Oh Gadget, I should hold back but one does despair.
Thomas PATERSON, in your example, no doubt became - or already was! - an Elder of the Kirk!
I have a rell (not actually an ancestor of theirs) on my children's paternal side who was required to sit on a stool outside the Kirk in the Orkneys in sackcloth and ashes for many many Sundays. Her sin? She'd served beer at a local beerhouse ... Truly. Nothing more. Not even a smidgin of a mention of fornication (which was clearly only a female sin) ...
Just as children often had only fathers - mothers obviously being irrelevant.
From another thread - I looked up records on the NAS and came across a murder case. Obviously, when I looked into it, a disturbed mother had committed infanticide. But the poor wee victim was described only as the child of the father. Hello?!
As for the case found in her ancestry by a member of my local Genie Soc where a child was convicted of incest with her father, and that child was sent to prison for her sin ...
Better get down off my soapbox! It's all far too sad.
Grantley, that appalling descriptor "a notable whoore" has surely struck all too many of us as grotesque.
Regards,
JAP
PS: Yes, still looking for where the Laird might have hailed from. Though perhaps not all that important. James (if the same one in all the records - as seems likely) was obviously pretty senior. Probably wouldn't have been criticized in the Kirk Sessions - but it would be very interesting to find the record!