she still held this position – received regular payments from the session for the school fees of poor children. On 17 July 1677, the Session gave Reid 3 pounds and 12 shillings for the purchase “ane neu bible and the third pairt of the bible for learning the bairnes,” ensuring the Burgh’s children had adequate learning materials.

Records of payments to schoolmistresses on behalf of the Parish’s poorer children reveal the names of more of the Parish’s active schoolmistresses – on 16 February 1665, the Holy Trinity Sessions paid each of Jean Rind, Isobel Beinstone, and Catherine Craig six shillings per child. Beinstone and Craig collected their payments in-person. Rind was ill and unable to attend, although the majority of pupils receiving Session support came from her school. Schoolmistresses appeared within other contexts as well – a male parishioner spoke up on behalf of Christian Bett, “qo teaches [th]r children in Brounhils and pairt[is] [th]rabout”, requesting that the Session provide her with maintenance for her school. Schoolmistress Agnes Hay was called before the session as a witness when her servant, Jean Wilson, was found to be with child out of wedlock.

When read closely and with an eye for women’s presence, the Burgh records, and most particularly those of the Kirk Sessions, provide revealing snapshots of the rich and varied activities of the impoverished, the misbehaved, and the employed women of seventeenth-century St Andrews. This research has also shown that, for those who look closely, much more remains to be discovered about the not-so-invisible lives of women in early modern Scotland.

Elizabeth Beattie
MLitt 2025

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[1] D. Moody, Scottish Local History: An Introductory Guide (London, 1986), pp. 79-80.

[2] An iron device of the nature of a bridle and gag. DSL. https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/brankis

[3] G. DesBrisay, ‘Twisted by Definition: Women Under Godly Discipline in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Towns’, in (ed.) Y. Galloway Brown and R. Ferguson, Twisted Sisters: Women, Crime and Deviance in Scotland Since 1400 (East Linton, 2002), pp. 138-141.