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{"id":18779,"date":"2017-03-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=502"},"modified":"2017-03-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T00:00:00","slug":"pew-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/03\/pew-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Pew Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Margo Todd\u2019s The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland<\/a> is an extraordinarily rich study. One brief note will serve to illustrate.<\/p>\n

\u201cA visitor to an early seventeenth-century Scottish church had no difficulty seeing the social structure of the community in the arrangement of seats.\u201d The principle was simple: The best folk got the best, most prominent seats. At Kirkwall, the elders insisted that the church retain socially segregated seating to avoid \u201cgreat incivility and undecentness of the baser sort among the people . . . . who being sat down in the chiefest seats of the kirk would not rise up to give place to their betters and superiors\u201d (320-1). <\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the prohibition only served to stoke rivalry: \u201cThe proprietary value of seats as status markers made them very often a cause of quarrels and even violence in the kirk.\u201d At Perth, elders \u201cwere so disgusted at a \u2018difference . . . fallen out between some honest women of the town for particular and proper seats in the kirk\u2019 that they ordered all seats \u2018appertaining to women to be demolished and taken out of the kirk for avoiding of such slanderous strifes\u2019\u201d (323).<\/p>\n

Not everyone got the memo. In 1634, \u201cthey had to deal with Elspeth Kettle and Barbara Stewart after Kettle \u2018raised Barbara off her stool, violently pulling it from her and striking her on the side of the head with her knife\u2019 and Stewart responded by jabbing Kettle \u2018with a needly in the ears to the effusion of her blood.\u2019\u201d Lawrence Dischington of Anstruther Wester decided on direct action. He was \u201cso distraught at not being thought worthy of a place that he \u2018violently broke the principal seat of the kirk and gave unto sundry of the elders man injurious languages\u2019\u201d (323).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"