Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution, Volume 1 (of 2)

DOMESTIC ANNALS OF SCOTLAND.
From the Reformation to the Revolution.
SECOND EDITION.
VOLUME I.
Bannatyne House, Strathmore.
W. & R. CHAMBERS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
MDCCCLIX.
Edinburgh: Printed by W. and R. Chambers.
It has occurred to me that a chronicle of domestic matters in Scotland from the Reformation downwards—the period during which we see a progress towards the present state of things in our country—would be an interesting and instructive book. History has in a great measure confined itself to political transactions and personages, and usually says little of the people, their daily concerns, and the external accidents which immediately affect their comfort. This I have always thought was much to be regretted, and a general tendency to the same view has been manifested of late years. I have therefore resolved to make an effort, in regard to my own country, to detail her DOMESTIC ANNALS—the series of occurrences beneath the region of history, the effects of passion, superstition, and ignorance in the people, the extraordinary natural events which disturbed their tranquillity, the calamities which affected their wellbeing, the traits of false political economy by which that wellbeing was checked, and generally those things which enable us to see how our forefathers thought, felt, and suffered, and how, on the whole, ordinary life looked in their days.
It will probably be matter of regret that this work consists of a series of articles generally brief and but little connected with each other, producing on the whole a desultory effect. Might not the materials have been fused into one continuous narration? I am very sensible how desirable this was for literary effect; but I am at the same time assured that, in such a mode of presenting the series of occurrences, there would have been a constant temptation to generalise on narrow and insufficient grounds—to make singular and exceptional incidents pass as characteristic beyond the just degree in which they really are so—namely, as matters just possible in the course of the national life of the period to which they refer. It seemed to me the most honest plan, to present them detachedly under their respective dates, thus allowing each to tell its own story, and have its own proper weight with the reader, and no more, in completing the general picture.