Conference

SHIHR One-Day Conference

The Sixteenth Century in the Highlands

Friday, 5^th July 2024

UHI Inverness, 1 Inverness Campus, IV2 5NA, Scotland

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Here follows a brief summary of this conference, which was promoted by SHIHR with additional support from the Scottish Society for Northern Studies and the Strathmartine Trust:

The event went very well with an audience of around 60 listening to 10 speakers talking on a variety of relevant subjects. These ranged from clan studies, discussions of new source material, a rather overlooked and early industry (the slate industry), archaeological finds at Finlaggan likely attesting activity there on the visit of James V, witchcraft, ecclesiastical reform, and Spanish interventions towards the end of the period.

Chaired by Prof Ewen Cameron of Edinburgh University, there were lively question and answer sessions. The papers delivered were mostly on subjects not previously published, so these were new initiatives bringing fresh insights into activity in the time and place.

The success of the conference has encouraged the SHIHR to go ahead with its plan to have the day’s proceedings fully written up and published, in the course of 2025. Consequently, the resulting volume may be able to take a place, albeit in not quite the same format or approach, alongside those volumes published by the Inverness Field Club in the last century. More to the point, it will contribute to what we are learning about the sixteenth century in the Highlands by looking at matters which have, perhaps, been of only marginal interest before, and bring these studies more into the mainstream of future historical overviews. It is hoped that Dr Martin MacGregor of Glasgow University, who was unfortunately unable to attend the conference, will contribute a paper. The editors of the projected volume The Sixteenth Century in the Highlands are to be Ewen Cameron, Aonghas MacCoinnich and James Petre. The publisher lined up is Shaun Tyas of Donington (Lincolnshire).

James Scott Petre, summer 2024

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Programme

• David Caldwell, Independent Scholar: James V and Islay – the archaeological dimension
• Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart, University of the Highlands & Islands (UHI): Witchcraft troubles and trials and Clan Munro at the end of C16th
• Alan Macquarrie, Hon. Research Fellow, University of Glasgow: The reforms of Roderick Maclean in the diocese of the Isles, 1545 to 1553
• Alison Cathcart. Professor, Stirling University: ‘The scattered isles in the polar ocean’? Scotland and the isles in the early modern period * Prof. Cathcart was unable to attend the conference due to a bereavement but it is hoped that her paper can appear in the published proceedings
• Allan MacInnes, Emeritus Prof. of History, Strathclyde University: The Rise of the Slate industry: 1490-1625
• David Worthington, Professor + Head of the Centre for History, University of the Highlands & Islands (UHI): ‘The ane in the west, and the vther in the northe’. Spanish interventions in the Highlands and Islands 1588 – 1633
• Elizabeth Ewan (Canada), University of Guelph and UHI: The Inverness Burgh Court Records as a Source for Life in the Sixteenth Century
• Ronald Black, University of Edinburgh: The Dewar MSS as a source for Sixteenth-Century Highland History
• Katharina Pruente, University of Stirling: The Earls of Argyll in the 16^th Century: using network analysis to study early modern clan structures
• Aonghas MacCoinnich, University of Glasgow: ‘Thus do the tryb of Clankenzie become great in these parts’. The rise of the Clan Mackenzie, c. 1540-1604
• James Petre, ICE, University of Cambridge: ‘The chiefest persons of the west isles’? The MacDonalds of Glengarry and Clan Donald North in the 16^th Century, c. 1539-1602

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Please contact James Petre (jamespetre@btinternet.com) if you have any questions regarding the conference.

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