This chapter considers the addressing of persuasive arguments, in oral, handwritten and printed forms and in Scots, English and Gaelic, and identifies rhetorical devices used to represent and express extra-institutional opinions in public communications. The analysis shows how dissidents worked to influence and exploit the views of supporters and how Scotland's rulers sought to manage extra-institutional opinions through a combination of censorship and their own proactive communications. The relative smallness of the Scottish print market and the gradual spread of literacy from elite to middling levels across this period meant that oral and manuscript communications remained important alongside print, producing a distinct communications culture. Though traditional figures like Lady Scotland or Jock Upaland were used to speak for the nation and people, over time collective opinions came to be represented in more literal terms as writers advanced claims about the views of the kirk, the godly and the covenanted nation.

Chapter 5 surveys non-royal discourse for evidence of how royal texts, and their material and linguistic properties, were recognised, understood and used by Tudor subjects. The chapter looks first at the documented afterlives of many royal texts, via manuscript circulation and publication, before examining metacommunicative remarks relating to royal letters and proclamations in manuscript letters and printed texts of the period. Proclamations have a wider range of discussion, likely reflecting their more public profile and dissemination, but both types of texts are used to justify the actions of the writer.