Sons and Daughters, Mothers and Mercenaries: Agency and Agenda in the Cross-North Channel Context, c.1500-c.1600

Abstract

First paragraph: Within the field of late medieval and early modern Scottish history, both in Lowland and Highland society, most studies of women have focused on the elite and often on individuals. These studies have nuanced our appreciation of women’s roles in wider society, whether as wife, mother, foster-mother, widow, guardian, confidante or as heiress to an estate or title, and in different contexts, whether political, legal or economic. While recent research has argued that we need to move beyond viewing women who exerted power or authority as ‘exceptional’, there is also a need to reconsider women whose agency has been either marginalised or condemned because it transcended the bounds of what was regarded as appropriate behaviour for a woman. Such has been the fate of Agnes Campbell and her daughter Finola (or ‘Iníon Dubh’) MacDonald, two women born into the elite of Highland clan society and subsequently married into two of the most powerful Irish kindreds in Ulster in 1569. As Gaelic women they operated within a cross-North Channel world which, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, saw significant military activity. This was a result of reinvigorated English efforts to impose authority across Ireland and subdue ongoing resistance to English governance there.