Ministers were the nexus of Reformed communities. Tasked with constructing the ‘godly community’ envisioned in the Scots Confession of 1560, the most successful Reformed ministers asserted the urgency of their theological perspectives through infamous fire and brimstone sermons ‘that change[d] the lives of their parishioners’. Sermons were events where ministers could connect their congregations with broader political and religious changes. They also shrewdly built and administered the kirk sessions as vehicles for surveilling the community and ensuring conformity. Yet it was not only the words, dictates, and discipline of ministers that constructed the Reformed community; also important was the model ministers provided to Scottish men on how to lead a godly life and run a godly household. The Kirk of Scotland recognised the influence ministers had over their neighbours and, in 1562, the General Assembly met and set out the order of visitation for ministers, explaining they were to live ‘such as others may be provoked thereby to godliness’. A Reformed masculinity was constructed whereby godly men were to embody ‘personal piety, order and control over one’s household, seriousness of mind, frugality, humility, temperate drinking, chastity outside of marriage, trustworthiness, self-discipline, and submissiveness to kirk discipline’. The Kirk hierarchy was invested in ministerial behaviour, and Scots were tasked with reporting those ministers whose example in their ‘doctrine, life, manners and conversation’ fell short of the godly example.

Much ink has been spilled on stories of personal piety, seriousness of mind, and great restraint by early modern divines as they followed their consciences in pursuit of the Reformed agenda, yet little attention has been paid to what their vocation and reformed expectations meant to those who resided within their households. As is familiar to students of early modern Europe, the patriarchal household was the norm; until recently, this model had subordinated the significance of the lives of wives, servants, and children to those of the master of the household. Therefore, it is no surprise that ministers’ families have largely been overlooked and assumed inconsequential to the history of the Scottish Reformation. This chapter seeks to recover some of the experiences of the wives and children of ministers and to explore the complex emotional lives of ministers’ families to unveil the role they played in Reformed efforts and the story of early modern Scotland.