Marriage of Ministers in Scotland 17th-18th century

[NaphtaliPress]

I didn't want to hijack the the thread about necessity of marriage for ministers so posting here what I found data wise on the culture of 17th/18th century Scotland. I had mentioned that both George Gillespie (mid seventeenth century Scotland) and Samuel Miller (Federal Period, America), married after training and obtaining a call; Miller 7-8 years later; Gillespie maybe a few years. Average age for marriage in Gillespie's day for ministers was 31. Not surprisingly, for both and both periods ministers as well as those apprenticing to a trade only married when they could be seen as offering ability of supporting a wife and family financially.

For ministers, age at first marriage is clearer because a larger sample is available, though again data are scarce for the early part of the period. The average age of first marriage was 31.0 for the period i 56o-1649 and 3i.7 for the last quarter of the seventeenth century, rising to 34.5 a century later. The median figure was more stable at thirty-two for the seventeenth century and thirty-three for the eighteenth. Ministers thus married later than their brides. This can be explained by the long and rigorous training which candidates for the ministry had to undergo. After graduating with an MA from a Scottish university, postgraduate study of divinity led to an examination by a presbytery assessing his suitability for the ministry. Once a presbytery granted a licence to a candidate he might then serve as a temporary stand-in for various ministers within the presbytery. Alternatively such men might take up posts as chaplains or tutors to landed families, or work as schoolmasters. Even after being licensed it might take some time for a suitable parish to fall vacant. The whole process of training might take six or seven years or more following graduation. 14 As a result, ministers commonly entered their first parish in
their late twenties or early thirties. Furthermore, there was no guarantee of a parish at the end of it. Given the system of patronage, candidates often needed suitable family connections in order to be presented to a vacant parish. An unknown proportion of hopeful young men must have ended up as 'stickit ministers', continuing as schoolmasters, sometimes too poor to marry, like Scott's caricature Dominie Sampson in Guy Mannering.
Ministers therefore generally delayed marriage until they had been entered into their first parishes. Where details can be calculated, sixteen per cent of ministers studied married in the same year that they entered their first parish, and seventy per cent of them within five years. Only three per cent married before they got a parish. In such circumstances it is likely that they had been engaged for some time but had postponed marriage until their future and financial security was confirmed. Many ministers delayed marriage for some years more until they had established themselves in their parish. Given this, it is not surprising that courtship was often prolonged.

CHAPTER NINETEEN Wed to the Manse: The Wives of Scottish Ministers, c.1560 — c.1800, by Ian D. Whyte and Kathleen A. Whyte in Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M. Meikle (eds), Women in Scotland, c. 1100–c. 1750 (East Linton, 1999), pp. 225-6.