This collection of eighteen essays is a fine tribute to one of the foremost historians of early modern Scotland and provides eloquent testimony to the affectionate regard in which he is held. As the editors point out in their helpful introduction, Michael Lynch has worked in several overlapping fields of history, including politics, government, court culture, religion, and urban life, all of which are represented here. Three essays span long periods. David Ditchburn demonstrates that pilgrimage remained popular in Scotland until the Reformation. E. Patricia Dennison traces growing sixteenth-century official disapproval of the Scottish “cult” of Robin Hood, defender of the poor. The Edinburgh surgeons’ success in raising their occupational and social status among Edinburgh crafts is attributed by Helen M. Dingwall to their energetic networking, special qualifications, and the absence of a local organization for physicians before the foundation of the Royal College in 1681. There is one essay for each of the Stewart monarchs who reigned from 1488 to 1567. Steve Boardman investigates the use of new “feu-farm” baronies under James IV to increase crown revenue and promote good rule and husbandry, while also showing that the attempted transfer of the control of royal lordships could provoke serious local resistance. In her study of coronation ritual and regalia, Andrea Thomas concludes that though parliament had recognized James III's imperial status as early as 1469, James V was in 1532 the first Scottish king actually to wear an arched or imperial crown to underline his independence and authority. Theo Van Heijnsbergen analyzes Alexander Scott's “New Yeir Gift” poem for the newly returned Mary Stewart, which envisaged her both as the patron of a moderate, unifying religious reformation in Scotland, and as the mother of the future sovereign of all Britain.

Two-thirds of this volume's essays are concerned largely or entirely with the reign of James VI. Sharon Adams underlines the importance of the financial provisions in the interim Leith agreement between Kirk and crown in 1572, and the crown's subsequent retreat from them. Jane Dawson describes the background to the parliamentary act of 1573 permitting divorce for desertion, an unwelcome encroachment on the Kirk's authority. The crown's continued appointment of archbishops was a source of widespread disquiet. The career of Patrick Adamson, archbishop of St. Andrews from 1576, culminated in his collaboration with the earl of Arran's determined effort to subject the Kirk to crown control in 1583–85. Alan R. Macdonald demonstrates that Andrew Melville, often portrayed as an aggressive Presbyterian, was a close friend of Adamson's who repeatedly forgave the archbishop's deceitful behavior and helped him during his final days of illness and poverty, when a Presbyterian church order seemed firmly established.

Ruth Grant's analysis of “The Making of the Anglo-Scottish Alliance of 1586” emphasizes Elizabeth I's need of Scottish friendship in the face of the growing threat from Philip II. An important motive for James's cultivation of potential Catholic supporters at home and abroad was to play on English insecurity both before and after the conclusion of the not entirely satisfactory 1586 treaty. Roderick J. Lyall reconstructs the career of James Halkerston, a Catholic adventurer and scholar with court connections who supplied Latin paraphrases of the Scots sonnet that James contributed to a memorial volume for Sir Philip Sidney that was published in 1587. In 1589, James married Anna of Denmark rather than Elizabeth's favored candidate. Scotland mounted, in 1590, appropriately splendid shows for Anna's coronation and entry into Edinburgh, described by Maureen M. Meikle. Her account underlines the importance of Edinburgh's help in making a success of the celebrations and of the welcome accorded Anna's Danish entourage. Amy L. Juhala shows that this help was part of a larger pattern: before 1603, the capital received “unending requests for assistance” (343) from the cash-strapped James, including loans, provision of food and wine, organizing banquets and entertainments, equipping embassies, raising temporary royal guards and escorts, and lodging foreign visitors. For their part, several leading burgesses benefited from lucrative court contracts and appointments.

After initial misgivings, leading Presbyterian clergy participated in Anna's coronation. Relations between James and Presbyterian ministers were never warmer than during the coronation's afterglow, when James praised the Kirk effusively in the 1590 general assembly. They deteriorated dramatically in 1596, due to the favor or lenity James showed toward leading Catholics, especially the earl of Huntly, who returned from exile without permission. (The Jesuit William Crichton believed that nearly half the forty-nine Scottish nobles he identified on a map he compiled in 1595 were Catholics, though Michael J. Yellowlees concludes that he greatly underestimated the strength of Protestantism.) Growing tension culminated in what has sometimes been described as a “riot” in which James found himself besieged in Edinburgh's tolbooth on 17 December 1596. Julian Goodare argues that far from being a spontaneous disturbance, this was an attempted coup d’état by a “national network of nobles and lairds, supported by ministers” (12). Its failure, and moderate kirkmen's reluctance to be associated with subversion, greatly strengthened James's hand in dealing with the Kirk. But what sort of Kirk did he want? Taking a long view, Jenny Wormald argues once again that despite his reinvigoration of episcopacy, and his imposition of the deeply divisive Five Articles of Perth, James was, unlike his son, far too shrewd and flexible a king to have provoked a revolution. Andrew Boyd, one of the most widely respected Jacobean bishops (Argyll, 1613–36), classical scholar and conscientious pastor, was nonetheless strongly critical of the persecution that resulted from the requirement to kneel at communion. Boyd's manuscript works help Jamie Reid-Baxter to draw a vivid portrait of him. Laura Stewart shows that noncompliance with James's religious policies was one reason for royal interference in the internal affairs of Scotland's burghs after 1603, though by no means the only one.

This is a lively collection that will be much consulted. Several of its essays sparkle, nearly all present the fruits of original research, and all are thought provoking.