Note 1 — Offences and their Punishment in the Sixteenth Century.

As a rule—and indeed the custom has not yet entirely ceased in the country districts of Scotland—wives retained their full maiden names after marriage, and in both sexes the christian or given name was held to be—as doubtless it virtually is—the proper designation of a person,—the surname indicating the family or clan to which he or she belonged. On Scottish tombstones to this day, the inscription for the loss of a child by a married couple will read as “Son of John Smith and Barbara Allen.”