ABSTRACT
The emergence of civil society in England and Scotland had several distinctive features. The first was the long historical gestation.1 It was organic in the sense that the institutions and practices of civil society emerged from the existing institutions of state, family and religion and did so without existing external models. The emergence of civil society was deeply involved with religious history, debate and organization. The scope and influence of civil society was closely related to the incidence and received legitimacy of violence in many areas of social activity.2 In both countries the incidence of those practices identified with civil society was urban and middle-class, or rather in the years before 1820, of the middling sort.
