Search

James, Duke of York and Albany (and court culture in Edinburgh) [ Aristocracy / Cities ]

… Abstract This entry explains how the stay of James, Duke of York and Albany, and his court in Edinburgh (1679-1682) changed some of its forms of sociability. Indeed, it refashioned a royal court in the Scottish … capital at a time when the merchant class had come to be the elite. People > Aristocracy Places > Cities Keywords Court Edinburgh Scotland New elite Duke of York and Albany Reformed society Patronage James of York and Albany came with his family and court to Edinburgh for two stays between 1679 and 1682, which radically changed the structure and the manners of society there. …

James Boswell [ Art and Literature ]

… to his excessive drinking, which placed a limit on his capacity for sociability. People > Art and Literature Keywords Edinburgh London alcohol Manners charm sex Boswell, who was born into a Scottish Presbyterian legal and landowning family … in 1740, suffered all his life from what he considered to have been his over-controlled, damnation-obsessed childhood in Edinburgh and on the family estate in Auchinleck. His father, Lord Auchinleck, a member of the Scottish Court of Session, … by this insistence that he study law and enter the legal profession. He found some alleviation in the pleasures of the Edinburgh cultural scene, including the theatre, alcohol and an affair with an actress. These, and especially the latter …

David Hume [ Philosophy ]

… as the practice of sociability. People > Philosophy Keywords Philosophy Clubs Societies Salons Scottish Enlightenment Edinburgh London Paris Republic of Letters essay David Hume’s original position in eighteenth-century letters is linked … ‘As Hume was to discover, […] he could never exert in London the literary authority which he had come to possess in Edinburgh. There Hume's philosophy, and his example of a man of letters, made him the moving force of what is now known … of Advocates (1752-57), a member of the Literary Society of Glasgow founded in 1752 and of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh of which he was appointed secretary in 1752, and which was composed of the most eminent physicians and …

Scottish Enlightenment [ Political & Moral philosophy ]

… the 1707 Anglo-Scottish Union. As Phillipson in particular has argued, the sense of trauma caused by the deprivation of Edinburgh’s status as the capital of an independent state stimulated new ways of thinking about patriotism, citizenship, … Princeton University Press, 1994). One microcosm of this Scottish culture of sociability could be found in the city of Edinburgh, with its distinctive interactions between town and gown. It is probably a mistake to describe this civic … remained traditional in many ways, and there continued to exist powerful networks of aristocratic patronage linking Edinburgh to the worlds of London and the wider empire throughout the eighteenth century. But it is true that the many …

Scottish clans [ Social interaction / Association ]

… the central institutions and power. They modelled their system and social life on the ones of the British capitals of Edinburgh and London; sociability and politeness being key components of the lives of the local elites. As an expression … remote places of Scotland. The Statutes of Iona (1609), which obliged all the Highland chiefs’ sons to come and study to Edinburgh or Glasgow as a way to educate them as loyal Protestants, had been an early attempt to ‘ civilise ‘  them. With … Society 7 of London (1778) worked at preserving ancient Highland traditions. It was linked to the Highland Society of Edinburgh (1784) 8 which worked for the promotion and modernization of the Highlands both by bringing Enlightenment ideas …