Prosecuting Rape in Seventeenth-century Scotland

Since at least the 1970s, rape, and male sexual violence against women more generally, has been a recurring focus of feminist historiography. While this body of scholarship has provoked criticism, it has had the profoundly important effect of situating the crime of rape as a feature of, rather than an aberration from, the society that hosts it. Scotland has been substantially overlooked in this discussion. This article explores the ideas, assumptions, and procedures involved in the criminal prosecution of rape in Scotland, taking the seventeenth century as its focus.