medieval-atlas/the-church/402

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Ecclesiastical organisation: the early eighteenth century The maps in this section aim to present the situation about 1707 as the closing date for this Atlas. That year does not mark any particular ecclesiastical event or development. The medieval inheritance of the parochial system had been adopted by the reformers after 1560 as a convenient network of territorial units. Over the next 150 years various commissions were appointed by parliament to make boundary adjustments where cliange of circumstances made it desirable to unite small parishes and divide large ones. By the early eighteenth century the country with around 1000 parishes had a parochial system that was still thought capable of meeting the needs of society, before the pressures of industrialisation demanded reappraisal and more drastic action. With a population standing, perhaps, at less than a million, a parish on average might possess rather less than 1000 souls, say between one and two hundred families and their servants. Most burghs, of course, were larger centres of population, but were usually served still by a single parish. Edinburgh was an exception with six parishes by this date; Glasgow too had more than one parish, and other large burghs had more than one charge within the single parish. The contrast between the large parishes in the Highlands and the compact ones along the eastern coast and in the central lowlands is a commentary not just on the disparity in resources and manpower in these areas, but also on the relative fertility of the land which sustained the population. In the earlier eighteenth century over two-thirds of the people of Scotland lived outside the Highlands and Islands. That the onethird of the population who li ved in these areas was served by perhaps one-seventh of the country's parish ministers could hardly be considered adequate; but it is unreasonable to deny the difficulties which wild and mountainous terrain presented in communicating the gospel, or for that matter, anything else. 75 , , 100 miles Parishes in the early eighteenth century 402

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