Signs of Change

Abstract

In the early part of the eighteenth century, there were clear indications that urban life and urban institutions in Scotland were beginning to face the challenge of the Union. This selection of documents attempts to illustrate some aspects of these changes: the successful drive towards the improvement and expansion of the universities, the increasing refinement of a social life in which books, theatres, clubs, were to play a greater part, and the growth of more moderate, less inflexible theology within the Church of Scotland. Inevitably such developments were piecemeal and slow, proceeding at different speeds in different parts of the country.