The Books of Assumption of the Thirds of Benefices: Scottish Ecclesiastical Rentals at the Reformation

The Books of Assumption of the Thirds of Benefices: Scottish Ecclesiastical Rentals at the Reformation. Edited by JAMEs KIRK. The British Academy's Records of Social and Economic History, new series 21. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. lxxxviii + 896 pp. $98.00.

Any library with deep concern for Reformation Europe should own this book.

Political, economic, religious, and cultural turmoil marked the sixteenth century. James Kirk, editor of the midcentury Books of Assumption, provides a "microscopic frozen section" of interactions of these forces in Reformation Scotland. Feudalism was challenged by emerging nation-states, the church in Scotland was challenged by the Church of Scotland, inflation was a fact of life, and agrarian culture was under attack. Medieval piety and prudence bequested properties, fiscal resources, and privileges into church control. Kirk estimates that at the...