1 - Argyll's life and character

Summary

In an age of personal monarchy and small, tightly-knit élites, personal rule lay at the heart of political power in the early modern period. The story of personalities and powers revealing the interplay of men and events forms the central narrative of its political history and comes closest to the way in which contemporaries analysed their own world. The structures of government were important, but at each level of the political process it was the personal and kin networks that ensured they worked. This was particularly true of Scotland, where governmental institutions were less well developed than in other European states. Political biographies are essential in the study of sixteenth-century British history. Before 1603, there were no common political institutions covering all three kingdoms. In that sense, British politics had not yet arrived, though a handful of British policies and British politicians flourished. The political history of the Atlantic archipelago during the sixteenth century has to be written around these personalities and their actions.

The use of political biography also offers an escape from two concepts that have dominated modern historical writing and have bedevilled the writing of British history. The first is state-centred history, which assumes that politics and international relations can be explained exclusively in terms of the state and its institutions. Although the interaction between centre and localities has long been recognised, many of the underlying assumptions about the institutional nature of early modern politics remain.