Alasdair Mann, the noted scholar of book culture in early modern Scotland, has suggested that a significant change had occurred in Scotland's relationship with the printed word by the late seventeenth century. This study sets out to explain how the interregnum served as a ‘watershed’ during which a consumer demand was created for popular print and how this in turn necessitated a significant increase in the production and distribution of printed material. Beginning with the sale of the press and patent of Evan Tyler to the London Stationers’ Company in 1647, the article charts the key factors that transformed Scotland's printing industry from the production of official declarations and works for foreign markets to the production of polemical texts for a Scottish audience. These developments also witnessed publication of the first serial news journal and the growth of a competitive market for up-to-date printed news. More than just an anomaly that flourished during a decade of occupation, these fundamental changes altered Scotland by introducing the large-scale consumption of chapbooks and printed ephemera, thereby initiating the nation's enduring print culture.

The story of the relationship between Ulster and Scotland during the seventeenth century has long been dominated by the flow of people and ideas from Scotland to the north of Ireland. This, however, belies the prominent role that Ireland had in the social and cultural history of the Western Isles and Highlands of Scotland during that century. This paper argues that of even greater importance to the resurgence of Catholicism in the Scottish Gaidhealtachd than a Rome driven Counter-Reformation were the financial support and personnel provided by Ulster Catholics. In the face of aggressive Stuart policies, Catholicism was rejuvenated and became an ideological justification for asserting traditional rights in the face of government sanctioned, Protestant blessed, incursions in the Western Isles. Moreover, in the face of historiography that has argued for the continual disintegration of ClanDonald throughout the seventeenth century, this article explores the ways the clans and their neighbours inspired, funded and facilitated the revival of Catholicism in the Gaidhealtachd.

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