Intellectual and Practical Education and its Patronage in the Northern Highlands in the Century after the Reformation, Part Two

Abstract

The first part of the article looked at schools and showed that a number of northern Highlanders, including from the lower tier of society, fully embraced the educational opportunities presented to them by the Crown. The second part uncovers the intellectual training of northern Highland women in a quite original and ground-breaking way. Then, access to university is explored to gauge numbers as well as social, geographical and kinship factors. Although not a common feature of the Scottish historiography of early-modern education, the role of apprenticeship was part and parcel of the formation of the youth at the time, including in the Highlands. Finally, by focusing on studies abroad undertaken by a number of northern Highlanders and the northern Highland patronage of education, it gives an insight into the importance granted by the local elite to education and participated in their integration into the wider Scottish and British society. It was these communities’ resources and their educational patronage that supported the whole system, which can only translate in a State formation of the collaborative type in terms of education, seen with its combination of ‘imperial’ features, with its impetus from the centre, and collaborative ones, with the cooperation of local society.