The aim of this thesis is a study of relations between marriage, property and law. It looks at the legal relationship of marriage, the form and nature of matrimonial property and the rules of Scots law as they apply to the property of husband and wife. The study falls into three parts. In Part I there are three histories. Historical changes in Scots law, in marriage and in property are traced through the accounts of legal and philosophical writers and through the historical account of marriage presented by L. Stone in The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. Part I presents isolated historical accounts of change in each of the three elements of law, marriage and property. In Part II, the patterns of change that emerge from these histories are questioned. It is argued that presentations of change in isolation may create an image or perception of change which can give rise to unfulfilled expectations. The term 'image' is intended to convey the possibility of illusion, a false or misleading picture. The dominant image of change has three characteristics: the disappearance of property from marriage and its replacement with affect, an increasing emphasis on privacy and a split from the public and an increasing emphasis on individualism rather than community. These trends can be discovered in the historical accounts of each of the elements of marriage, property and law. In Part III these emerging images of change are used to analyse specific points of interaction between marriage, property and law. The aim of this study is to consider how an image has arisen of marriage and its relations with property and law, to assess what contribution this image has made to the confusion which seems to surround the relations between marriage, property and law and to explore how this confusion is reflected in Scots law.