Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542 3030893766, 9783030893767

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Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542 Amy Blakeway

Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542

Amy Blakeway

Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542

Amy Blakeway School of History University of St Andrews St Andrews, Fife, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-89376-7    ISBN 978-3-030-89377-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Mark Waugh / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

In memory of my father John Graham Blakeway 1954–2002

Acknowledgements

At its heart, this book argues that specialised and expert advice was a central factor in governing Scotland in the reign of James V. It is therefore fitting to first offer my heartfelt thanks to friends and colleagues who gave their care, time and attention to reading draft chapters at various stages: Jackson Armstrong, Paul Cavil, Mark Godfrey, Julian Goodare, Emily Michelson, Cynthia Neville and Bess Rhodes. Counsel, of course, could be delivered in a group as well as one-on-one, and I also owe thanks to those who listened to earlier versions of chapters delivered as seminar or conference papers, so thanks too to the attendees at the Edinburgh University Scottish History Seminar I delivered in 2019, my paper at the Scottish Legal History Group in 2019, the IHR’s Tudor-Stewart seminar in 2017 and colleagues at the Legal Cultures Colloquium in 2020 (thanks to Alice Taylor for inviting me to this). I hope that whatever else people think of this book they at least see the riches of the archival material on which it is based—even if this is complicated and frustrating at times—and it is important to express my gratitude to the staff who helped me at the National Records of Scotland, National Library of Scotland, Aberdeen City Archives, John Gray Centre (East Lothian Archives), A. K. Bell Library (Perth and Kinross Archives) and the British Library. A fellowship at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities and a grant from the Strathmartine Trust made travel to these places possible. Acknowledging these debts of course recalls another facet of James’s governance—the need for meticulous record keeping, and cash to keep the show on the road. vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Finally, however, my biggest thanks are owed are to my friends and family. Just like James’s kin and household must have been his first sounding boards, thank you for listening to me talk about this project and offering sympathy and solace. You know who you are—but there are three people I need to name. Thank you Aunt Elaine for your supportive listening ear. Emma Hart and family: thank you for lending me your flat and Oscar the cat whilst I needed the Edinburgh archives. Above all, deep, deep thanks are owed to my mother, Christine Blakeway, who has been my rock throughout, and who confirmed the last date I needed for this book—the year of my father’s birth. It is to his memory this book is dedicated.

Conventions

All sums of money given are in £ Scots unless otherwise specified, and all dates are in new style with the year beginning on 1 January. Original spellings have been retained and contractions silently expanded. A crown was worth £1, a ducat £2.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Council and Conventions 23 3 Conventions of the Lords, War and Wedlock: Public Or Private Consultation? 83 4 Consultation and Access for the Third Estate139 5 Taxation and Finance177 6 Legislation, Treason and Parliament227 7 Conclusion283 Appendix A: Attendance at Conventions293 Appendix B: Repassed Legislation319 Bibliography331 Index347 xi

Abbreviations

ACA Aberdeen City Archives Aberd. Recs. J. Stuart (ed.), Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen (Spalding Club, 4 vols, 1844–1872) Actis (1542) The New actis and constitutionis of parliament maid be the rycht excellent Prince Iames the fift kyng of Scottis (Edinburgh, 1542) Actis (1566) The actis and constitutiounis of the realme of Scotland: maid in Parliamentis haldin be the rycht excellent, hie and mychtie princeis kingis James the first, secund, thrid, feird, fyft, and in tyme of Marie now quene of Scottis, viseit, correctid, and extractit furth of the registers by the Lordis Depute be hir Maiestieis speciall commissioun thairto (Edinburgh, 1566) ADCP R. K. Hannay (ed.), Acts of the Lords of Council in Public Affairs, 1501-1554. Selections from the Acta Dominorum Concilii introductory to the register of the Privy Council of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1932) APS T. Thomson and C. Innes (eds), Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, (Edinburgh, 12 vols, 1814–75) BL British Library, London CSPV Rawdon Brown et al. (eds), Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice (London, 38 vols, 1864–1947) ECA Edinburgh City Archives Edin. Recs. J. D. Marwick et al. (eds), Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 13 vols, 1869–1967) ER George Burnett et al. (eds), Exchequer Rolls of Scotland (Edinburgh, 23 vols, 1878–1908) HP Joseph Bain (ed.), Hamilton Papers (Edinburgh, 2 vols, 1890) xiii

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ABBREVIATIONS

L&P J. S. Brewer (ed.), Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII (London, 21 vols, 1862–1910) LJV R. K. Hannay and Denis Hay (eds), The Letters of James V, 1513-1542 (Edinburgh, 1954) NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh NRS National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh RCRBS J. D. Marwick and T. Hunter (eds), Records of the Convention of Royal Burghs of Scotland (Edinburgh, 7 vols, 1866–1918) RMS J. Thomson et al. (eds), Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum/Register of the Great Seal of Scotland (Edinburgh, 11 vols, 1882–1914) RPC J. H. Burton et al. (eds), Register of the Privy Council of Scotland (Edinburgh, 14 vols, 1877–1933) RPS Records of the Parliaments of Scotland www.rps.ac.uk RSS M. Livingstone et al. (eds), Registrum Secreti Sigilli Regum Scotorum/Register of the Privy Seal of Scotland (Edinburgh, 8 vols, 1908–82) SHR Scottish Historical Review TA T. Dickson et al. (eds), Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland (Edinburgh, 13 vols, 1877–1970) TNA The National Archives, London

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

On Epiphany in 1540, James V, his Queen, Marie de Guise, his council and their court gathered in the Palace of Linlithgow to enjoy an ‘interluyde’ which laid bare the unhappiness of the peasantry and exposed the faults of their superiors, especially the clergy. The forum in which this complaint was aired was one which would have been amply familiar to this politically active audience: the fictional peasant appeared before ‘A man Armed in harnes withe a swerd drawen in his hande, A BUSSHOPE, A BURGES man, and EXPERIENCE clede like a doctor whoe sete theym all down on the dies under the KING’. In other words, the peasant appeared before the three estates, gathered in a ‘playne Parliament’.1 Despite the play-bishop’s anger upon hearing the peasant articulate what amounted to a thorough critique of the existing Church, the other two estates considered that the clerical abuses were ‘verey expedient to be reaformede withe the consente of parliament’. Unsurprisingly, when ‘the Busshope said he wold not consent thereunto The MAN OF ARMES AND BURGES saide thay wer two and he bot one wherfor thair voice shuld haue mooste effecte’. The proposed reforms duly passed into law as ‘the King in the playe Ratefied approved and confermed all that was rehersed’. This conclusion to the Christmas festivities was reported to 1

 ‘The copie of the notes of the enterluyde’, January 1540, BL Royal MS 7 C XVI f.138r.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4_1

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English officials eagerly seeking information on the religious temperature of the Scottish court, who seized upon James’s foreknowledge of the play and warning to the clergy in its wake to amend their behaviour as a hopeful sign.2 Interest in the interlude as a source of information on James’s openness to religious reform has survived the test of time and been shared by modern historians of religious change in Scotland.3 Amongst literary critics, too, the incident is far from being unknown: although literary debate on the play’s possible relationship to the Lyon herald David Lindsay’s later Satire of the Three Estatis has moved back and forth, the pendulum seems to have settled at an acceptance of Lindsay’s authorship and a close relationship between the 1540 interlude and the extant play text despite the differing circumstances of production.4 In comparing the English spy report discussing the 1540 interlude with the extant text of the Satire, Greg Walker has argued that both iterations of the play ‘speak powerfully to the importance of parliament’ in the Scottish polity.5 This observation is entirely in line with recent reassessments by historians of parliament in late medieval and early modern Scotland who, over the last generation, have dragged parliament out of the wings and thrust it centre stage.6 Furthermore, Walker argued that the Interlude played during James’s personal rule accorded a more central role to the monarch than the Satire played during a minority, when parliament assumed greater significance: in 1540, the pauper spoke to James; in 1552 and 1554, he appealed to parliament. Again, Walker’s claim that a period of royal minority would lead to an increased role for governmental institutions, in this case, parliament, is one which has been widely shared.7 The case that well into the sixteenth century governmental institutions flourished during royal minorities and the rule of women, whilst strong adult  Eure to Cromwell, 26 January 1540, BL Royal MS 7 C XVI f.137r.  C. Kellar, Scotland, England and the Reformation, 1534–1561 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 69–70. 4  For a summary of this debate: Greg Walker, ‘The Linlithgow Interlude and the Satire of the Three Estatis’, Medieval English Theatre (2015), pp.  41–56 at 41–2. See also: Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 117–123, 128–9; Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (Amherst, 1994), pp. 49–50. 5  Walker, ‘The Linlithgow Interlude and the Satire of the Three Estatis’, p. 54. 6  For an overview of this: K. M. Brown and R. J. Tanner, ‘Introduction: Parliament and Politics in Scotland’ in K. M. Brown & R. J. Tanner (eds), Parliament and Politics in Scotland 1235–1560 (Edinburgh, 2004), pp. 1–28. 7  Jenny Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland 1470–1625 (London, 1981), p. 22; Julian Goodare, The Government of Scotland 1560–1625 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 130–1. 2 3

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Kings ruled free from the constraints of parliaments, councils and the like is gradually being revised. However, its long dominance explains why we know far more about the imaginary parliament crafted by Lindsay than the parliaments actually summoned during James’s reign. Whilst the spy reports of the interlude have been scoured for information on the performance itself, read carefully, they reveal as much as about real-life government as they do Lindsay’s fictitious parliament. William Eure, the English official whose reports constitute our evidence for the play, obtained his information from two members of James’s council. Asking them directly ‘whate mynde the king and counsaile of Scotland was inclyned unto concernyng the busshope of Rome’, the two Scots had described a play about parliament (though not an actual meeting of that assembly), said James had known about the play beforehand, and affirmed that he and his council had watched it. Beyond this, they gave Eure to understand that after Marie de Guise’s coronation, James intended to hold a ‘convencon of the lords’—here, they hoped, might church reforms be discussed.8 Looking again at the well-known report of Lindsay’s play, we in fact see all the elements of consultation brought together: the constants of the court and council, as well as the occasional meetings of parliament and convention. The appearance of all these things together encapsulates one of the key arguments advanced in this book, namely, that consultation and decision making in the personal rule were complex, multi-stage processes which encompassed multiple meetings cutting across different institutions and extra-institutional discussions alike. * * * To date, historiographical debate on the reign of James V has focused largely upon the King’s character and his relations with his magnates. Mid-twentieth-century surveys of sixteenth-century Scotland taught generations of undergraduates that James (perhaps on account of his Tudor blood) was little better than a tyrant, obsessed by greed and unable to work with his nobility.9 The reader of these works is left with the strong impression that James was saved from the ignominious fate of murder at the hands of his rebellious subjects, as his Scottish grandfather James III  Eure to Cromwell, 26 January 1539/40, BL Royal MS 7 C XVI f.137r.  Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: James V to James VII (Edinburgh, 1978 reprint), pp. 61–2; Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community, p. 12. 8 9

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had lost both his crown and his life, only by his untimely death following a disastrous military campaign led by low-born favourites. With this type of reputation, it is unsurprising that James for many years failed to attract serious scholarly attention. This ‘most unpleasant of all the Stewarts’ apparently simply lacked the roguish renaissance charm of his father, the salacious appeal of his daughter or the imminent pan-Britannic importance of his grandson.10 However, the first serious modern scholarly work on James’s governance, Jamie Cameron’s reassessment of James’s adult kingship, marked a departure from previous accounts of James as a magnate-­crusher and emphasised instead that for most of his reign the King enjoyed support from a broad cross-section of his nobility.11 Typically of the time he was writing, however, Cameron’s interest was primarily in monarch-magnate relations, not the institutions through which these might be conducted. Accordingly, his attention to James’s parliaments and conventions focused on an account of the 1528 parliament, the first of the personal rule, and a discussion of magnatial attendance at subsequent sessions and conventions as part of his broader case that James enjoyed a broad base of magnate support.12 Alongside this reassessment of political relationships, a wider group of studies have demonstrated that James presided over a lively and glamourous court which, as Andrea Thomas observed, combined both chivalric and humanist influences to ‘glorify the unique dignity and status of the monarch’ whilst fostering relationships with his magnates.13 Such courtly talents, moreover, were put to good use  Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community, p. 12.  Jamie Cameron, James V: The Personal Rule, 1528–1542 (East Linton, 1998). 12  Whilst other sessions are noted in passing the major analysis comes at: Cameron, James V, pp. 38–43, 356–9. For the parliament of 1528 see also: W. K. Emond, The Minority of James V: Scotland in Europe 1513–1528 (Edinburgh, 2019), pp. 260–3. 13  Andrea Thomas, Princelie Majestie: the court of James V of Scotland 1528–42 (Edinburgh, 2005) p.  225; Andrea Thomas, ‘Crown Imperial: Coronation Ritual and Regalia in the Reign of James V’, in Julian Goodare and Alasdair MacDonald (eds.), Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch (Leiden, 2008) pp.  43–67; Janet Hadley Williams, ‘James V of Scots as literary patron’, in Martin Gosman, Alasdair A. MacDonald and Arie Johan Vanderjagt (eds), Princes and princely culture, 1450–1650 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 173–98; Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (1486–1555) (Amherst, Mass., 1994); Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart Style, 1513–1542: essays on the Court of James V (East Linton, 1996); Sarah Carpenter, ‘David Lindsay and James V: court literature as current event’ in Jennifer and Richard Britnell (eds), Vernacular Literature and Current Affairs in the early sixteenth-century: France, England and Scotland (Aldershot, 2000). 10 11

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in the complex diplomacy emanating from James’s need for a wife and his country’s enhanced European status, arising in part from Scotland’s position as a bastion of orthodoxy standing against Henry VIII’s heresies, and in part from James’s tantalisingly close position to his English uncle’s throne.14 A number of relevant implications can be drawn from these studies. First, if James had a sophisticated and glamourous court and was able to conduct diplomacy adeptly, this would have required administrative back up and adequate funding, which, in turn, would have required consultation to acquire it in the first place. Roger Mason has revealed how the expansion of Latin literacy to layfolk facilitated the growth of a new pool of individuals on whom James’s regime could rely alongside the traditional clerical stalwarts of royal bureaucracy.15 Theo van Heijnsbergen built on this to show how, since many of James’s administrators were also accomplished poets, literary and administrative talents might be combined in the same individuals and operate through shared networks of connections.16 In this book, we will meet several of van Heijnsbergen’s culture vultures putting their Latinity to good use in their day jobs. Secondly, the quality of sophisticated ceremonial and literature circulating around James’s court speaks both to the ability of James’s regime to communicate outwards to a broader public and to direct its messages inwards in the form of counsel to the monarch himself. In exploring how processes of disseminating information to subjects and advising the monarch worked in institutional settings, we are therefore knocking at an open door: it has already been amply established that these were important concerns for the regime. Thirdly, the humanists working at James’s court were intimately 14  Dana Bentley-Cranch and Rosalind Kay Marshall, ‘Iconography and literature in the service of diplomacy: the Franco-Scottish alliance, James V and Scotland’s two French queens, Madeleine of France and Marie de Guise’, in Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart style, 1513–1542, pp.  273–88; Edmond Bapst, Les Marriages de Jacques V (Paris, 1889); M. P. Rooseboom, The Scottish Staple an account of the trade relations between Scotland and the Low Countries from 1292 till 1676; with a calendar of illustrative documents (the Hague, 1910); John Davidson and Alexander Gray, The Scottish staple at Veere, a study in the economic history of Scotland (London, 1909); Kellar, Scotland, England and the Reformation; Richard W.  Hoyle and J.  B. Ramsdale, ‘The Royal Progress of 1541, the North of England, and Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1534–1542’, Northern History 41.2 (2004), pp. 239–65. 15  Roger Mason, Kingship and the Commonweal: Political Thought in Renaissance and Reformation Scotland (East Linton, 1998), pp. 104–138. 16  Theo Van Heijnsbergen, ‘Studies in the Contextualisation of Mid-Sixteenth-Century Scottish Verse’ (University of Glasgow, unpublished PhD, 2009).

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familiar with notions of imperium and the concept that James was an Emperor in his own kingdom who owed allegiance to no one else.17 Such ideas were not new in the 1530s, and as Ryoko Harikae has shown with reference to John Bellenden’s vernacular translation of Hector Boece’s History, they appeared gradually and did not emanate in a straightforward manner from the monarch.18 Even so, in the context of the intellectual networks to which van Heijnsbergen has pointed, it seems reasonable to suppose that this exalted understanding of monarchy tinged how James’s administrators understood their own activities in the service of the crown. Most pertinently for our present purposes, however, a small but growing number of studies of the roles of central institutions in James’s personal rule suggest that the 1530s witnessed significant governmental development. The first moves towards this came from legal historians interested, naturally enough, in the development of Scotland’s highest civil court, the court of session.19 The late medieval royal council combined both advisory and judicial functions: in May 1532, however, parliament approved the setting up of the college of justice, and this provided these judicial sessions with an institutional identity distinct from that of the council. This proved a decisive moment in the longer-term process whereby the judicial sessions became the preserve of trained jurists alone. Mark Godfrey’s work has been particularly valuable in showing that the growing jurisdiction of the session and the eagerness of James’s subjects to avail themselves of its services sits comfortably alongside the more established historiographical emphasis on feud and extra-institutional justice.20 This important point about judicial practice—that dispute resolution happened both through the King’s courts and outwith them, and that these two methods were not in competition but worked in concert with each other—is reflected in the findings about political decision making and counsel in this book. Consultation typically took place across a series of interconnected and carefully managed meetings, including council,  Mason, Kingship and the Commonweal, pp. 104–38.  Ryoko Harikae, ‘“Daunting” The Isles, Borders, and Highlands Imperial Kingship in John Bellenden’s Chronicles of Scotland and the Mar Lodge Translation’, in Joanna Martin and Emily Wingfield (eds), Premodern Scotland: literature and governance 1420–1587: Essays for Sally Mapstone (Oxford, 2017), pp. 159–170. 19  John W.  Cairns, ‘Revisiting the foundation of the college of justice’, in  Hector MacQueen (ed.), Stair Society Miscellany Five (Edinburgh, 2006), pp. 27–50; A. M. Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland: The Origins of a Central Court (Leiden, 2009). 20  Godfrey, Civil Justice, p. 447, 355–399. 17 18

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parliament, conventions and extra-institutional means. These were not ­competing with each other for prominence, and a royal preference for one was not an attempt to sideline another—just as royal efforts to develop the court of session cannot be read as an attempt to extirpate arbitration. Rather, the political toolbox was well stocked with a range of gadgets from which to select the best for the job in hand. The session was not the only group which grew out of the council, drawing on some of its members whilst excluding others. Athol Murray has shown that the lords of council appointed to the exchequer could act with the authority of the full council and deal with its business whilst the exchequer was in progress.21 Evidently, the council in this period offered a pool of expertise from amongst which sub-groups could be selected on a permanent or temporary basis to meet a specific need. Where, then, does that leave the portion of the council dedicated to offering advice to the King? Cameron’s focus on James’s interest in smooth relations with his magnates meant that his interest in James’s council was confined largely to membership, rather than its place in governance, although he noted the difficulties facing the historian looking for its activities post-1532.22 In making this case, he drew on R.  K. Hannay’s observation that ‘public’ business declined in frequency in the council register following James’s assumption of power. Hannay speculated that this might have arisen from the development of a now lost register.23 I have argued elsewhere that the decline can indeed be explained by changing record keeping and that a ‘secret council’ remained very much part of James’s regime.24 Many of its records have subsequently been lost, but there is strong evidence that by being based part of the time in Edinburgh the group facilitated James’s peripatetic lifestyle and that they advised on diplomatic relations with England. This book provides still more evidence for the continued importance of a council that both counselled and offered administrative support throughout the personal rule. It is important to stress with all the historians cited in this paragraph that the council’s advisory role, the 21  Athol L.  Murray, ‘Exchequer, Council and Session, 1513–1542’, in Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart style, 1513–1542, pp. 97–117. 22  Cameron, James V, pp. 292–4, 342–343. 23  R. K. Hannay (ed.), Acts of the Lords of Council in Public Affairs, 1501–1554. Selections from the Acta Dominorum Concilii introductory to the register of the Privy Council of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1932), p. xliii. 24  Amy Blakeway, ‘The Privy Council of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542’, Historical Journal 59: 1 (2016) pp. 23–44.

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development of the session and the appointment of lords of exchequer were based upon earlier precedents. Even so, these developments provide a very good example of James’s regime showing a preference for the use of smaller, specialised, groups to deal with particular specialist tasks. One of the major contentions of this book is that the type of specialisation which is so well established as an aspect of legal and conciliar development in this period is equally pertinent to understanding how James employed his other central governmental institutions. Although less full than the studies of James’s court and diplomacy, together, this research into the administration and organisation of central government has shown that this was a time when considerable attention was paid to the organisation of central institutions as well as to sharing at least some of their activities more widely throughout the kingdom. In this context, it is surprising that the considerable revisionist scholarship produced on the late medieval and early modern Scottish parliament has yet to extend to James’s personal rule.25 For both the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the once radical reassessment that parliament was an important part of political life and, generally speaking, was more than equal to the task of resisting the monarch is now the new orthodoxy: the plethora of studies which have cumulatively established this status have ranged widely encompassing a range of approaches. For the purposes of the present book, a number of themes are important to drawn out of the scholarship on the immediately preceding and following periods. The first is the importance of parliament as a tool for legitimising political activity, especially regime change. The parliament of 1488 which explained away the death of James III as an unfortunate accident, that of 1515 which confirmed John Stuart, duke of Albany as rightful governor, the assembly of 1525 which declared James V an adult, the meeting of the estates summoned when James took power into his own hands in 1528, the March 1543 parliament which confirmed James Hamilton, earl of Arran, in the regency after his initial appointment in a convention in January, and the parliament held eleven years later in 1554 when Arran relinquished the regency to Marie de Guise are the examples which

25  For a helpful overview of these tendencies: William Fergusson, ‘Introduction’, in Clyve Jones (ed.), The Scots and Parliament, (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 1–10. For the traditional view of James’s parliaments: Robert S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland (Glasgow, 1924), p. 43.

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immediately bookend our period of study.26 Parliament continued to play this role until dynastic union in 1603, the 1567 assembly which registered Mary Queen of Scots’s deposition is probably the most dramatic example, but Goodare has argued for the importance of parliament as a component in articulating governmental legitimacy more broadly.27 Crucially, these assemblies did not actually cause regime change: this had already happened by the time parliament was summoned and fenced. Rather, they advertised the fact regime change had occurred, asserted it to be in keeping with the laws by holding the assembly in keeping with parliamentary traditions, and recorded it. After such a meeting, no one could claim ignorance that the ruler had changed and the act of witnessing also served to endorse and approve the new regime. The political capital to be gained by the combination of doing something and being seen to do something, mirrored by the process of witnessing and being seen to witness, was well understood by James V’s regime and constituted an important factor in many of the assemblies it summoned. Whilst parliament allowed new regimes to proclaim their right to rule and offered opportunities for their policies to be endorsed, this did not mean that it sat putty-like and pliant in the crown’s hands. Roland Tanner’s work on the parliaments of the first three James’s in particular has emphasised the extent to which the estates could engage in adversarial relations with the crown, especially on the issue of taxation.28 In particular, Tanner reassessed the role of the lords of the articles.29 This was the most important committee of Scotland’s unicameral parliament, tasked with receiving 26  Norman Macdougall, ‘The estates in eclipse? Politics and Parliaments in the reign of James IV’ in Brown and Tanner (eds), Parliament and Politics in Scotland 1235–1560, pp. 145–59; Norman Macdougall, James IV (East Linton, 1997), pp. 58–60; W. K. Emond, ‘The Parliament of 1525’ in Brown and Tanner (eds), Parliament and Politics in Scotland 1235–1560, pp. 160–178; Emond, Minority of James V, pp. 35–6, 246, 262; Cameron, James V, pp. 38–42; Pamela Ritchie, ‘Marie de Guise and the Three Estates 1554–1559’, in Brown and Tanner (eds), Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235–1560, pp.  179–202; Amy Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge, 2015) pp. 56, 59–61, 75–83. 27  Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 29–31, 37–41. 28  Roland Tanner, ‘“I arest you, sir, in the name of the three astattes in perlement”: the Scottish Parliament and resistance to the Crown in the fifteenth century’, in Tim Thornton (ed.), Social attitudes and political structures in the fifteenth century (Stroud, 2000), pp. 101–17; Roland J. Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: politics and the three estates, 1424–1488 (East Linton, 2001). 29  Roland Tanner, ‘The Lords of the Articles before 1540: a reassessment’, Scottish Historical Review 79 (2000), pp. 189–212.

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petitions and suggestions for new laws, drafting potential statutes (the ‘articles’ from which it took its name) and presenting them to the whole house for discussion and a vote. Traditionally dismissed as the yes-men of the crown and an effective mechanism by which the crown kept the estates in check, Tanner’s work on the committee until 1540 and Alan MacDonald’s on the late sixteenth-century lords of the articles have cumulatively overturned previous assumptions that the articles stymied parliament’s activities for the crown’s benefit.30 During the 1530s, there is little evidence that the lords of the articles forced through unpopular measures. We will see in chapter 6 a large portion of its work in some sessions (notably that of 1535) was devoted to selecting acts to be repassed: much of what this committee did was simply not controversial. On the other hand, chapter 2 will show that the picture is complex and that Tanner’s suggestion that the committees of the early sixteenth century do look more pliant than their predecessors in fact needs to be taken further.31 The committee of the articles could be managed in such a way as to exclude some members from politically sensitive discussions whilst temporarily adding unelected members to their number. Cumulatively, this could indeed make the articles look very much like the council. Those members who were excluded on such occasions were invariably representatives of the third estate: the burghs. This at first glance seems to suggest the 1530s sat at a considerable distance from the final decades of the sixteenth century, when, as Alan MacDonald has amply demonstrated, the third estate was an active and engaged participant in the parliamentary process which afforded both the burghs as a whole and individual communities considerable opportunities to achieve their aims, largely focused upon the preservation of their privileges.32 Much of this activity was facilitated by meetings of conventions of the burghs, special meetings of the

30  Alan R. MacDonald, ‘Deliberative processes in Parliament c.1567–1639: Multicameralism and the Lords of the Articles’, Scottish Historical Review 81:1 (2002), pp. 23–51. 31  Tanner, ‘Lords of the Articles’, pp. 210–212. 32  A.  R. MacDonald, ‘Uncovering the Legislative Processes in the Parliaments of James VI’, Historical Research 84 (2011) pp.  601–17; Alan R.  MacDonald, ‘The third estate: Parliament and the Burghs’, in Parliament in Context, 1235–1707 (Edinburgh, 2010), pp.  95–121; Alan R.  MacDonald, The Burghs and Parliament in Scotland, c. 1550–1651 (Aldershot, 2007); Alan R. MacDonald, ‘“Tedious to Rehers”? Parliament and Locality in Scotland c. 1500–1651: the Burghs of North-East Fife’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 20:1 (2000), pp. 31–58.

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11

third estate summoned to discuss business appertaining to the ‘commonwealth of merchandice’, but late sixteenth-century burghs also participated in conventions of the three estates, extra parliamentary meetings to which representatives of all three estates were summoned.33 Although chapter 4 shows that conventions of the burghs met more frequently during the 1530s in order to discuss the Scottish staple, no extra-parliamentary conventions of the three estates were held during this period. What, then, was the meeting due to be held after Marie de Guise’s coronation in 1540? Eure, our informant on this point, was a northern Englishman who regularly met with Scots and received reports from spies north of the border: this gathering was obviously so familiar to Eure himself and his anticipated reader in the Henrician court that he felt no need to explain it further. This is deeply frustrating, because taking a longer view across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries conventions in the 1530s were unusual. Alongside their parliaments, councils and courts, conventions offered Scottish monarchs a further way of gathering advice. Unconstrained by the parliamentary requirements of a forty-day summons and set invitation list of the clergy (from archbishops to abbots), nobility (from dukes to lords) and representatives of the parliamentary burghs, conventions offered the opportunity to consult flexibly with a group beyond the regular council. Parliament’s form was settled more or less throughout the sixteenth century (with the notable exception of the admission of the lairds in the reign of James VI), but conventions changed considerably between the late fifteenth and late sixteenth centuries.34 Whilst the three estates met outside parliament in the ‘great council’ during the fifteenth century and in conventions of the three estates after the reformation, such meetings did not take place during James V’s personal rule. The meetings described as ‘conventions’ were, instead, specially

33  James David Marwick and Thomas Hunter  (eds), Extracts from the records of the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland (Edinburgh, 8 vols, 1870–1918); Theodora Pagan, The Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland (Glasgow, 1926); Alan R. MacDonald and Mary Verschuur  (eds), Records of the Convention of Royal Burghs, 1555; 1631–1648 (Woodbridge, 2013). For conventions of the three estates: Alan R. MacDonald, ‘Consultation and Consent under James VI’, Historical Journal 54.2 (2011), pp. 287–306. 34  Julian Goodare, ‘The admission of lairds to the Scottish Parliament’, English Historical Review 116.5 (2001), pp. 1103–33; Julian Goodare, ‘The estates in the Scottish Parliament, 1286–1707’, Parliamentary History 15 (1996), pp. 11–32; Julian Goodare, ‘Who was the Scottish Parliament?’, Parliamentary History 14 (1995), pp. 173–8.

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summoned meetings of selected members of the first and second estates, centred on the regular council but bringing in specialist advice from beyond the usual roster. Eure’s description of the one held in early 1540 as being ‘of the lords’ seems a fitting epithet for these bodies. As we shall see, however, ‘lords’ was an elastic term which could on different occasions encompass not only the higher nobility and clergy with a right to attend parliament but also the lords of council, prominent amongst whose number in this period were burgesses learned in the law. There is significant debate surrounding conventions in their various forms. For Robert Rait, the existence of another body able to tax and to pass temporary legislation helped to build his case surrounding parliament’s weakness: parliament was beset and successfully undercut by this ‘rival’.35 Irene O’Brien’s exploration of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century ‘conventions’ alongside parliaments took a more careful approach. Highlighting the changes to these bodies over time, O’Brien firmly rejected claims they constituted a ‘rival’ to parliament—a position on which Julian Goodare has expanded.36 The conventions encountered in this book should not be understood as quasi-parliamentary. Conventions could not try traitors, nor make a permanent law, nor, it seems, did they offer quite the same quality of endorsement of legitimacy as a parliament. They were attended by clerics and nobles, always joined by the royal officers. Their membership was focused around and their authority was ultimately derived from the council—chapter 2 will lay out this case in greater detail. Their lack of juridical competence alone meant that conventions could not ‘rival’ parliament, nevertheless, during the 1530s, conventions of the lords were an important mechanism of government—especially, we will see, in chapter 3, when facing military campaigns at home or against the English, smaller conventions proved a helpful way of gaining counsel, whilst larger meetings served to endorse plans. During James’s personal rule, conventions of the lords varied considerably in size and this flexibility allowed them to perform a range of functions. Conventions were a highly flexible institution, combined with the fact that their authority derived

 Rait, Parliament, pp. 9–18.  Irene O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ (University of Glasgow, unpublished PhD, 1980), pp.  235–270; Julian Goodare, ‘The Scottish Parliament and its early modern “rivals”’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 24 (2004), pp. 147–172. 35 36

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from the council, this made them a useful tool—especially alongside the council and parliament. These themes, of flexibility, and  of different types of meetings being summoned to tackle different aspects of the various concerns facing James’s regime, cut across this book. Chapter 2 explores conventions and their relationship to the council, identifying when conventions were held and who attended, demonstrating the way in which the council was central to a range of types of meetings (including the curious hybrid group of ‘lords of articles and council’ who occasionally surface in this period). The considerable variations amongst types of conventions are explored in more depth in chapter 3, when, in the context of a study of the conventions held during the overlapping military campaigns of 1530–3, we see that smaller groups met to offer counsel or plan and larger groups, broadly speaking, witnessed important events. Having established that the burghs were not invited to conventions of the lords does not, however, mean that the burghs never met outwith parliament: chapter 4 turns to the increase in evidence for meetings of the third estate in this period. A need to discuss the potential locations for the Scottish staple port exposed a range of positions regarding when the third estate ought to be consulted. Together these three chapters build a picture of a political system characterised by specialised consultation. Although discussion was certainly controlled and ordered by James’s regime, it is more helpful to think in terms of the selection of specialised groups to offer specialised counsel than to adopt an inclusion/exclusion model. Having seen the important role conventions played in planning for warfare, it is unsurprising to discover that they also granted James a significant quantity of taxation. The uncontested ability of conventions to grant a tax is worth stressing at the outset since this was a distinctive aspect of Scottish taxation and marks a point of contrast with practices, for instance, south of the border. Chapter 5 shows that parliament’s role in granting taxation was far less significant either than the extra-parliamentary taxation which James received from conventions, or the permanent expansion of the royal patrimony which parliament effected through confirming the annexation of forfeited lands to the crown. Whilst chapters two to five emphasise the different and complementary parts which council, convention and parliament might play in managing different facets of the same concern, chapter 6 turns to the two areas where parliament was distinct from these other governmental institutions: its role as a court and its legislative activities. Parliament’s activities as a court where traitors were tried were hugely significant in this period, but rather

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than being a space where punishment was sought, it more often served as one amongst several places where accused traitors could negotiate with the regime and, in many cases, ultimately make their peace with the crown—albeit for a hefty price. Turning to legislation, we see that although codification of the laws has hitherto been located in the reigns of James I and James VI, the prevalence of repassing laws in the 1530s suggests that James V’s regime too devoted considerable attention to reviewing, revising and repromulgating the law. Between 1528 and 1542, we find the Scottish crown seeking counsel frequently, inviting specialist gatherings of its subjects to discuss such diverse topics as war with England or how international trade should be managed via a staple port, being granted the taxes for which it asked, seeking reconciliation with its subjects rather than in absentia convictions, engaging with existing legislation to better organise the law and drafting new statutes to support these efforts. Building on Cameron’s work on James’s largely positive relations with his magnates, this transports us a world away from earlier accounts of James’s predatory kingship. It is therefore important to emphasise that whilst this book is focused on uncovering how consultation worked, James and his administrators were more than able to coerce: indeed, it is possible that the focus of this book on meetings designed to secure counsel or consensus obscures some of the regime’s worst coercive excesses. These too however were a component of control. For example, in 1540, the aged James Douglas, earl of Morton, was imprisoned without being told the cause—in Inverness ‘in the sesioun of wynter’, no less, exposed to the ‘cauld and tempestuous air’ and provided with a diet of only ‘rude and ungangand metis’.37 Forced by James to resign his earldom, within six months of the King’s death, Morton sought to have this reversed. Morton’s deposition provided in support of his case suggested that his situation was not unusual—the elderly earl recalled that it was ‘weill knawin that our said umquhile Soverane Lord was Prince of the realme and usit to put his mainisings to execution and ward his men and leigis at his plesour’.38 Morton got his earldom back—so at some level, his story must have been credible. It is not hard to see how such behaviour fuelled James’s traditional historiographical reputation.

37   Cosmo Innes et  al. (eds), Registrum Honoris de Morton II (Edinburgh, 1853) pp. 289–294. See also NRS CS7/1/2 f.281r. 38  Registrum Honoris de Morton II, p. 291.

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Morton’s case is a dramatic example, however, throughout this book, we also see instances of James driving hard bargains with men seeking to enter his peace, suspending acts of parliament by royal letters, refusing to repay debts which parliament had told him he ought to and passing this burden onto the burghs. Indeed, the importance of treason trials to parliament’s business, and the importance of managing aspects of political life ranging from domestic military campaigns to conventions, affords us a glimpse of the iron fist curled inside a (doubtless very stylish and expensive) velvet glove. There is a profound tension between the regime’s emphasis on consultation and elaborate procedures to perform rituals of counsel and consent deployed via both parliament and conventions, and its use of both actual violence and judicial threats. However, the fact that James’s regime sought to incorporate consultation on some occasions when it could have proceeded straight to coercion suggests that it did indeed consider that consultation was important and that consulting, or at least being seen to consult, had a purpose in helping it to achieve its aims. Securing buy-in might have been easier than exercising coercive power; equally, just as Morton’s resignation was technically legal but secured through threats, we should not discount the possibility that some gatherings—probably the larger and more apparently performative ones—were exercises in informing subjects and securing their acquiescence rather than gaining advice. Just as the traditional emphasis on James’s coercive activities should not be allowed to obscure the fact that notions of counsel remained rhetorically important and had an influence on practice, nor should an emphasis on consultation allow us to forget occasions when the crown openly flexed its muscles. The institutional apparatus explored in this book allowed it to do both. The sources on which this research is based are familiar to historians: the parliamentary registers, the register of the lords of council and session and royal financial materials are supplemented by royal correspondence and burgh records. Even so, it is helpful to spend a few moments attending to some of the technical aspects of our three main sources since this allows us to appreciate what we can and cannot uncover. Turning first to the parliamentary registers, James V’s personal rule is considerably better served than his own minority or that of his daughter, since parliamentary records cover the entire period. Three extant manuscripts traditionally understood to be ‘official registers of parliament’ now record the activities

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of James’s adult parliaments, covering 1524–31, 1532–8 and 1532–42.39 However, I have argued elsewhere that the third volume covering 1532–42 was not produced as a complete register of parliament’s activities but, rather, as a record of the statutes in preparation for the printed edition of these which appeared in 1542.40 The manuscript remained in use in the early portion of Mary’s reign, until 1548, but at some point in the nineteenth century, the manuscript was split in two and materials appertaining to James’s reign were separated from those of his daughter. This has considerable implications for our understanding of the records. First, it allows us to more accurately identify which material from the 1535 parliament made it beyond the articles stage to reach the statute books. Secondly, this means our only record of parliamentary activity between 1540 and 1542 began its life as draft for a printed compilation of statutes. Whilst the draft and the printed volume did include some non-statute material, it is highly likely this was not a full record of parliament’s activities—notably, judicial matters may well have been excluded. Chapter 6 fleshes out these implications to show the 1535 parliament passed fewer laws than we thought and presents strong evidence to suggest that other sessions heard judicial business which is not in the extant registers. The volume covering 1532–8 is also not straightforward. This too is highly unlikely to be a complete record of parliamentary business. It contains numerous blank spaces and incomplete entries. Given this is quite a neat volume, these omissions suggest it was copied from minutes taken in the sessions and that this process was incomplete. It is annotated throughout by the clerk register. This combination of an incomplete record which was handled by the clerk register suggests that the manuscript may not have been produced for the crown’s archives but, rather, might have been the clerk register’s own working copy—as the 1532–48 manuscript became after 1542. In short, whilst the publication of the printed Actis that year means it is likely that we have a record of all general statutes dating between 1535 and 1541 for many other areas of parliament’s business we are not so lucky. Gaps in the record are particularly marked for the 1533–4 and 1538–9 sessions, for which no business was recorded in the manuscript and which do not appear in the printed edition. Chapter 5 will  NRS PA2/8/I-III.  Amy Blakeway, ‘Reassessing the Scottish Parliamentary Records, 1528–1548: manuscript, print, bureaucracy and royal authority’, Parliamentary History 40 (2021), pp. 417–442. 39 40

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suggest the 1538 parliament granted a tax and chapter 6 posits that both sessions were summoned to deal with judicial business. In essence, these parliamentary materials are a lot better than nothing but we still need to use them with caution and doing so alongside other evidence can yield new discoveries. These complexities in the manuscript also mean that despite the existence of three modern editions of these records, there are a number of questions which can only be answered by consulting the original records.41 Despite the complexities of its record, parliamentary activity for this period is at least recorded in its own register: decisions made by conventions, on the other hand, were sometimes but not always recorded in the register of the lords of council and session. For our period, this contains a mixture of ‘public’ business alongside civil legal cases (often related to property or inheritance) and private contracts, inserted at the behest of the parties to render the agreement more secure.42 It also contains records of the exchequer when it sat as a court, and this shared record underscores the extent to which the three bodies of exchequer, council and session were intimately related.43 The register also notes, albeit inconsistently, decisions to summon both conventions and parliaments. Evidently, the register of the lords of council and session is an important source for this study, but it too needs to be approached with care. As with the parliamentary materials, the extant registers are not usually the original notes taken during meetings, but rather were compiled after the event. These were not always completed: blank spaces left for sederunt lists (recording who was present) or the contents of meetings remain frustratingly unfilled. Clerks were perhaps awaiting material not immediately to hand. Equally, material might arrive with the clerks responsible for the fair copy after they had 41  William Robertson (ed.), The Parliamentary Records of Scotland in the General Register House 1240–1571 (Edinburgh, 1804); APS; Keith Brown et  al. (eds), Records of the Parliaments of Scotland www.rps.ac.uk. For Robertson and Thomson’s editions see: Julian Goodare, ‘The Scottish Parliamentary Records, 1560–1603’, Historical Research 72 (1999), pp. 244–267 at 265–6; Blakeway, ‘Reassessing’; Amy Blakeway and Laura Stewart, ‘Writing Scottish Parliamentary History, c.1500–1707’, Parliamentary History 40:1 (2021), pp. 93–112. 42  R.  K. Hannay (ed.), ‘Introduction’ to Acts of the Lords of Council in Public Affairs, 1501–1554 (Edinburgh, 1932); Athol Murray, ‘Introduction’ to Alma B. Calderwood (ed.), Acts of the Lords of Council 1501–1503 (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. xxvi–xxviii; Murray, ‘Exchequer, council and session’; Godfrey, Civil Justice, chapter 5 passim. 43  Murray, ‘Exchequer, Council and Session’, pp. 100–1.

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completed the relevant entry—this would be inserted at the nearest available gap out of chronological order. We have just seen the parliamentary registers also contain gaps: this filling-in was usual practice across many types of governmental records.44 Although widespread, this habit of leaving space in anticipation of interventions which might or might not ­eventuate means that in several instances the dates on which meetings took place or dealt with particular business need to be worked out quite carefully, and there are a number of technical interludes dealing with this in chapters 2 and 3. Summaries of entries from this register are given in the printed Acta Dominorum Concilii [ADCP], although since this early twentieth-century work did not include information on sederunt lists, for any study, such as this one, interested in who decided something, or, indeed, in seeing a full record rather than a summary, it remains essential to consult the original manuscript.45 Indeed, the editor of the ADCP himself, R. K. Hannay, acknowledged that ‘a close study of the council, much desiderated and certain to be arduous, cannot be effective without constant reference to the manuscript register’.46 Beyond the need to understand how these volumes were compiled by their early modern creators, like the 1532–48 parliamentary register now split at 1542, the register of the lords of council and session has suffered from nineteenth-century intervention. The present archival organisation imposes a division amongst the materials in May 1532, when the college of justice was inaugurated. However, Athol Murray has shown that this division was not contemporary: rather, it was created under the auspices of Thomas Thomson, deputy keeper of the records in the nineteenth century.47 In fact, the inauguration of the college marked no change in the record keeping practices of James’s clerks, and the manuscripts now divided into CS5, CS6 and CS7 in the National Records of Scotland should be understood as part of the same continuous early modern record series. As James V’s reign advanced, but particularly from c.1535 onwards, the quantity of what Hannay described as ‘public’ business in the council registers declined

 Murray, ‘Exchequer, Council and Session’, p. 100.  R. K. Hannay (ed.), Acts of the Lords of Council in Public Affairs, 1501–1554. Selections from the Acta Dominorum Concilii introductory to the register of the Privy Council of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1932). 46  ADCP, p. ix. 47  Athol Murray, ‘Introduction’ to Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes, 1501–1503, iii, ed. A. B. Calderwood (Edinburgh, 1993), p. xiii. 44 45

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considerably.48 Hitherto, despite Hannay’s speculation about a potential lost record, this has been ‘attributed to James V having reached an age when could take full control of the administration’.49 In fact, this was due to a change in record keeping p ­ractices, since at some point before September 1537, a record known as the ‘registri S. consilii’ or ‘secret council register’ was begun.50 Sadly, this is no longer extant, and we will have cause to regret this regularly throughout this book. However, it is likely that the decline in ‘public’ business in this period in the surviving council register is because these extant volumes were primarily being used by the court of session and the ‘public’—or, less anachronistically, ‘commonwealth’—business was instead recorded in the secret council register. The fact that two records, not one, were being maintained does not mean that a completely hard and fast division was imposed between them—lords of the session remained lords of council and continued in that capacity to deal with some non-judicial matters. For instance, in March 1540, James wrote to the council ordering replacements to be made for all of his seals after one had been ‘stollin’ and this letter was copied into the register of the lords of council and session.51 It might be objected that the existence of this and other similar items shows that since public business was still being recorded in the register of the lords of council and session that, therefore, no separate register specifically for these commonwealth matters existed. However, the register of the lords of council and session contained ‘public’ materials well into the 1550s—a decade after the first extant privy (or secret) council register commences.52 This type of archival cross-over should be understood as evidence of a flexible and developing record-keeping culture which reflected a political reality where the council’s authority was central. As for the new seals made up in 1540—appropriately enough, the council specified that these ought to feature a symbol of James’s imperial monarchy—‘ane clos croun’.53 This is nicely symbolic of the extent to which the burgeoning central government administration enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with blossoming notions of enhanced monarchical authority.  ADCP, p. xliii.  Murray, ‘Exchequer, Council and Session’, p.  109. For a similar view: Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 129–131. 50  NRS GD249/2/2/1 f. 76r; LJV, p. 233; Blakeway ‘Reassessing’, p. 440. 51  RSS II, 3444; NRS CS6/12 f.86r-v; ADCP, p. 485. 52  ADCP, pp. 540–639; RPC I. 53  NRS CS6/12 f.86v; ADCP, p. 485. 48 49

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The complex system which is beginning to emerge would have cost money. Payments from the treasurer to messengers delivering summons offer a valuable form of evidence for both parliaments and conventions, although clearly this would only reveal those summons issued which required a messenger to be paid to deliver them: such an expense would not be requisite for individuals present when a decision to hold a meeting was taken or those closely nearby. More problematically, on some occasions, such as for the convention of June 1531, payments for summons cannot be traced.54 Evidently, the treasurers’ accounts, like the parliamentary register and register of the lords of council and session, cannot offer us a complete picture. Potentially James’s pursemaster paid for some of these messengers, certainly, the one extant pursemaster’s account shows this official too paid messengers for both delivering news to the King and sending royal orders.55 Moreover, dating an event from the treasurer’s accounts is not simple: this was a record of payments, not when the events to which the payments related actually took place. For example, a payment to a crown messenger in 1532 to deliver letters from Falkland to elsewhere was made only after the court had left Falkland: evidently, this messenger was paid on his return, not when the letters were despatched.56 The time lag between the penning of a letter, its arrival with its intended recipient and the payment for services rendered in its delivery makes information gleaned from the treasurer’s accounts regarding dates approximate rather than absolute.57 Despite the need to treat the incomplete extant sources with caution, it is clear that James V’s regime consulted in a wider range of meetings from council to parliament with, in between, a wide variety of gatherings almost 54  For this convention: NRS CS5/42 ff.185–190; R.  K. Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, SHR 20 (1923), pp.  232–249 at p.  103. Had the treasurer paid messengers this would have been noted in NRS E21/24, covering October 1530– September 1531. 55  A.  L. Murray (ed.), ‘Pursemaster’s Accounts’, Scottish History Society Miscellany X (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1965), p. 29. 56  Payment was delivered on 13 October, the court left Falkland on 6 October. NRS E21/26 f. 49v. Andrea Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture at the Court of King James V, 1528–1542’ (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1997), p.  402. Thomas’s text is published as Princelie Majestie, but the appendix detailing the movement of the royal household is available only in the PhD. 57  Although these records are published in their entirety, some volumes in this series contain significant inaccuracies in transcription. Again, therefore, consulting the manuscript is vital.

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all of which could be described as ‘conventions’ of one type or another. Perhaps counter-intuitively, however, these problems for the historian in identifying and understanding conventions may be the very reasons which made them helpful to a busy and ambitious early sixteenth-century regime. Taken cumulatively, parliament and the whole range of conventions offered a variety of fora from which monarch and council could select the most appropriate to meet their needs. As the clear procedures which existed for parliament and the courts show, when the Scots wanted tightly defined institutional systems, they created them and, generally speaking, they worked. This concomitantly suggests that on other occasions when no such systems were put in place, this was because a lack of tight restrictions offered some other form of advantage. This mixture of both closely defined and more flexible meetings provided an ability to respond to a range of circumstances. It also means that much of this book does not deal in absolutes—notably, there is no one-size-fits-all definition of a convention. The plethora of meetings of various sizes means that James’s regime was constantly working with a large cross-section of the polity from amongst which it efficiently selected groups of people based on interest and expertise with whom to consult on specific issues. Such consistent small-group consultation alongside both a regular council and intermittent parliaments and conventions extends Cameron’s argument that James’s nobles were largely willing to work with their monarch by suggesting that they joined the other estates to do so in a range of institutions. Parliaments and conventions played a significant part in James’s ability to wage war, conduct treason trials, and offered counsel on a range of weighty matters. Accordingly, as the challenges the regime was facing changed so too did its use of these meetings: in particular, when military activities and matrimonial negotiations declined, so too did the use of conventions to plan for war, or parliament as a source of cash to fund the hunt for a bride. Taken together, the following chapters show how institutions adapted to different circumstances in the personal rule. Consultation was carefully managed by James’s regime—not because the King sought to avoid it, but, rather, because it was understood to be vitally important to gather the appropriate opinions and share the right information with the right people, at the right time. Council, conventions of all kinds, and parliament, as well as informal relationships and a lively court, functioned together to make this possible. It is now time to see how this worked in practice.

CHAPTER 2

Council and Conventions

Between 7 and 10 November 1530, both archbishops; three bishops; four other clerics; lords Erskine, Ruthven and Oliphant; and six professional administrators met in Perth.1 The earl of Montrose joined them for one day, on 9 November. This was not, however, simply a relaxing jaunt up the Tay: Thomas Erskine, James’s secretary, had recently returned from France and brought with him news of potential marriage negotiations between James and Catherine de Medici, duchess of Urbino. The matter of James’s future wife was clearly of the highest importance, and the group decided that negotiations were best delegated to James’s former regent and heir apparent, John Stuart, duke of Albany, who was Catherine de Medici’s maternal uncle by marriage. Albany was to act as a go-between with Pope Clement VII, head of Catherine’s paternal kin-group, who had also written to James on the subject of the commonweal of Christendom. Considering an ‘article’ on the subject of the Isles—an area of the Stewart realm whose control was perennially problematic—they concluded that James should ‘pass apon thame [the Hebrides] in propir persoun’ in April the next year accompanied by the temporal lords and barons, whilst ‘the prelatis and burrowis that remanyis at hame pay ane certane contributioun

1  NRS CS5/41 f.118r-121v; ADCP, pp.  342–3; R.  K. Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, SHR 20 (1923), pp. 98–115 at p. 103.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4_2

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to the furnissing of the kingis grace thairto’.2 Despite an impressively productive few days, the group of seventeen felt that further consultation was required. Just before the group dispersed, a parliament was summoned to meet in Edinburgh on 4 May ‘for certane materis’, whilst ‘ane generale conventioun of all the lords’ was summoned to consider ‘certane greit matteris to be auisit & consalit’ on 8 January.3 In the end, the convention would make further provisions for a voyage to the Isles which never took place, meanwhile, although treason cases were summoned to be heard in parliament, negotiations outwith either parliament or convention meant that none of these resulted in a conviction. The November 1530 meeting is a good place to start this chapter because it illustrates a number of the characteristics of conventions evident throughout the personal rule. First, the subject matter with which the November 1530 convention dealt was entirely typical: war, in this case a military campaign against the Isles, and foreign relations, in this case, the royal marriage. Second, this meeting was part of a series—whilst it took some decisions, others were deferred to two larger future meetings. Decisions surrounding, for instance, a campaign, were taken, refined and implemented over multiple gatherings. Parliament, conventions of different sizes and the council all worked together as part of the process whereby this occurred. In our November 1530 example, the convention took a broad decision surrounding the necessity of a voyage to the Isles, but summoned a larger convention to make further provisions and a parliament to deal with the anticipated judicial aftermath. Third, James’s absence from the sederunt, despite the fact he was in the town where the convention was held, is striking. Sederunt lists were not always accurate; certainly James’s mother was occasionally left off these during her regency, but it seems unlikely that if the King participated in decision making only the lords would receive credit.4 As we shall see, it is very hard indeed to find evidence of James attending many conventions at all, and this fits into a broader picture of his absence from council and meetings of the lords of the articles. James V, it seems, was not a meetings man, but this pattern prompts questions about how he was appraised of the discussions held in his absence, as well as raising important comparisons with his successors. Finally, this convention imposed a tax on the third estate even though no  NRS CS5/41 f.118v; ADCP, p. 342.  NRS CS5/41 f.121v; ADCP, p. 343. 4  Amy Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge, 2015), p. 72. 2 3

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burgh representatives had been summoned. Nevertheless, several burgesses, namely the comptroller, Robert Barton, and the future clerk register, James Foulis, were present in their capacity as members of the council. The presence of burgesses in such prominent roles, even if only from Edinburgh, marks a sharp point of contrast with the ‘minor posts’ they had occupied in the relatively recent past.5 The prominent role of burgess councillors attending this and other conventions cannot be construed as equivalent to summons being issued to representatives from all or even some of the burghs—conventions which included burgess councillors were not equivalent to meetings of the three estates. However, the presence of Edinburgh men, albeit wearing different hats, would have facilitated contact with the third estate and allowed the regime to test the waters of the capital’s opinion. The November 1530 meeting is also a good place to start because it exposes some of the methodological and conceptual difficulties which need to be addressed in a study of conventions in James’s personal rule, and some of the historiographical assumptions which require interrogation. Conventions in this period are a tricky subject because, firstly, no contemporary definition exists. Secondly, the Scots employed a range of terms to describe meetings and it is not immediately clear how they related to each other, to the terms employed in the late fifteenth and late sixteenth centuries, or to the names chosen by historians to describe these meetings at various times—terminology will therefore be an important recurring theme throughout this chapter. In the case of November 1530, there is no hint this meeting was special in the register of the lords of council and session, where it was recorded. Yet, the payments for messengers charged with issuing invitations refer to the meeting as a ‘convention’.6 On this basis, it was included in the one serious study of conventions in James’s personal rule to date, by R.  K. Hannay.7 Hannay considered that two meetings were held in quick succession at this juncture since two sets of summons were issued—the first was held ‘at the secretatis first hamecummyng’ summons for which were issued on 1 October and another to be held ‘in Sanct Johnstoun’ summoned on 31 October. However, since the secretary’s mission was discussed in detail on 9 November in Perth—the 5  Roland Tanner, ‘The Lords of the Articles before 1540: a reassessment’, Scottish Historical Review 79 (2000), pp. 189–212 at p. 198. 6  NRS E21/24 f.36r. 7  Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, p. 103.

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meeting for which the 31 October summons was issued—and there is no record of earlier discussions of his mission, it is unclear if we are indeed looking at two meetings or one. Since the 9 November meeting was, as we shall see, relatively small for a convention, if there had been an earlier meeting to plan for this, it must have been very exclusive indeed. Our problems with establishing the order of events are exacerbated since Albany’s commission to negotiate for Catherine’s marriage and participate in discussions at Rome regarding recent incursions in Hungary by the Turks—in other words, the documents apparently arising from the convention—are dated 2 November, a week before the convention discussed this on 9 November.8 There are two possibilities to explain this. It could have arisen as a result of a record-keeping error: either the letters were misdated when copied into the royal letter book in which they survive or the council register recorded the meeting on the wrong date. Alternatively, it is possible that the ‘convention of the lords at the secretaries first hamecummyng’ made a decision and began the paperwork on 2 November, for approval by the ‘convention of the lordis in Sanct Johnestoun’ on 9 November.9 Regardless of the actual order of events, this illustrates the significant difficulties in pinning down when exactly things happened.10 The size and composition of the meeting also raises important questions. The group comprised just shy of twenty men, all of whom were regular councillors, this, combined with the fact its activities were recorded in the council register, fits neatly with Hannay’s broader assessment that conventions were ‘extensions of the standing or privy council in various degrees’.11 This statement raises two points about the relationship between conventions and council. The first is constitutional: conventions derived their authority from the council. Throughout this book, we will see instructions issued by conventions described as coming ‘from the council’. Indeed, in 1529, a royal letter making an appointment to the council explained that the new appointee would ‘be ane of oure cunsale and haue place thairof in oure sessioune chekkir general counsale and all uthir tymis as accords’.12 General council, another term for a convention, was here  LJV, pp. 181–183.  NRS E21/24 f.36r. 10  For this convention: NRS CS5/41 f.119r. The only obvious misordering in the register in this portion is f. 120r when details of a private legal matter heard on 31 October in Stirling are inserted in the midst of materials dated from the convention in Perth. ADCP, pp. 342–3. 11  Hannay, ‘General Council and Conventions of Estates’, p. 102. 12  NRS CS5/39 f.155r; ADCP, p. 307. 8 9

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classed with the session and exchequer as groups which ultimately derived their authority from the council. The fact conventions derived their authority from the council of course meant that councillors were entitled to attend. However, this raises another, practical, concern: the issue of attendance. Even though councillors often attended in large numbers they did not necessarily dominate attendance at a convention since these meetings could sometimes match a parliament in size. This means that despite the close connections between convention and council, in terms of overlapping personnel, the roots of their authority and shared record keeping, the largest of James’s conventions cannot be characterised as their namesakes later in the century were, as comprising ‘the privy council augmented by whoever happened to be at court, or by one or two magnates who had been specially summoned’.13 They were varied beasts and, at their largest, were carefully planned national-sized gatherings. Indeed, whilst the November 1530 convention was a slightly augmented regular council in terms of size, the convention it summoned for the following January was attended by thirty-five, the size of a small parliament. Both of these conventions are listed, alongside parliaments, other conventions and conventions of the burghs in table A1, whilst attendance at conventions is broken down by social group and individuals in tables A2 and A3, all of which appear in Appendix A. The November 1530 convention summoned the January 1531 convention on fifty-five days’ notice. This points to another area where previous claims about conventions require revisiting. To date, explanations of the ways in which conventions were useful to government have laid significant emphasis on the fact conventions were flexible and did not share the parliamentary minimum summons period of forty days.14 In James’s personal rule, some conventions were indeed summoned at short notice but others were carefully planned far in advance—these were actively chosen instead of a parliament, and were not a faut de mieux second-choice substitute convenient for their flexibility. Observing that conventions were 13  Alan R. MacDonald, ‘Consultation and Consent Under James VI’, Historical Journal 54 (2011), pp. 287–306 at p. 289. 14  Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, pp. 109–110; R. K. Hannay, ‘On “parliament” and “general council”’ SHR 18 (1921), pp.  157–70 at p.  166; Norman Macdougall, ‘The Estates in Eclipse? Politics and Parliaments in the Reign of James IV’ in Keith M. Brown and Roland J. Tanner (eds), Parliament and Politics in Scotland: 1235–1560 (Edinburgh, 2004), pp. 145–159 at 156–8; Irene O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Glasgow, 1980), p. 159.

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held on both short and long notice and might themselves summon parliaments allows us to explore the relationship between these different sorts of bodies and their roles in the Scottish polity whilst sidestepping outmoded, and now overturned, understandings of the two bodies as ‘rivals’. In exploring these relationships, we should not expect them to be set in stone since the practice and structure of Scottish government changed substantially between the late fifteenth and late sixteenth century. Even so the fulcrum on which it turned was always the council. The first section of this chapter briefly explores the changes to the royal council in this period and reminds us of its central role in government before turning to the mysterious committee of ‘lords of the articles and council’ whose activities can be found in the records of both parliament and council. Despite recent scholarship emphasising the independence of the committee of the articles from the crown in other chronological contexts, the existence of this group affirms that during the 1530s, the committee of the articles could on occasion closely resemble the council. This meant that parliament offered a space for secret as well as open discussions. Having shown that the council could shape shift and manifest itself in the committee of the articles in parliament, we move on to see the central role it occupied in conventions. The middle section of this chapter therefore asks, given Hannay’s observations about the close relationship between council and convention, how we might identify conventions as distinct from a normal council meeting. Two methods of delineation emerge—nomenclature and size in comparison to other types of meetings. These two sections provide the basis for the third and final portion of the chapter which moves on to identify when conventions occurred and, briefly, why they were summoned—building on Macdougall’s observation that the great councils of James IV were summoned to deal with a ‘specific business’ or ‘affairs of state’ it becomes apparent that this was also true of the variously named conventions of the 1530s.15 Taking both these ‘old’ and ‘new’ conventions together it is clear that conventions were held very frequently in the early years of the personal rule, especially during the Anglo-Scottish war of 1532–3, but evidence for them declines after that. There is not sufficient evidence to offer a definitive explanation for this, but possible reasons include a decline in the activities for which conventions were needed in the early years of the personal rule, changes to the structure of the council and changes in record-keeping practices. Whilst providing a final answer on  Macdougall, James IV, p. 191.

15

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this question is impossible, it is amply clear that consultative processes were taken very seriously in the Scotland of James V and that conventions, both in their form of augmented council gatherings and in their other manifestation as national-sized gatherings, were a central component of government. Even so, James himself was only very rarely in attendance at such meetings, and the final section of the chapter considers why this was the case. James’s absence in itself points to an important distinction between the process of obtaining counsel, which emphasised listening to diverse voices, and the practicalities of converting this into governing, which required a single decision and a unified approach to its implementation. It also hints at the importance which James’s closest councillors must have assumed as they facilitated contact between the monarch and the range of consultative fora which they coordinated.

Lords of Council and of the Articles The giving and receiving of counsel was a central facet of political life in numerous early modern European polities and Scotland was no exception. Nobles were understood to be possessed of a natural right to counsel their monarchs and they, in their turn, took counsel on how to exercise their lordship well.16 For example, James’s half-brother Moray requested his own council of four or six ‘wyse men and of experience in weir’ to advise on the military campaign against England when he took on the position of lieutenant in January 1533.17 To this, the King’s council (on which Moray himself sat) readily acquiesced, allowing Moray to choose four or five men from each quarter of Scotland to serve in succession, to whom the King would make additions. Whilst defined groups were an important way of giving and receiving counsel, this activity did not automatically necessitate an institutional framework. John Mair and Hector Boece proffered their Latin histories as a source of exemplar to James, Bellenden’s translation of Boece was likewise intended to edify and inform, and Sir David Lindsay’s poetry mingled humour with clear directions on the desirability (or otherwise) of various monarchical behaviours, as well as

16  For an example of a noble taking counsel, J. E. A. Dawson, The Politics of Religion in the age of Mary, Queen of Scots (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 64–5, 104. 17  NRS CS6/2 f.38r.

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reflecting on the correct comportment for a counsellor.18 These performed and printed works were widely shared addresses to the monarch—when it came to in-person advice-giving, however, counsel was by its nature a secret activity, designed to aid the monarch in decision making, which might take place within or outwith the institution of a council.19 James’s regime appears to have got the message—the need to consult with the magnates served as a handy excuse to delay responding to the papacy on a request for contributions to a crusade, conciliar anxiety was cited as a reason for James declining Henry VIII’s invitation to visit him at York, and even the matter of the Scottish staple port might be deferred until ‘the magnates and those interested’ had been consulted.20 On all these occasions, delay or avoidance offered James clear political advantages, but the fact this excuse was deployed at least shows the regime talked the talk. The fact the excuse was considered believable suggests it also walked the walk. In the context of a broader study of ideas surrounding counsel in the early sixteenth century, Roger Mason has observed how striking it is that during the reigns of James IV and James V, a broad agreement that counsel was important did not lead to the development of a constitutional model with a clearly delineated built-in place for counsel—even when contemporaries were faced with the ‘aggressively predatory kingship’ of these two monarchs.21 This failure to develop notions of the importance of counsel into the basis of system for controlling Kings, Mason further suggests, was not only a mark of contrast with the later sixteenth century, but actually a sign that the existing system was working well. Because James IV and James V understood their duty to take counsel, utilising both a relatively flexible institutional context and advice giving outwith institutions, 18  J.  H. Burns, True Law of Kingship: concepts of monarchy in early modern Scotland (Oxford, 1996), pp. 54–92; A. A. MacDonald, ‘William Stewart and the Court Poetry of the reign of James V’ in Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart Style: essays on the court of James V (East Linton, 1996), pp. 179–100 at pp. 184–192; Janet Hadley Williams, ‘David Lindsay and the Making of King James V’, in Stewart Style, pp. 201–226; Carol Edington, Court and culture in renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (Amherst (MA), 1994). 19  Claire Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority in later fifteenth-century Scotland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews, 2015), pp.  91–5; Roger Mason, Kingship and the Commonweal (East Linton, 1998), pp. 15–19. 20  LJV pp. 212, 152. Blakeway, ‘Privy Council of James V’, p. 36. 21  Roger Mason, ‘Beyond the Declaration of Arbroath: kingship, counsel and consent in late medieval and early modern Scotland’, in Stephen Boardman and Julian Goodare (eds), Kings, lords and men in Scotland and Britain, 1300–1625: essays in honour of Jenny Wormald (Edinburgh, 2014), pp. 265–282 at 278–9.

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father and son consulted their way to contentment. Such (literally) off-­ the-­record counsel is notoriously tricky to recover, yet hints and gaps in institutional records allow us to half-glimpse some of the conversations which must have taken place outwith minuted meetings.22 The summons to small groups or individuals which litter the treasurers’ accounts can reveal requests for ad hoc advice just as they help expose conventions. For example, a letter delivered to Moray in January 1534 summoned him ‘to avyse apon the ambassatoris depesche’, and it is possible that in cases where no reason for a summons was given, such as the three bishops summoned in August that year, that an advisory purpose was also intended.23 Small meetings between James and an individual or small groups would have offered the advantages of swift, secret and specialised counsel. Much historiographical emphasis has, rightly, been placed on the significance of such extra-institutional counsel—especially in an English context as part of a broader revisiting of the central place accorded to the privy council in G. R. Elton’s ‘Tudor Revolution in Government’ thesis—and the focus on institutions in this book is in no way an attempt to sideline the important counsel which James must have received as he hunted or hawked, gambled or dined.24 Nevertheless, the royal council was consistently available to offer advice, and this body changed significantly during the course of the sixteenth century. Fifteenth-century monarchs were equipped with relatively small ‘daily’ councils responsible largely for patronage and administration which constituted the ‘core’ of a larger body which met more occasionally. Chalmers shows this larger body was known as a ‘secret council’, whose membership was a slightly slimmed-down version of the ‘great council’ of all tenants in chief and had taken an oath to give true counsel. This secret council met only at the King’s specific command and hardly ever, if at all, 22  For the difficulties of extra-institutional counsel: Jacqueline Rose, ‘The Problem of Political Counsel in Medieval and Early Modern England and Scotland’ in Jacqueline Rose (ed.), The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286–1707 (Oxford, 2016), pp. 2, 9–10. 23  TA 6, pp. 219, 223; NRS E21/28 ff. 53v, 55v. 24  The following is a small sample of a large literature: Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, The Tudor revolution in government: administrative changes in the reign of Henry VIII (Cambridge: 1953); Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, ‘Tudor government: the points of contact, 2: The Council’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 25. (1975) 195–211; DeLloyd J. Guth and J. W. McKenna (eds), Tudor rule and revolution; essays for G.R. Elton from his American friends (Cambridge, 1982); Christopher Coleman and David Starkey (eds), Revolution reassessed: revisions in the history of Tudor government and administration (Oxford, 1986).

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as a whole group.25 Whilst Chalmers saw that the daily council, whose membership included royal officers, might offer some advice, he considered that this was largely administrative in nature as opposed to political.26 More recently, Claire Hawes has offered an important corrective and shown that the daily councillors are also likely to have offered political advice.27 Indeed, given that offering counsel was an activity best undertaken away from prying eyes and listening ears, even, perhaps, on an individual basis, daily councillors were well placed to offer it.28 Certainly, by Mary’s personal rule, the group met regularly, embraced its advisory role and, indeed, developed more agency to act on its own.29 Hawes’s comments allow for greater continuity between the Marian council and its predecessors. James V’s personal rule was an important stage on this journey of conciliar development. In 1532, the college of justice was endowed. Although the details of this and its implications for various judicial and political developments have long provoked debate, for our present purposes what matters is the consensus surrounding the changes to the council which it entailed.30 The foundation of the college of justice effectively segregated the council’s judicial business from its other duties. Thereafter, individuals outwith the specifically selected group of legally qualified clerics and lay lawyers were debarred from the council’s judicial sessions.31 Although its origins lay in the council’s judicial sessions, the court of session was henceforth separate and enjoyed a jurisdiction as Scotland’s supreme central civil court which it exercised as distinct from the council.32 At least at first, however, the two bodies continued to share a register. Indeed, the changes to the session in May 1532 were not even marked by a new book—as Athol Murray has shown, record keeping continued uninterrupted in the same volume, and the current archival organisation was created as a result

25  T.  M. Chalmers, ‘The King’s Council, Patronage and the Governance of Scotland, 1460–1513’ (unpublished PhD, Aberdeen, 1982), pp. 18, 90–1. 26  Chalmers, ‘King’s Council’, pp. 90–2. 27  Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority’, p. 114. 28  Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority’, pp. 94–95. 29  Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 131–2. 30  For a summary of these debates see: A. M. Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland: the Origins of a Civil Court (Leiden, 2009), pp. 94–105. 31  Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland, pp. 131–4. 32  Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland, chapters 5–7.

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of nineteenth-century interventions.33 Nevertheless, what has not been sufficiently appreciated to date is the way in which types of business could be distinguished within the same register—both before and after the foundation of the college of justice. During the early years of the personal rule, the non-judicial business in the council register often appears in a different hand, with the entries further demarcated by subtle differences in layout. More space was taken by scribes, with a clearer, less squashed layout on the page.34 Sometimes, such entries are identified in the left-hand margin by a small circle: these may have been for speedy identification or provide evidence of a more ambitious type of administrative project which required their extraction and copying out.35 Such alterations in layout suggest either different clerks associated with the entries, or a deliberate attempt to distinguish types of activities from each other, or both. Either way, this is more evidence for the distinctive identities held by each portion of the council. The picture of the council which the session left behind is murkier but nevertheless one of change. At the start of James V’s personal rule, a series of attempts were made to provide the King with a group of councillors to accompany him on a personal basis and these appear to have begun as an attempt to manage the transition from the Douglas regime to James’s own rule.36 Between 1532 and 1534, there is no evidence for conciliar reorganisation, but in 1535, parliament passed an act creating a council for the commonweal. The term commonweal had, as Mason has shown, multiple layers of meaning in 1530s Scotland.37 It appeared with frequency in the translation of Hector Boece’s history which James V had commissioned from John Bellenden amongst other literature of the period, and was used to mean either the welfare of a community under discussion or that 33  Athol Murray, ‘Introduction’ to Alma B. Calderwood (ed.), Acts of the Lords of Council, 1501–1503, iii, (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. xiii-xv. See also: Margaret D. Young, ‘The age of the Deputy Clerk Register, 1806–1928’, SHR 53 (1974), pp. 157–93 at pp. 162–6. 34  For a change of layout on the same date see NRS CS6/1 ff. 117v–118r. 35  Amy Blakeway, ‘Reassessing the Scottish Parliamentary Records, 1528–1548: manuscript, print, bureaucracy and royal authority’, Parliamentary History 40 (2021), pp. 417–442 at p. 441. 36  Blakeway, ‘Privy Council of James V’, pp. 30–2. 37  Mason, ‘Beyond the Declaration of Arbroath’, pp. 275–6; Roger A. Mason, Kingship and the Commonweal: Political Thought in Renaissance and Reformation Scotland (East Linton, 1998), chapters 2–3. For this in an English context see: P.  Withington et  al., ‘Commonwealth: the social, cultural, and conceptual contexts of an early modern keyword’, Historical Journal 54: 3 (2011) pp. 659–87.

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c­ ommunity itself.38 In Bellenden’s translation ‘commonweal’ and ‘imperial’ appeared alongside each other: this fact draws our attention to the point that, as in the fifteenth century, notions of the common good emerged in tandem with claims to enhanced royal authority.39 The exact remit envisaged for this council is unclear, but perhaps surprisingly in 1536, the rebels participating in the English Pilgrimage of Grace nearly echoed the language when they called for ‘a [council] be had for the cummunwelthe’.40 The Pilgrims clearly conceptualised their council for the commonwealth as a body which would give advice for the good of the country and its people staffed by noble-born councillors who would value ‘the communwelth abuffe their princes lo[ve]’. This, then, was a rejection of the small group of (low-born) councillors which had coalesced about Henry VIII and, the Pilgrims perceived, usurped the places of the ancient nobility. Scotland, however, was not their inspiration, since they explained their point of comparison was ‘the cunsell off Parys in France’, a body which likened itself to the Roman senate and as such saw itself as a check on crown power.41 It seems unlikely that comparable concerns to those of the Pilgrims lay behind the Scottish council for the commonwealth, and a more plausible interpretation is that the council was set up to deal with concerns relating to the commonwealth—in other words, either to Scotland as a country or to the common good of the people who inhabited it.42 Its activities were recorded in its own, no longer extant, register.43 The existence of this register suggests that, like the session, the

38  Ryoko Harikae, ‘Kingship and Imperial Ideas in the Chronicles of Scotland’, in Janet Hadley Williams and J. Derrick McClure (eds), Fresche fontanis: studies in the culture of medieval and early modern Scotland (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2013), pp. 217–29. 39  Ibid.; Ryoko Harikae, ‘Daunting the isles, borders, and highlands: Imperial kingship in John Bellenden’s Chronicles of Scotland and the Mar Lodge translation’, in Joanna Martin and Emily Wingfield (eds), Premodern Scotland: Literature and Governance 1420–1587 (Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 159–70; Hawes, ‘Community and public authority in later fifteenth-century Scotland’, p. 136. 40  L&P XI no. 1244; John Guy, ‘The rhetoric of counsel in early modern England’, in Dale Hoak (ed.), Tudor political culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 292–310 at p. 297. 41  John Guy, ‘The King’s Council and Political Participation’ in Alistair Fox and John Guy, Reassessing the Henrician Age (Oxford, 1986), pp. 121–47 at p. 138. 42  Mason, ‘Beyond the Declaration of Arbroath’, pp. 275–6. 43  LJV, p. 233; Blakeway, ‘Reassessing’, p. 440.

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advisory/administrative council was developing over this period, but its loss means that the contours of this change remain obscure. During the very early years of the personal rule, a series of lists outlined who was to sit upon various iterations of the secret council, but no such provisions were made to accompany the parliamentary act of 1535. This distinction might point to the increasing personal authority of the King as he grew older and more established, equally, it is possible that James made his appointments to this council in consultation with the men who advised him to create it. If their names were noted anywhere, the record which is most likely to have been employed is the now lost secret council register. For comparison, the latest dated extant secret council list, dating from June 1531, appointed five bishops and two abbots, one earl, three lords and ten individuals without a major ecclesiastical or lay title but who had accrued either one of the crown offices or a role as a legal expert.44 Whilst all of these men did appear regularly on council sederunts, there are some surprising omissions—notably William Graham, earl of Montrose. Even so, this gives us a rough sense of what James’s secret council was like. The prominence of secular men, whether lairds or burgesses who may have become lairds, fits neatly into Roger Mason’s broader observations surrounding the ‘laicisation’ of culture, the law, and administrative activities in this period.45 Mason has already shown how the educational pathways which these men followed facilitated the development of a robust sense of Imperium in Scotland in this period and has pointed to the influence of the secretary, Sir Thomas Erskine, on the specific development of the college of justice project. Sir James Foulis of Colinton’s career offers some parallels in another sphere—as clerk register Foulis worked under Erskine in maintaining the crown’s records. However, this extended to developing those records—including responsibility for the new secret council register, compiling loose diplomatic correspondence into letterbooks and preparing the printed edition of parliamentary acts.46 Foulis also delivered letters on James’s behalf to the council and spoke for him in parliament.47 Himself a burgess, he acted as James’s envoy to Edinburgh burgh council.48 These services rendered are shadowed in the registers of the seals by grants to  NRS CS5/42 f.185v.  Mason, Kingship and the Commonweal, pp. 104–38. 46  Blakeway, ‘Reassessing’, pp. 440–1. 47  NRS CS5/42 f.4v; RPS, 1540/12/27. Date accessed: 21 August 2020. 48  Edin. Recs. II, p. 109. 44 45

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himself and his wife, Katherine Broun, gradually building up a landed estate to pass on to their son Adam, and provide for James’s illegitimate daughters, Agnes and Alison, whose mother is unknown, but for whom he purchased letters of legitimacy.49 Foulis’s lands of Colinton were, like those of Oxgangs acquired by his colleague Nichol Crawford, the justice clerk, former parts of the barony of Redhall located just to the south-west of Edinburgh.50 The remainder of this was purchased by James’s lord advocate, Adam Otterburn, who was equally enmeshed in the capital’s politics and served as its provost.51 Otterburn also undertook diplomatic work and, like Foulis, was an acclaimed Latin poet, working with the latter and Sir David Lindsay, Lyon herald, on the welcome speech for Marie de Guise.52 James relied on Erskine, Foulis, Otterburn and the other men like them on the council, and this points to a political and administrative influence for layfolk in general and Edinburgh lawyers in particular which extended beyond the specific remit of the college of justice project. Work on the role of the secretary in English households has shown how the secretary’s role in dealing with secrets and offering counsel as his master’s ‘trusted advisor and companion’ positioned him outside the usual social hierarchy.53 Serving on the council, speaking for the monarch in council or in parliament, or delivering his letters containing his will, may well have performed a similar feat for those burgesses appointed as lords of council. The prominence of such lay administrators who were not of noble birth brings to mind debates in other European contexts surrounding the rise of ‘new men’, whose presence in the council and administration of James’s English grandfather, Henry VII, sparked grumbling that the old nobility were losing place to rapacious upstarts serving an equally greedy King. Indeed, Foulis’s legal training and humanistic accomplishments, for instance, meant that he brought exactly the two types of learning to the council

49  RSS II, 87, 90, 856, 1047, 1078, 1475, 1618, 1779, 2559, 2872, 2946, 2986, 3429, 3552. Some of these lands were subject to dispute: NRS CS6/13 f. 160v-161r. 50  John A. Inglis, Sir Adam Otterburn of Redhall, King’s Advocate, 1524–1538 (Glasgow, 1935), p. 33. 51  Inglis, Sir Adam Otterburn, pp. 33, 35, 40–2. 52  Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland, p. 36. 53  Arnold Hunt, ‘The Early Modern Secretary and the Early Modern Archive’, in Kate Peters, Alexandra Walsham and Liesbeth Corens (eds), Archives and Information in the Early Modern World (London, 2018), pp. 105–131 at p. 111.

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which were prized amongst Henry VII’s ‘new’ administrators.54 Recent research on Henry’s court has established that important though these non-noble administrators were they did not supplant, but rather supplemented, the military services provided by great magnates and elevated county gentry alike.55 This bears close comparison with the trust James placed in his half-brother, Moray, and the steady presence of Montrose and John, lord Erskine, on his council alongside the secretary, advocate and clerk register. We shall go on to see that both senior nobles and favoured administrators enjoyed access to James outwith as well as through the council. James’s councillors, of course, had lives outside the council chamber and usually attended parliament en masse—the earls, bishops and abbots were invited in their own right, others might attend as the burgh representative for Edinburgh or, when they did not fit in anywhere else, officials simply appeared in their own section of the sederunt.56 Lindsay’s Bishop, Man of Arms and Burgess Man had, after all, been joined by Experience when they appeared in Linlithgow Great Hall in 1540—whilst this character exemplified the importance of custom and established practice in guiding decision making, he also reflected a reality that councillors without a noble title, ecclesiastical appointment, or burgh provostship, attended parliament to provide exactly these qualities.57 Beyond this, however, throughout the personal rule, we occasionally catch sight of a group described as ‘the lords of articles and council’, or variants upon this phrase, in the registers of both the council and of parliament. Despite the flexible 54  John Watts, ‘New Men, New Learning and New Monarchy: Personnel and Policy in Royal Government 1461–1529’, in Benjamin Thompson and John Watts (eds),  Political society in later medieval England: a festschrift for Christine Carpenter (Martlesham, 2015), pp. 199–228 at pp. 201–2, 214–22. 55  Steven Gunn, ‘“New Men” and “New Monarchy in England, 1485–1524”’ in Robert Stein (ed.), Powerbrokers in the late Middle Ages: the Burgundian Low Countries in a European context = Les courtiers du pouvoir au Bas Moyen-Âge: les Pays-Bas bourguignons dans un contexte européen (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 153–63. 56  RPS, 1540/12/6, 52. Date accessed: 28 July 2021. 57  For an exploration of the character of ‘Experience’ in Lindsay’s other work which may provide clues to the 1540 character see: Katherine A. McClune, ‘Depictions of Experience in the Three Older Scots Poems’, in Kevin J. McGinley and Nicola Royan (eds), The apparelling of truth: literature and literary culture in the reign of James VI (Newcastle, 2010), pp. 48–61; Juanita Feros Ruys, ‘Experience and the Courteour: Reading Epistemological Revolution in a Sixteenth-Century Text’, in  Hadley Williams and McClure (eds), Fresche fontanis, pp. 249–69.

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terminology which prevailed in this period, the emergence of such an apparently hybrid group requires investigation in the context of recent historiographical reassessment of the lords of the articles and their role in parliament. The lords of the articles made up one of the most important committees of the late medieval parliament, tasked with responsibility of receiving suggestions for new laws, known as articles, drafting these into potential statutes and presenting them to parliament for a vote. Traditionally, the lords of the articles were understood as a mechanism by which the crown was able to effectively place a stranglehold over parliament. For Robert Rait, ‘the revival of General Council…under the name of Convention’ in the minority of James V ‘brought Secret Council, General Council, and Lords of the Articles into an association so close that it is often difficult to distinguish between their activities’.58 By contrast, considering the late medieval committee Roland Tanner has recently argued that even though councillors might dominate its membership, this did not preclude it maintaining independence from the crown. Nevertheless, Tanner acknowledged a shift during the reign of James V, when the committee seems to have become more closely aligned with the regime, citing in particular the 1535 session when plenary power was delegated to the lords of the articles.59 This was highly unusual, although parliament had delegated power to groups to act on its behalf during the fifteenth century, and the experiment of a committee who could determine acts without reporting to the whole sederunt had also been made in 1424–6.60 Tanner focused on the personnel of the committee, arguing that we need to think carefully about who was elected—high status members could serve to give it independence because they were better placed to challenge the crown. This focus on membership is vital; however, it is also important to think about who attended each particular meeting and what these meetings actually did. Shifting our focus away from membership towards attendance and activity helps shows that the ‘lords of the articles and council’ described a sub-­ group comprising the councillors who had been elected as lords of the articles meeting separately to the whole committee and joined by other  Rait, Parliaments of Scotland, p. 363.  Roland Tanner, ‘The Lords of the Articles before 1540: a reassessment’, SHR 79 (2008), pp. 189–212 at p. 211. 60  Tanner, ‘Lords of the Articles’, pp. 192–4; Roland Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: politics and the three estates, 1424–1488 (East Linton, 2001), p. 221. 58 59

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councillors. In other words, like any group in early sixteenth-century Scotland, attendance at the committee of the articles varied and the crown could make extra appointments. This gave the group considerable flexibility in membership. This hybrid body did not emerge during the personal rule—we also meet it in the final years of James’s minority and it is worth going through this example first. 17 July 1525 was a busy day: governmental activity is recorded in both the council and parliamentary registers. Turning first to the parliamentary record we find the unambiguous Latin ‘Sederunt domini electi ad articulos’ immediately followed by the equally clear vernacular explanation that ‘the lords of the secret council’ were intervening in the details of a respite for the earl of Arran, both phrases apparently referring to the same group.61 Meanwhile, in the council register for the same date, we find lords ‘electi ad articulos’ apparently dispensing judgements as ‘lordis of counsale’.62 Citing only the council material, Athol Murray has argued that this example shows that, like appointments to the exchequer, secret council or the session, when the lords of the articles were appointed, they ‘were given special powers and responsibilities without prejudice to those already incumbent on them as lords of council’.63 Murray is clearly correct that taking on the temporary role of being a lord of the articles would not somehow occlude the ongoing powers an individual assumed as a lord of council. However, not all lords of the articles were councillors, in 1525, for instance, four of the burgh commissioners elected to the articles were certainly not normal councillors (although the other four lords elected from amongst the third estate were).64 Although the 17 July sederunts did not name those who attended, the ‘dominorum secreti consilii et articulos’ who gathered the following day excluded the four burgesses elected to the articles who were not regular councillors and included councillors who were not appointed to the articles.65 The phrase was describing two types of lords, not a group who all happened on that date to be wearing multiple hats.

 RPS, 1525/7/23. Date accessed: 25 August 2018.  NRS CS5/35 f.95v-96r; ADCP, p. 225. 63  Athol Murray, ‘Exchequer, Council and Session 1513–42’, in Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart Style 1513–1542: Essays on the Court of James V (East Linton, 1996), pp. 97–117 at p. 105. 64  RPS, 1525/7/4. Date accessed: 25 August 2018. 65  NRS CS5/35 f.96v. 61 62

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Exactly the same type of group, with the same type of record-keeping split across council and parliamentary register, emerged in February 1541. On 17 February, the activities of the lords ‘electi ad articulos et sessionis’ and ‘the lordis of articulis counisale and of sesioun’ appear in the council register.66 Recording this term was evidently important since the entry was originally headed ‘sederunt dm sessionis’ but ‘sessionis’ was deleted to make way for ‘articulos et sessionis’. Ten of those present had indeed been elected to the articles at the last parliamentary session in December 1540, but a further ten had not—each of these men was a regular councillor, amongst whom were three officers.67 Effectively this meant that most of the December 1540 spiritual and temporal lords of the articles remained, whilst burgess lords of the articles had been replaced with a group of core royal administrators. The specific designation of ‘articulis counsale and of session’ only appeared in relation to one case, which was raised by Thomas Richardson an indwellar in Leith against the council of Edinburgh. Edinburgh council had attempted to charge Richardson for anchorage and ‘small custom’ payable for a boat he had docked in Leith. Richardson, however, averred that his boat was anchored on the north side of Leith bridge. This area was exempt from paying anchorage and ‘small custom’ to Edinburgh because it was part of the regality of Holyrood. Before its transfer to the lords of ‘articulis, counsale and of session’ the case had been ‘in pley before the lords of counsale’ and the judges expressed their concern that ‘na Innovatioun suld be maid’ in its resolution.68 The ‘lordis of the articulis of parliament, counsale and of sessioun being convenit for decision of the said actioun’ found that Edinburgh had acted lawfully according to the privileges granted to them by previous monarchs in charging custom.69 In this instance, then, the authority of the council was being explicitly re-enforced by that of the articles in a case which related to a royal grant with implications for customs, the rights of the capital and, allegedly, the bounds of the regality of Holyrood. The lords of the articles were probably called in since the customs were a form of royal income which had been annexed to the crown in perpetuity and over which parliament had purview.70 The same extra authority may have been helpful in a  NRS CS6/14 ff. 179r, 181r. The sederunt is transcribed following Table A4, Appendix A.  RPS, 1540/12/7. Date accessed: 21 August 2020. 68  NRS CS6/14 f.181r. The lords also found that Edinburgh burgh council would ultimately be competent judges to the case: ff.179v–180r. 69  NRS CS6/14 f.181v. 70  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p. 162. 66 67

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second case related to teinds formerly held by Hamilton of Finnart, whose lands had been escheated and annexed to the crown and over whose whole estate the crown held an interest.71 Whilst the ‘lords of the articles and lords of council’ were unusual in an early sixteenth-century context, the judicial nature of their business suggests parallels to earlier hybrid groups composed of councillors and members of the parliamentary committee of auditors for causes and complaints. Although in decline by our period, the committee of auditors for causes and complaints was one amongst several parliamentary judicial committees which had been prominent during the fifteenth century and on occasion its members could be joined by lords of council. Like our sixteenth-century examples, Philip Hamilton-Grierson remarked of this earlier period, ‘when we examine the instances in which auditors and councillors sit together we find it difficult to follow the procedure’.72 Hamilton-Grierson further suggested that whilst decrees of the parliamentary committee alone were not final, the addition of councillors to these committees conferred the power to issue final decrees.73 In view of the decline of parliament’s special judicial committees by the early sixteenth century, it is possible that the ‘lords of articles and council’ groups of the personal rule emerged in part to plug this gap and that when they met as part of a parliament the addition of councillors was intended to afforce the authority of the originally parliamentary group. On 25 February 1541, the date to which the December 1540 parliament had been continued, the unusual terminology returned.74 Attendance at the several meetings held on this date and recorded across the registers of council and of parliament is compared in Table A4 in Appendix A. The parliamentary preamble for the morning of 25 February listed a group which comprised lords of the articles (some of whom were also lords of council) and councillors who had not been elected to the articles.75 The Latin sederunt for the afternoon parliamentary session noted that the lords of the articles were sitting with the ‘dominorum consilii’, followed 71  RPS, 1540/12/26. Date accessed: 20 January 2020; Athol Murray, ‘The Exchequer and Crown Revenue of Scotland, 1437–1542’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh, 1961), p. 162. 72  Philip J.  Hamilton-Grierson, ‘The Judicial Committees of the Scottish Parliament, 1369–70 to 1544’, SHR 22 (1924), pp. 1–13, at p. 11. 73  Hamilton-Grierson, ‘Judicial Committees’, p. 12. 74  RPS, 1540/12/41. Date accessed: 20 January 2020. 75  RPS, 1540/12/40. Date accessed: 20 January 2020.

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by six names of councillors none of whom had been appointed to the articles in December.76 This description of the lords of the articles sitting ‘together with’ (unacum) certain named lords of council is a slightly different formula to those we have seen so far, and lends support to the interpretation that lords of council could be adjoined to the lords of the articles without re-consulting with the whole parliamentary sederunt. This bears an obvious parallel to the practice whereby the King had the discretion to adjoin three or four members of his ‘gret counsell’ to the session for particular cases.77 These men oversaw a private act appertaining to a land transaction between James and the abbot of Dunfermline.78 Their decision was only made ‘efter lang desputatioune in that behalf and with the avise and counsale of sindry utheris letterit men, baith spirituale and temporale’.79 The allusion to ‘utheris letterit men’ might well point to consultation with still more councillors. Equally, the evident controversy may explain why this was dealt with as a private act of parliament, especially in the broader context of close parliamentary scrutiny for royal land transactions via the December 1540 act of annexation followed by further legislation on the royal lands in March 1541.80 Turning to the council register, the first set of activities recorded under the date 25 February constituted a normal meeting of the session: the sederunt was headed ‘lords of session’ and private legal cases were heard. It is slightly unclear who attended this meeting since there was no list of names given but instead a note saying attendance was the same as the lords of session ‘ut In die precedenti’. This was a common term in the register but the most recent full sederunt was that of 17 February, when, as we have seen, lords ‘electi ad articulos et sessionis’ and ‘the lordis of articulis counisale and of sesioun’ were sitting.81 It seems unlikely this group remained together between 17 and 25 February and were in between these dates described simply as ‘lords of council’ so it seems likely the note ‘sederunt dominorum sessionis ut In die precedenti’ directs us to the most recent full sederunt described simply as lords of session, dated 1 February.82  RPS, 1540/12/41. Date accessed: 20 January 2020.  RPS, 1532/6. Date accessed: 20 January 2020. 78  RPS, 1540/12/42. Date accessed: 6 August 2019. 79  RPS, 1540/12/42. Date accessed: 15 January 2020. 80  RPS, 1540/12/26, 89. Date accessed: 21 August 2020. 81  NRS CS6/14 ff. 179r. 82  NRS CS6/14 f.119r. Subsequent notes suggest that Cambuskenneth must have left since his return is noted on 16 February f.175r, and that on 19 February Cambuskenneth 76 77

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If this is correct, the group comprised twelve lords of session whose activities were described as being undertaken ‘by the lords of council’. The second council sederunt for that date was headed ‘domini electi ad articulos et conslii’—lords elected to the articles and council.83 Again, it was evidently considered important to record this because the entry was amended to include these words. This group were listed individually, and did not include any burgess lords of the articles. Instead, most of the spiritual and temporal lords of the articles attended, joined by eleven legally trained councillors, who had not been elected to the articles. This affirms what we saw in the parliamentary register, namely that the ‘lords of articles and council’ looked considerably more like the council than the committee of the articles appointed in December 1540. It also suggests that the two afternoon meetings recorded in parliamentary and council registers were indeed separate. The lords of the articles plus eleven lawyers whose business appears in the council register heard a request for a declaration of innocence from charges of treason by John Ross, laird of Craig. Accused of treason by William Geddes, Craig had raised an action of leasing-­making on Geddes. Leasing-making encompassed similar types of speech to that dealt with in England by the laws of slander, however, the December 1540 parliament had expanded existing laws which prohibited subjects lying about the King to encompass subjects who told untruths to the King about their fellows.84 Craig won his action, Geddes was executed and, by implication, Craig was exonerated from Geddes’s initial accusations of having committed treason. Craig now sought for the lords of council to issue him with a formal declaration to this effect.85 The lords of council were more than competent to issue such a declaration on their own authority—especially since they had received a royal letter ordering them to do so. Moreover, even though the jurisdiction of the session, the judicial branch of the council, developed considerably in this period, at no point did it stretch to treason.86 Given that the extant records of this parliament are a draft edition of the statutes prepared for publication, although some exceptional judicial business was included, it is highly likely other and Kinloss were absent f.190v. For other sederunts in between simply pointing the reader to a previous day: ff.137r, 140r, 145r, 150v, 156r, 165v, 183r, 195r, 197v. 83  NRS CS6/14 f.201r. 84  RPS, 1540/12/25. Date accessed: 5 September 2019. For leasing-making more broadly see: A. J. Mann, Scottish Book Trade 1500–1720 (East Linton, 2000), pp. 164–5. 85  NRS CS6/14 f.201v. 86  Godfrey, Civil Justice, passim.

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trials were not.87 On balance, it seems probable that this case originated in parliament and had been continued to 25 February, and that as a result it was felt relevant to note that some of the councillors sitting in judgement were also on the articles—all of the other cases heard by this group were noted as being dealt with simply by ‘the lords of council’.88 Although these case studies are complex it is nevertheless clear that the committee of the articles had been reconfigured outwith a full session of parliament and that it was not simply drafting laws. This may in part have been a consequence of the decline of parliament’s judicial committees, but it is especially significant in view of the recent scholarly emphasis on the independence of the committee of the articles in relation to the crown, an argument which has relied in part on evidence that the whole parliament participated in selecting the committee’s members, even though details of this process are obscure.89 Whilst members were indeed elected to the committee of the articles in meetings of the whole parliament, the fact that not every member attended every meeting and that exceptional (presumably crown mandated) additions could be made to the committee means that it could reconfigure to become, in essence, a gathering exclusively comprised of councillors. These meetings took place outwith main parliamentary sessions, and we might compare them to the type of occasion when a small group of parliamentary commissioners met to discuss a specific task. This should not, however, be read as a return to older interpretations of the lords of the articles as in essence synonymous with the council and, indeed, conventions. The sessions concerned with considering proposals for laws and working these up into draft statutes were, as far as we can see from the extant records, attended by most if not all of the men elected by the estates, including those who were not royal councillors. By contrast, the reconfigured quasi-conciliar subgroup of the lords of the articles stepped in to lend parliamentary authority to land transactions or judicial business dealt with outside a main session of parliament, or to act as a council whilst parliament was in full session. The committee of the articles was sometimes analogous to the council, but at its fullest, it was a

 Blakeway, ‘Reassessing’, p. 424.  NRS CS6/14 ff.201v–202r. 89  Tanner, ‘Lords of the Articles before 1540’, p. 196; Alan R. MacDonald, ‘Deliberative processes in Parliament c.1567–1639: multicameralism and the Lords of the Articles’, SHR 81 (2002), pp. 23–51. 87 88

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body arising out of a selection process undertaken by the whole parliament. It was flexible depending on what was needed at the time. This flexibility is amply demonstrated by the 1535 parliament, a session which was unusual for two reasons. First, parliament delegated its power to the committee of the articles, enabling them to enact statutes without reference to the whole gathering—this enabled anyone not on the committee to go home. Secondly, the lords of articles were not an exclusive group: rather, they comprised 67% of those who had decided to attend the opening session and Tanner has suggested that this was so large that ‘probably anyone who wanted to attend’ could do so.90 The fact that attendance amongst the committee remained robust in the subsequent session dedicated to reviewing legislation certainly suggests a high degree of engagement.91 Despite the fact the committee remained large, its composition did not reflect the whole session—either in terms of the balance amongst the estates or in terms of the types of people who attended from within estates. First, the fourteen lords of articles chosen from amongst the spiritual lords rebalanced the composition of this estate in favour of the bishops and members of the council who held a clerical position. Of twelve abbots, three made it onto the committee of the articles. By contrast, only three of the eleven bishops failed to make the cut. Moreover, all of the abbots who did sit on the committee were also members of council, likewise, all of the lower clerics appointed were councillors. Second, amongst the seventeen temporal lords of the articles, all the crown officers were appointed alongside secular magnates such as Moray, Huntly, Argyll, Montrose and Rothes, who attended numerous conventions, and Eglinton, Erskine, Fleming and Gray—none of whom were strangers to the council board. In the late fifteenth century, high status could serve to render the lords of the articles more independent of the crown; by contrast, in this instance, the prevalence of very high status clerical and temporal lords meant that the members of the first and second estates who received plenary power were those who already supported the regime through the council.92 Whilst men with close ties to the regime dominated the committee, the proportion of burgh representatives became marginally higher 90  Tanner, ‘Lords of the Articles before 1540’, p.  211. RPS, 1535/2–3, 8, 48. Date accessed: 21 August 2020. Several slight variations exist between the sederunt for the lords of articles, the overall parliamentary sederunts and the list of those appointed to the articles, these are discussed below. 91  RPS, 1535/8. Date accessed: 10 June 2021. 92  Tanner, ‘Lords of the Articles before 1540’, p. 196.

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as compared to parliament overall, creeping up from 11% of the parliamentary sederunt to 16% of the articles. Six burgh commissioners, two from Edinburgh, one each from Aberdeen, Stirling, Dundee and St Andrews, were recorded in the main sederunt. More burgesses may, however, have been present. Although only six burgess lords of articles were appointed this group included a different named representative for Dundee from the person named in the main sederunt, and a representative from Ayr—a community not named in the main sederunt. Beyond the fact that the selection process from within the first and second estates largely reproduced the council, whilst parliament was in session James used a group from within the lords of the articles to offer advice in the manner of a council or a convention. This took place on 11 June amongst a group of twenty-seven.93 Of the five burgh representatives voted on to the committee of the articles only one, Francis Bothwell, who was sitting in parliament as a representative for Edinburgh but was also a member of the royal council, was present. Not only were most of the burgess lords of the articles missing, but men who had not been elected to the articles but were lords of council, namely, Walter Lindsay, lord St John and Adam Otterburn, were in attendance. The most likely explanation is that this was a group of lords of council sitting ‘together with’ the articles, as occurred in February 1541. The location of their meeting—the chancellor’s house—also hints at a quasi-conciliar nature. Whilst officials’ homes or lodgings could host break-out meetings of parliament, for instance, the bishop of Aberdeen’s house had been used for a hearing during the 1526 parliament, the chancellor’s house was used on a number of occasion to host meetings of the council.94 The first article resulted in the lords offering ‘counsale and avise’ to the King that the borderers presently in ward should remain there until they had been tried.95 In response to the second article, counsel was offered on how to reply to a request recently received from the Duke of Holstein for support in his dispute with the town of Lubeck, on whose side Henry VIII

 RPS, 1535/5–7. Date accessed: 21 August 2020.  RPS, 1526/11/10 Date accessed: 21 August 2020. 3 March 1529, NRS CS5/39 f. 134v; 29 May 1529 NRS CS5/40 f.48r (in Haddington); 9 February 1532 NRS CS6/2 f.79v; C.  F. Wegener (ed.), Aasberltninger fra det Konelige Geheimearchiv, indeholdende Bidrag til dansk Historie af utrykte Kilder III (Copenhagen, 7 vols, 1852–83), p. 246. 95  RPS, 1535/6. Date accessed: 7 July 2019. 93 94

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had recently intervened.96 The editors of the RPS characterised the discussions of this committee in response to these two articles as ‘legislation’; however, the language used, notably a request for ‘counsale and avise’ and the formula that ‘the lordis thinkis expedient that’ a particular course of action should be undertaken, was very close to that used by council and conventions and reflected the fact the group were in reality offering counsel.97 This suggestion, and the extent to which the council and committee of the articles overlapped in this meeting, is underscored by the fact that the Duke of Holstein’s request had in fact been made in the form of a Latin oration by his secretary Peter Suavenius before James and the council earlier that month.98 The fact that the burgess lords of the articles returned on 12th June—when, amongst a large legislative programme, a tax was granted—suggests that they would have been available in Edinburgh for discussions on 11 June had they been required but that their attendance was not necessary.99 Given the strong evidence later in the century for the burghs meeting concurrently with parliament to discuss their own affairs, it is tempting to suggest that the burgess lords of the articles spent 11 June in the Tolbooth with other burgh commissioners discussing any articles they wished to propose and any other burgh business.100 The segregation of the spiritual and temporal lords of the articles from their burgess companions in order to offer counsel resonates with events of the first parliament of the personal rule, held in September 1528. Nine burghs sent representatives to parliament for its opening day on 2 September.101 The election of the lords of the articles was recorded as having occurred on 4 September, comprising five spiritual and five temporal lords: no burgess names were entered, although space was left for these.102 96  RPS, 1535/7. Date accessed: 7 July 2019. A petition given by Suavenius to the chancellor on this topic on the day before this discussion and the response to Christian can be found in: LJV, pp. 290–1. 97  RPS, 1535/6–7. Date accessed: 7 July 2019. 98  Wegener (ed.), Aasberltninger fra det Konelige Geheimearchiv III, pp. 260–5. Wegener suggests a date of 2 June for this based on the evidence of Suavenius’s diary (ibid., p. 243); there is no corroborative evidence in the extant register of the lords of council and session: NRS CS6/6 ff.123v–127v. 99  RPS, 1535/14. Date accessed: 4 August 2019. 100  A. R. MacDonald and M. Verschuur (eds), Records of the Convention of Royal Burghs 1555; 1631–48 (Edinburgh, 2013), p.11. 101  RPS, 1528/9/2. Date accessed: 21 August 2020. 102  RPS, 1528/9/8. Date accessed: 21 August 2020.

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On 2nd September, however, a group of thirteen ‘domini ad articulos electi’ had apparently met with James to discuss the terms under which the Douglases would appear to answer their summons in parliament and arrange for a proclamation to be issued regarding the forthcoming expedition to the border.103 This comprised the five spiritual and five temporal lords who would be ‘elected’ on 4 September, joined by three councillor-­ administrators, Sir Thomas Erskine, the secretary, Adam Otterburn, lord advocate, and Nichol Crawford, justice clerk. The latter three men appeared neither on the main session’s sederunt for 2 September nor on the list of lords of the articles appointed on 4 September. This apparent meeting of representatives of the first and second estates on the committee of the articles two days before the record of their full election raises intriguing questions about procedure. It is possible this was a scribal error, but this does not explain the lack of burgess representatives and presence of councillors whose presence is not recorded anywhere else in this parliament’s records. If the manuscript indeed reflects the correct order of events, it is plausible that the lords spiritual and temporal agreed their appointments to the committee in advance of parliament. Probably, in the light of evidence from other periods, this would have entailed the nobles selecting the clerical members and vice versa.104 The fact their decisions were described as being made ‘with avise of his [James’s] lordis of counsale’ gives a fairly unambiguous steer as to from whence their authority was considered to arise.105 Just like when advice was sought on the borderers in 1535, when counsel was needed on recalcitrant subjects even though parliament was sitting only the council could offer suitably secret advice. Unlike in 1535, however, in 1528 James attended the committee in person. This was highly unusual and points to the importance of the King’s personal visibility as he set up his new regime. Again, we might speculate that the burghs were consulting amongst themselves whilst this council-­ articles hybrid body met and that this meeting amongst the third estate discussed, amongst other things, who their nominees to the articles might be. Regardless of when and how the 2 September 1528 group was appointed, its membership, as in the examples from 1525, 1535 and 1540–1, comprised a mix of councillors who were also on the articles and councillors  RPS, 1528/9/3–5. Date accessed: 4 March 2020.  MacDonald, ‘Deliberative Processes in Parliament’, p. 46. 105  RPS, 1528/9/4. Date accessed: 21 August 2020. 103 104

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who were not elected to the articles. Some of these might have been burgesses but they were all senior crown officials. Like the group in 1535, this 1528 committee met in the context of a full session of parliament but addressed the kind of questions which were usually addressed to a council. A tentative explanation for the occurrence of these intriguingly named groups in 1528 and 1535 might be found in the fact that when the King’s highest court of parliament was in session, lower courts were not supposed to meet. Potentially when parliament sat it likewise needed to incorporate the advisory and administrative functions of other parts of government and this was managed via the lords of the articles—just as outwith the main sessions this committee might manifest itself via the council to deal with questions which in theory required parliamentary input. The only other occasion when we have evidence that parliament offered advice on crown relations with foreign powers or troublesome subjects, the 1531 session, is an instructive comparison.106 Seven burgh communities sent one commissioner to this parliament; Edinburgh sent three, all of whom were lords of council. The burgess lords of articles were the three Edinburgh commissioners accompanied by John Collison, from Aberdeen. Curiously, Aberdeen had originally intended to send Gilbert Menzies, their provost, and Andrew Cullane, a former provost, as commissioners.107 It is unclear when or why the plan changed, but since Collison was part of a group seeking ‘to prevent the development of an effectively hereditary Menzies provostship’, it is likely that the change reflected this struggle within the burgh.108 What is clear, however, is that as in 1535, the lords of the articles over-represented the most senior members from within each 106  The 1529 grant of the office of conservator of the Low Countries is not included here since this was a confirmation of a decision already made; even so, it was dealt with by a group of only six commissioners: RPS, 1528/9/52, 54. Date accessed: 15 January 2020. 107  ACA CA1/1/13 f.105; Aberd. Recs., I, p. 129. The editor of Aberd. Recs. inserted this in the wrong place, as though it appertained to March 1530 new style. The 24 April date for the parliament though means this must be March 1530 old style, that is, March 1531. See chapter 4 n. 15 for further details on the old/new style dating confusion in the printed burgh records for this period. 108  Allan White, ‘The Menzies Era: Sixteenth-century Politics’ in E.  Patricia Dennison, David Ditchburn and Michael Lynch (eds), Aberdeen Before 1800: A New History (East Linton, 2002), pp.  224–37, p.  225. For the Menzies family and elections in the 1590s: Stephanie Dropuljic and Adelyn Wilson, ‘Elections and Local Governance in Early Modern Aberdeen’, in A.  M. Godfrey (ed.), Stair Society  Miscellany Eight (Edinburgh, 2020), pp. 231–263.

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estate—in other words, those already likely to have a seat on council. For instance, the numbers of bishops and earls appointed to the articles halved as compared to the whole sederunt—ten to five and eight to four respectively, but they were joined by one nominal abbot out of nine and two lords from thirteen. Accordingly, when the lords of the articles discussed offering a respite to Alasdair Mac Dhòmhnaill, the location of the staple in Middelburg, and ordered John Campbell of Lundy to hand over paperwork relating to his recent embassy to the royal administration, it was only the Aberdonian John Collison who would have been out of place at a council meeting.109 Even so, being on this committee did not give Collison access to new information: he had heard Mac Dhòmhnaill’s case discussed before the whole parliament on the previous day and would have known about the staple and the need for Campbell’s paperwork from the convention of the burghs which met the previous month.110 In brief, this meant that in 1531 when the articles advised on matters already shared with parliament, the sole representative from outwith the council could remain; in 1535 when information which was not widely available was discussed, every burgh representative was excluded in favour of regular councillors. It is clear that in a flexible political system where the crown had only a limited pool of administrators available, and could add members to all sorts of committees, the council’s members staffed a range of central governmental institutions. This, presumably, had advantages since the council’s corporate authority, as well as the individual authority and expertise of its members, underpinned their activities. The expertise harboured by the council and the authority it carried both enabled and drove it to sub-­ divide to better manage the clamour for central civil justice and to meet the King’s needs both in financial management via the exchequer and increased administrative activity. Councillors also made up a high proportion of the lords of the articles drawn from the first and second estates— and, more than that, when a subgroup of this committee’s membership drawn from the council sat ‘with’ other councillors the committee of the articles could be temporarily reconstituted as a de facto council to deal with business where the authority of parliament was desirable but a full session was not considered necessary. During the later years of James’s 109  RPS, 1531/5–8. Date accessed: 21 August 2020. Alasdair Mac Dhòmhnaill (also known as Alexander MacDonald fifth of Dunivaig and the Glens or, as the sources produced by James’s regime referred to him most frequently, Alexander John Canochsoun). 110  RPS, 1531/4. Date accessed: 27 July 2019; RCRBS, pp. 512–13.

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minority and his personal rule the lords of the articles could take different forms and this meant that even within parliament when confidential matters needed to be considered solutions could be found within the committee structure to provide this. Cumulatively, this reveals a broader pattern of restricting discussion on foreign relations, war, and the management of rebellious or disobedient subjects to carefully controlled groups centred on the council which, as we shall go on to see, stretched to conventions as well as parliament. Having seen the council subdividing and inveigling its way into the committee of the articles, it is now turn to consider how it might also expand to form a convention.

General Council and Conventions The foregoing section has affirmed the importance attached to the council in this period and its central role in advising on James’s relations with his subjects and foreign powers. Yet, the very fact that counsel was so amply provided for in normal governance conversely suggests that the large occasionally summoned meetings were understood to have offered something different and special. Asking a group of advisors to gather was not simply about getting advice—that was already available on tap through the council, individual meetings or, indeed, correspondence with those absent from court. Such methods were especially suited to counsel a monarch because they offered secrecy. Large meetings afforded something else: a wider pool of counsellors, perhaps, or, alternatively, an unusually large audience to witness the performance of advice-taking or justice-giving good kingship. Equally, attending such a meeting was a performance of being a good magnate or royal servant. These gatherings make the process of counsel visible precisely because they were special performances of how politics ought to work. As such, they served as practical mechanisms of governance working as part of a broader, and developing, system in tandem with other institutions, and before going any further, it is helpful to clarify their place within that developing governmental context. Alongside their regular (daily) councils and occasional parliaments, fifteenth-­century kings also met their subjects in general councils. There is conflicting evidence surrounding whether everyone who had a duty to attend parliament also had to attend general councils. In the fourteenth century, parliament and general council had been hard to distinguish from one another, whilst under James I and James II, attendance at both was similar including, crucially, the burghs, who were invited to general

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councils and parliaments alike.111 Concurring broadly with this picture of similarities between late medieval general councils and parliaments, Tanner has, building on Hannay, suggested that the ‘lesser formality’ which surrounded general councils meant that they ‘tended to be summoned when a king was unable to govern personally’.112 By the early sixteenth century, these meetings had declined in frequency, attendance overall had dropped and the onus on burghs to attend was lessened.113 This fits into a broader picture: as T. R. Chalmers showed, a late fifteenth-century preference to hold meetings of all kinds in Edinburgh rather than in a range of locations around the country precluded busy merchants with pressing commercial interests from attending.114 Subsequently, James IV’s preference for general councils over parliaments, Norman Macdougall argued, was not an attempt ‘to ignore the estates’ but, rather, arose because that monarch valued general councils for flexibility, the speed with which they could be summoned and their greater tractability.115 Due to the nature of the sources, MacDougall identified two areas of ambiguity about these meetings. First, in some instances, the line between ‘general councils, bodies of a similar size to parliaments’ and ‘considerably enlarged sessions of the royal council’ is unclear.116 Second, it is uncertain whether general councils habitually included burgesses.117 Nevertheless, it is clear that James IV frequently summoned these bodies to widen the pool of his advisors beyond the council on a temporary basis to deal with a particular concern. During the reign of James V, the term ‘general council’ gradually vanished from the records, to be replaced by ‘convention’. We have already seen ‘general council’ employed in letters from 1529: a decade later, it is much less likely that this term would have been chosen. Observing this, Hannay suggested that the two names were broadly interchangeable—in other words, this shift in terminology did not reflect a change in

111  Michael Brown, ‘Kings, Guardians and Councils’ in Jacqueline Rose (ed.), The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286–1707 (Oxford, 2016), pp. 52–3; O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament’, pp. 143–5. 112  Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, p. 30. 113   Hannay, ‘General Council and Conventions of Estates’; O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament’, pp. 146–50. 114  Chalmers, ‘The King’s Council’, p. 189. 115  Macdougall, ‘The Estates in Eclipse?’, pp. 156–8. 116  Macdougall, James IV, pp. 191–2. 117  Macdougall, ‘Estates in Eclipse’, p. 158; Macdougall, James IV, pp. 191–2.

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practice.118 Hannay’s observation that conventions in this period were, like the earlier great or general councils, usually attended only by members of the first and second estates also led him to conclude that they were in essence expanded meetings of the council.119 As we have seen, subsequent work has suggested earlier great councils did sometimes include burgesses, but Hannay’s identification of conventions as relatively small and often essentially an expansion of the council has proven influential. Notably Irene O’Brien built on this analysis to characterise conventions as in essence ‘private’ and the opposite to the ‘public’ forum provided by parliament.120 By contrast, there is some debate surrounding whether Hannay was correct to view general council and convention as interchangeable terms. O’Brien instead argued that ‘conventions were not meetings of the three estates, as had been general councils, but meetings of an estate or the three estates to which the council had been added’ and that the different terms therefore each stood for a different type of body.121 For the 1530s, Hannay’s view is far more persuasive—the terms convention and general council and a number of variants upon them were used interchangeably as part of a highly flexible political vocabulary. For instance, on 23 June 1528, James wrote to Henry VIII informing him that ‘ane generall counsaile universale of the estates of our realm’ would be held the following month to investigate the potential treason of his erstwhile stepfather, Archibald, earl of Angus.122 On the same day, James (or, at least, his clerk) described the same meeting as a ‘general conuention of our lordis’ to the earl of Northumberland, echoing the ‘generalle conuention…of our gret baronys’ employed the previous week.123 Evidently, the same body could be called by different names by the same clerk writing on the same day. Northumberland later described the meeting as a ‘general counsale’— whether this was a slip, a reflection of the phrases used by the Scottish spy from whom he had obtained his information or an English approximation of a Scots phrase is impossible to say.124 In view of the febrile domestic situation and the importance of persuading Henry VIII not to intervene  Hannay, ‘General Council and Conventions of Estates’, pp. 102–3.  Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, p. 102. 120  O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament’, pp. 156–8. 121  O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament’, p. 154. 122  James V to Henry VIII, 23 June 1528, TNA SP49/3 f. 84. 123   James V to Northumberland, 23 June 1528, TNA SP49/3 f.85; James V to Northumberland, 19 June 1528, TNA SP49/3 f. 93. 124  Northumberland to Wolsey, 2 July 1528, TNA SP1/49/3 f. 64r. 118 119

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on Angus’s behalf, it is tempting to suggest that in this instance the Scots simply employed phrases designed to convey that the body in question carried significant authority. When instructions were issued as a result of this meeting, they eschewed all of the extra terminology, and were described simply as coming from the council, with no hint this was great, general, or universal.125 This suggests that although the fact that the body was more than a normal council meeting gave it enhanced legitimacy at a testing time, the basis for its authority was conciliar. This terminological interchanging should not surprise us in the context of a broader culture of linguistic flexibility which prevailed in Scottish record keeping. In a late medieval burgh context, Claire Hawes has drawn attention to the ‘fluidity of nomenclature in relation to the town and its representatives’, whilst emphasising that fluidity should not be identified as indicative of a lack of sophistication but, rather, as a pragmatic example of something that ‘worked very well’.126 Elsewhere, immediately after the January 1531 convention, a ‘Sessio Dominorum Consilii Supremi’ was begun. This rare perhaps even unique term probably translates best as being a ‘session/sitting of the lords of the highest council’—but this was, in fact, simply the first business of a new judicial session, which had been continued (postponed) from 9 November.127 The evocative name was made still more notable by an elaborately formed initial letter. Both terminology and calligraphy may have reflected the fact this was the first entry in a register. ‘Secret councils’ too were shape-shifters—for the fifteenth-­ century officials who Chalmers studied this meant a body larger than the daily council, but Michael Brown has shown that in the reign of Robert II, the term was applied to a group of seven, then tasked with setting up the new King’s household.128 Indeed, even in 1561 the ‘Greit Council’ which welcomed Mary, Queen of Scots, home to her realm quickly changed its name to the ‘secret council’.129 In the context of significant terminological flexibility, it is potentially misleading to pay too much attention to names, and the July 1528  James V to Wolsey, 14 July 1528, TNA SP49/3 f. 97r.  Claire Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority in later fifteenth-century Scotland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews, 2015), pp. 51–2. 127  NRS CS5/41 f.119v; NRS CS5/42 f.1r. Attendance at this session was high—thirtytwo—perhaps because it came immediately after a convention. 128   Chalmers, ‘The King’s Council’, pp.  18, 90–1; Brown, ‘Kings, Guardians and Councils’, p. 53. 129  Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 23. 125 126

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example shows that we should not assume that each variant on a phrase represented a distinct type of meeting. Nonetheless, given the close relationship between conventions and council and the fact that conventions were recorded in the council register, names still serve a purpose in helping to identify unusual meetings, particularly when they describe the people in attendance. This is especially useful because the word ‘convention’ by itself was just a generic term for a meeting of any sort. In addition to the nobility of the realm and community of burghs, members of a university or vagabonds were amongst the groups who could be described as attending conventions.130 As a result, the nature of some meetings, such as the summons issued in September 1529 to ‘diverse lordis…to convene’ on 8 October is left ambiguous—sadly there is no record of their activities in the council register.131 This group could, potentially, have been a large convention, but it could also have been a slightly enhanced council meeting or another sort of gathering entirely. However, coupled with another term ‘convention’ usually signalled something special. For example, in April 1533, summons were issued for a ‘conventioun of the greast personageis of the realme’ which would ‘provide for resisting of our auld Inemys of Ingland’.132 Most of our examples of names for conventions emerge in vernacular records—the treasurers’ accounts, the minutes of the council register or in diplomatic correspondence with England. In Latin letters sent beyond the British Isles we find a ‘magnum concilium’—the use of ‘magnum’ marks this out from a usual council meeting.133 There does not appear to be a Latin equivalent to ‘convention’, in this period: in the 1560s, Buchanan would describe a ‘procerum conventu’, but this term or an equivalent is not evident in the governmental records of the 1530s.134 James V’s conventions stand in stark contrast to the developments evident from the 1560s when a new term ‘convention of estates’ emerged to describe an extra-parliamentary body which the entirety of each of the 130   ‘Conventioun n.’. Dictionary of the Scots Language. 2004. Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd. Accessed 31 Jul 2019 https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/conventioun. 131  NRS E21/23 f.24v; NRS CS5/40 f.119r. It is possible that approximately half a page was left blank for decisions which were never entered: NRS CS5/40 f.118v. 132  NRS CS6/2 f.153r. 133  LJV, pp. 212 134  Buchanan, History of Scotland, ed. Sutton, http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/ scothist/14lat.html#32.

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three estates was expected to attend.135 Alan MacDonald has argued that the term ‘convention of estates’ could also be extended, during the personal rule of James VI, to different types of meetings to which members of the three estates were invited—either as entire estates or in groups where attendees were balanced equally amongst representatives of nobles, clerics and burghs.136 Whilst these are interesting debates, they will not be entered into here for the simple reason that there is no evidence meetings of the three estates outside parliament were a prominent activity in James V’s reign. Messengers were paid to issue summons to three burghs alongside spiritual and temporal lords to the November 1536 convention; Edinburgh was not amongst them but since the decision to hold the meeting was taken in the capital, it is likely that Edinburgh’s representatives were notified without the need to pay a messenger to deliver the invitation.137 Even so, this was neither the summoning of an entire estate nor a meeting with attendance balanced evenly amongst the three estates. The exceptional nature of this meeting can probably be explained by the fact it was summoned to grant a tax during James’s absence in France.138 Beyond this, the only meetings to which all members of each of the three estates were summoned in James’s personal rule took place in parliament. Our discussion of nomenclature has shown that conventions were related to the council. Combined with the fact they shared its books and the instructions they issued were promulgated in the council’s name, this suggests that these variously named meetings derived their authority from the council. Nevertheless, their special names show that they were considered distinct from a normal council meeting. This was for two reasons: like the general councils of James IV they were larger than normal council meetings and, unlike the permanent council, conventions were a temporary gathering summoned to deal with a specific purpose. During the reign of James IV, Macdougall reckoned that a council meeting had a ‘normal maximum of 12–15’, a figure closely reflected in the attempts to appoint a council in the closing years of James V’s minority.139 Here, however, we need to distinguish between what the regime intended to do, and what it actually achieved: securing attendance at council, like many  O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament’, pp. 151–4.  MacDonald, ‘Consultation and Consent’, pp. 287–306. 137  NRS E21/31 f.22v. 138  For the arguments a tax was granted, please see: p. 213. 139  Macdougall, James IV, p. 191; Blakeway, ‘Privy Council’, pp. 30–2. 135 136

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governmental activities, could prove problematic and chairs at the council table were frequently empty. Indeed, repeated attempts to reorganise and restructure the council between 1528 and 1529 may have been a symptom of low attendance.140 Both council and session sought to address this problem of low attendance by designating a large pool from amongst whom minimum attendance might be secured.141 Calculating a mean average of attendance at the meetings recorded in the extant council register across the fourteen years of the personal rule would only serve to obscure what was a varied picture, even if we discounted judicial sessions. It is more helpful to observe that the usual range for attendance was about eight to fourteen. This increased to the low twenties fairly regularly, for instance, in the days immediately surrounding a convention or when an important noble dispute was being resolved. The meeting with which we opened the chapter thus sat on the border between a well-attended council meeting and a small convention. At the other end of the scale, Cameron has calculated that the maximum number of temporal lords who might attend a parliament in James’s personal rule was fifty-two, with the lords spiritual numbering about forty-­ two.142 In addition, the forty-two burghs liable to pay tax also had a right to be summoned.143 In theory, parliament ought to have been attended by about 130 people, plus the King, any parliamentary or royal officers and, perhaps, a few extra commissioners sent by Edinburgh or other larger burghs. In practice, of course, under-age earls and lords or vacant benefices would drive these totals down.144 Even so, parliamentary attendance fell well short of its theoretical capacity, ranging from thirty-eight in 1532

 Blakeway, ‘Privy Council’, pp. 30–2.  Blakeway, ‘Privy Council’, p.  30; For the ‘pool’ system at work with the session: Godfrey, Civil Justice, p.  117; NRS CS5/42 f.  52r. For the same problems surrounding attendance in a burgh context:  E. Patricia Dennison, ‘Robin Hood in Scotland’ in Julian Goodare and Alasdair A. MacDonald (eds), Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch (Leiden, 2008), pp. 169–88 at p. 181. 142  Cameron, James V, pp. 356–9. 143  For the difficulties in calculating the number of burghs with a right to attend in this period: MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p.11. For the tax roll on which this is based: RCRBS, pp. 514–15. 144  For under-aged earls in the personal rule: Cameron, James V, pp. 356–9. 140 141

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to seventy-one in December 1540.145 Between fifty and sixty was the more usual parliamentary attendance range.146 However, parliament was both larger and smaller than this. Within parliament, the committee of the articles ranged from an exceptionally large thirty-seven in 1535 when it received delegated plenary power, down to just ten recorded names in 1528—although since the extant list lacked burgh commissioners, the committee would have been a little bigger.147 As an event, though, parliament was far larger—those men who participated in parliamentary sessions would have been accompanied by retainers and family members, who presumably eagerly awaited news of and commented upon the day’s discussions. As a final point of contrast, in 1537 the largest set of messages of the personal rule was issued to 255 individuals and communities who were ordered to make ‘honest preparing agane the kingis gracis hamecuming’.148 The thirty-three senior clerics and forty-­ two earls and lords summoned were far outnumbered by 129 lairds, whilst the letters directed to two regalities and twenty-one sheriffs may have been intended for distribution to further individuals within the bounds of the regality or sheriffdom. It is not clear if these men were being summoned to meet the King or to make more general preparations; in Ayr, at least, there is evidence that fires were lit and ale and wine purchased for celebrations within the town, but no evidence for the payment of expenses for a commissioner to travel to Edinburgh greet the King on the burgh’s behalf.149 Regardless of their contents, it is likely these orders to prepare for the King’s homecoming were issued to the men and communities who the council considered to be politically active and important. Each of these individual councils, committees or groups appointed was selected in response to particular circumstances and practical considerations such as who was in good enough health to perform their duties, over the age of majority but not yet incapacitated through age, not about  RPS, 1532/2, 1540/12/6. Date accessed: 21 August 2020.  Sixty present in 1528 (RPS, 1528/9/2. Date accessed: 21 August 2020); fifty-three in 1531 (RPS, 1531/2. Date accessed: 21 August 2020); fifty-four in 1535 (RPS, 1535/2. Date accessed: 21 August 2020) and sixty-eight in the March 1541 session (RPS, 1540/12/52. Date accessed: 21 August 2020). 147  This numbered twenty-two in 1532; twenty in 1540; sixteen in 1531. RPS, 1528/9/8, 1531/3, 1532/3, 1535/3, 1540/12/7. Date accessed: 21 August 2020. 148  NRS E21/31 ff. 24r–25v. 149  George Pryde (ed.), Ayr Burgh Accounts 1534–1624 (Edinburgh, Scottish History Society, 1937), p. 26. 145 146

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to face a treason trial for corresponding with the English, and so forth. Drawing these different sizes of gathering together, however, it emerges fairly consistently that when groups were appointed either to deal with ongoing governmental business or alternatively selected as a subgroup from within a larger whole (whether as a council, committee of the articles, parliamentary commissioners or a judicial session), membership fell in between twelve and twenty-two. Attendance, however, would often fall in the lower part of this range. Anything upwards of twenty or thereabouts would have been an unusual meeting in terms of size. The grey area between a council meeting and a ‘convention’ is thrown into especially sharp relief when we have to rely on summonses to identify meetings. In October 1531, for instance, a series of summons were issued over a few days—lord Maxwell was asked  to attend ‘a conventioun in Edinburgh’, the lairds of Ferniherst and Cessford ‘to convene to assist with their counsale anentis writings cumin furth of England’, whilst George Lord Hume, John Hume, abbot of Jedburgh, the laird of Howpaslett and ‘David the Lady’ were to ‘compere before the lordis for good reule to be devisit on the bordouris’.150 Were all these men being summoned to the same meeting and if so, was this a convention? We have no clear name for the body to help us. Clearly this was a temporary gathering, or several such meetings, in response to a specific need arising from what Macdougall described as ‘affairs of state’—what we might less anachronistically describe as commonwealth business.151 If all seven men came at the same time and sat alongside the normal council, this would have formed a meeting similar in size to the November 1530 example we saw at the start of the chapter. Reading too much into the language choices of the treasurer’s clerks who recorded payments for these summons may be mistaken, but there does seem to be a distinction in the types of roles envisaged—Maxwell was to attend a convention, Cessford and Ferniherst were coming to help the council and the final four were appearing in front of the council. Each suggests a greater distance from the body which issued the invitation, a lower status in relation to that body and less of a role in making a decision. This also means that there is little evidence for a large group sitting together and collectively working as a council. On balance, therefore, the meeting to which Maxwell was summoned and

150 151

 NRS E21/25 f. 49r-v.  Macdougall, James IV, p. 191.

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others like it do not seem appropriate to include as conventions but rather were instances of the council seeking specialist advice on particular issues. As this example shows, considering a combination of these factors in relation to each other offers the most sensible approach to identifying a meeting as a convention. First, how they were described, paying particular attention to information hinting towards attendance (such as ‘of the lordis’) or adjectives indicating an elevated status (‘great’ in Scots, or ‘magnum’ in Latin, for instance). Secondly, having an attendance or invitation list of about twenty or more. Thirdly, the nature of their business: conventions addressed a specific set of issues, usually enumerated, as we shall see, in the form of a list of articles. Unlike James IV’s great councils, however, they did not engage with judicial matters.152 These were temporary gatherings which took place around the structure provided by the permanent council but which were intended to supplement its expertise and scope. They were well-suited to address especially important decisions which required neither a law (for which parliament was needed) nor a trial (for which parliament or a lower court would be required), pre-eminently this comprised preparing for and managing warfare. This emerges clearly in the following section and is explored in more depth in chapter 3.

Conventions in the Personal Rule: When and Who? Hannay identified nine conventions held during James V’s rule, the first of which was the general council of twenty-three held at Stirling in July 1528, to help initiate the process of James’s declaration of his majority.153 The convention of 19 May 1530 discussed plans for a forthcoming campaign against the Isles. He also noted the two October sets of summons to conventions which, as we saw at the start of this chapter, may have been for two meetings or simply for one held on 9th November. This took place in Perth: James was in the town but not on the sederunt and the framing of advice ‘by the lordis’ with no mention of the monarch suggests he was absent. The January and 5 June 1531 conventions were respectively attended by thirty-five, who planned for a military campaign on the  Macdougall, James IV, p. 191.  NRS CS5/38 f. 131r. Hannay places the first convention of the personal rule on 17 July 1528, but this appears to be a mistranscription of 11 July since business on 17 was purely private: NRS CS5/38 f.132v; ADCP, pp. 278–9. Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, p. 103. 152 153

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borders and Isles, and forty-six, who witnessed the submission of one of the main leaders of resistance to the crown in the Isles, Alasdair Mac Dhòmhnaill. This high attendance at a meeting which essentially witnessed the successful assertion of crown authority is especially telling in terms of considering the purpose of these meetings. James was either in Edinburgh or Stirling or travelling between them when the January convention was held, and in Stirling, where the convention was, in June: he did not appear on either sederunt and the records of decisions make no mention the King was involved.154 The 26 January (attended by fifty-­ four), 3 September (attended by twenty-eight) and 16 December 1532 (attended by thirty-seven) conventions all, to a greater or lesser degree, made provisions for the move towards war with England.155 Again, James was in the towns where the conventions were held, but not on the sederunt. In the case of the January convention the fact the chancellor spoke on the King’s behalf strongly suggests that James was indeed absent. Notably, this convention, the largest of the personal rule, participated in a set-piece discussion of an English claim to Canonbie, a Scottish settlement on the borders: the point seems to have been to collectively witness the status quo and this later provided the basis for legitimate warfare.156 Finally, there are no minutes for the November 1536 convention to which twenty-six were summoned, but the timing suggests it disseminated information about James’s activities in France.157 Hannay did not clearly articulate his criteria for identifying a meeting as a convention, but, as we are doing, he seems to have employed a mixture of terminology, size and activities. He did not include primarily military gatherings—such as that of January 1533—and dynastic celebrations—such as James’s 1537 homecoming. Like conventions, dynastic celebrations provided an occasion for attendees to witness royal authority—however, there is no evidence that consultation took place, accordingly, it seems sensible to exclude these. As we shall see, however, there is strong evidence that as armies gathered in Edinburgh before moving to wherever a campaign would be undertaken, elite attendees were witnessing important business, being consulted on future plans and making decisions. Since the authority underpinning their 154  NRS CS5/41 f. 154v; NRS CS5/42 f. 185r; Hannay, Essays on the College of Justice, p. 237; Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, pp. 398–9. 155  NRS CS5/43 f.140v; NRS CS6/1 f. 110v; NRS CS6/2 f.27r; Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, p. 103. 156  See below pp. 109–110. 157  Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, p. 103.

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activities was, like that of the other conventions identified, conciliar, there is a case to include them here. Each of these meetings appears, alongside parliaments and conventions of burghs, in Table A1 in appendix A. Despite the flexibility of the term convention and the grey area between ‘council-meeting-plus-extras’ and ‘convention’, we can nevertheless add five more conventions to Hannay’s list of nine with reasonable certainty. Our first hitherto unidentified convention is revealed to us by its name—a meeting held in early 1532 was described as a ‘Magnum Concilium’ in a commission directed to John Stuart, duke of Albany, James, bishop of Ross and Thomas Erskine, the secretary, to negotiate on James’s marriage. Whilst that letter offered no further details about the meeting, a separate commission directed to Albany alone further explained that ‘magnates of both estates’ had been consulted prior to issuing these instructions.158 There is no reference to such discussions in the council register, yet, after his period as governor during James’s minority (1515–24), Albany was amply familiar with the Scottish council, as indeed were Ross and Erskine, who both sat on it.159 Clearly, then, the officials who penned these commissions intended to describe something significantly more than a normal council meeting. Nevertheless, it is likely the group was small, since a third letter of the same date to the papal nuncio explained that James was ‘taking tentative steps with his chancellor here and a very limited number besides’ towards joining a possible crusade.160 Secondly, a meeting of spiritual and temporal lords took place shortly after the brief parliamentary session of 13–17 May 1532. This must have taken place by 27 May, the day when the college of justice was inaugurated and when James wrote to Clement VII informing him that he had ‘summoned the magnates who ought to be consulted’ about how Scotland should respond to the threat of Ottoman incursions in Christendom.161 They had duly advised him to ‘send a good man to Rome to join with the other princes in giving financial support’. Indeed, this was entirely consistent with James’s March promise to consult ‘both orders of magnates’ in ‘an assembly of magnates’ to discuss a crusade after Easter.162 It is of course  LJV, p. 212.  For Albany’s Governorship: Marie W. Stuart, The Scot Who Was a Frenchman: being the life of John Stuart, Duke of Albany, in Scotland, France and Italy (London, 1940); W. K. Emond, The Minority of James V: Scotland in Europe, 1513–1528 (Edinburgh, 2019). 160  LJV, p. 211. 161  LJV, pp. 223–4; Godfrey, Civil Justice, p. 137. 162  LJV, pp. 211–1. 158 159

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possible that discussions on the crusade could have been omitted from the parliamentary records, but the fact that the meeting was identified as an assembly of magnates suggests this was not a reference to now-lost business of the May parliament. Had James discussed this in parliament surely he would have said so to the Pope. By early June, news of the meeting reached England, where Carlo Capello, the Venetian ambassador, heard that James had left Edinburgh for St Andrews ‘to hold another Parliament, at the request of the Pope’.163 His informant was likely to have been Sylvester Darius, the papal nuncio. Although the report was inaccurate on a number of details, such as the date that the May parliament closed, Darius was presented with a copy of the traditional first act in defence of the Church, augmented with a speech by James.164 He was therefore appraised of what happened in that meeting and is likely to have known when and where James discussed this possible crusade—and he was quite clear this was not in the parliament which had passed the act in defence of the Church. On balance, the evidence suggests that a second meeting which was not a parliament but, rather, a convention attended by ‘both orders of magnates’ which took place between 17 May, when parliament closed, and 27 May, when James wrote to Clement VII offering aid. If Darius was right about St Andrews as the location, then James cannot have been present since he next went there on 27 June.165 It is perhaps most likely that a group from amongst those already gathered for parliament simply stayed behind in Edinburgh after the main session closed. Some jumbled memory of this convention may have remained in the late sixteenth century, since John Leslie averred that in the May 1532 parliament after James had ‘exponit’ his and his country’s commitment to the Catholic faith, ‘thair wes sindre actis and constitutionis maid for punishing of heresies and manteaning of privileges of Halie kirk, quhilkis was published in the nixt parliament’.166 The manuscript records of the 1532 parliament do not record any acts against heresy, although as we will see in chapter 6 it is just possible that the 1525 act against Lutherans was amended in this session. Despite a lack of positive evidence for activities in parliament or convention, both meetings took place in the context of a broader ongoing 163  CSPV, IV, 778. This refers to letters from Scotland ‘in date 28 May’—it is unclear what this translation means but in view of James’s correspondence cited below, it seems likely this means date of receipt. 164  RPS, 1532/5. Date accessed: 6 September 2020; NRS CS6/1 f. 24v. 165  Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 401. 166  John Leslie, History of Scotland (Bannatyne Club 1830), p. 146.

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anti-heretical effort since a number of Lutherans were tried at around this time, an occurrence which excited the attention of the Observantine Friar Adam Abel in his near-contemporary chronicle.167 Leslie, therefore, might have been offering a jumbled account of the 1532 parliament, these trials and the convention which met shortly after parliament. Despite such ambiguities, these two ‘new’ conventions offer, as far as we can tell, an example of business being discussed across multiple meetings—as we have seen, in March, James explained to the Nuncio that he was consulting a small group who suggested the larger meeting should be held after Easter.168 Consulting across multiple meetings will emerge as an important part of governmental practice in the following chapters. Our third ‘new’ convention occurred in April 1533 when lord Hume wrote to the council requesting further help in managing the campaign. In response, they proposed to hold a convention ‘of the gretast personagis of the realme’ which would meet on 17 April.169 Twelve were summoned to attend.170 No direct evidence survives for governmental activities on 17 April, although orders to hold wappenschawings issued immediately afterwards may have been in response to a decision by the convention.171 To these three meetings where we have some idea of their activities, we can add a fourth, more elusive, gathering. On 11 July 1541, ‘clos writings to convene the temporal lords’ were distributed.172 In contrast to the ‘clos writings for certane temporale lords to cum to Edinburgh’ sent the previous month, the phrasing here suggests that all the temporal lords were invited.173 There is no evidence surrounding what this group did, potentially, this would have been to consult surrounding relations with England or France since Thomas Bellenden had just departed for the English court, and David Beaton was shortly to embark on a visit to François I and the Queen’s Guise relatives amongst other important continental contacts.174 Considerable discussions surrounding the location of the staple port were  Adam Abel, ‘The Riot or Quheill of Time’, NLS MS 1746 f.117r.  LJV, pp. 211–2, 223–4. 169  NRS CS6/2 f. 153r. 170  NRS E21/26 f. 59r. This assumes the messenger was paid on his return, see pp. 119–20 below for more details on this. 171  If it appeared in order in the council register, we would see this in NRS CS6/2 f.153v; for wappenschawings: NRS E21/38 f. 67v. 172  TA VII, p. 467; NRS E21/38 f. 83v. 173  TA VII, p. 457; NRS E21/38 f. 76v. 174  BL Add. MS. 32,646, f. 170; HP I, p. 76; LJV, p. 427. 167 168

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also drawing to a conclusion at this juncture—we will discuss these in chapter 4—the attendant implications of this for relations with various jurisdictions in the Low Countries may also have required discussion.175 The fifth possibility for a ‘new’ convention is January 1533. On 16 December 1532, a convention attended by thirty-two men had decided that because Scotland was now openly at war with England, the great spiritual and temporal lords of the north and a wider group from the southern shires should meet in Edinburgh on the following 5 January ‘wele boden in feir of war’.176 The ensuing large muster of fighting men was preceded by and incorporated within it meetings to plan the campaign. Although the records of these are incomplete, negotiations with Moray in his capacity as lieutenant appear in the special ‘convention’ layout: we will go through the details of these in the following chapter. Whilst James was present in person to negotiate with his half-brother regarding this position of high trust and deal directly with men who were about to fight for him, by contrast, on 5 January, when the nitty gritty of dividing the tax amongst the burghs was dealt with, the bishop of Aberdeen appeared in his capacity as treasurer and ‘oblist him In the kingis behalf to abyde at the avise of the lordis of counsel’ regarding a land transaction— James was obviously absent.177 Writing shortly afterwards, Adam Abel recalled that in 1533 ‘our king herand the skaith done on the borduris be the inglis men of the bordurs & the quhit cotis he callit his consall for remeid’.178 This emphasis on a special meeting of the ‘consall’ seems to accurately reflect the discussion which surrounded the organisation of this military campaign. Despite wildly differing levels of detail in the records, these conventions were written about by James himself or at least by Scottish clerks: we can therefore be reasonably sure that there were solid plans for an event to take place. To these, we can add whispers and rumours of still more meetings suggested by otherwise unconfirmed English reports. As we consider these, it is important to recall that the English had no equivalent body to a convention: the English ‘great council’, the closest equivalent, had fallen out of use in the reign of Henry VII and, with the exception of some  Below pp. 157–8; LJV, p. 427–8.  NRS CS6/2 f.27r; ADCP, p. 390. 177  NRS CS6/2 f.33v-35r; ADCP, pp. 391–3. The date was originally written as ‘quarto’ but this was corrected to ‘quinto’. The correction is difficult to decipher, but since this follows a 5 December entry (f.30r) this seems the most likely way round. 178  Adam Abel, ‘The Riot or Quheill of Time’, NLS MS 1746 f. 119v. 175 176

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attempts to revive it as an attempt to muster support for royal policy during the dark days of Henry VIII’s divorce crisis, would not reappear again in regular usage until its resuscitation by James V’s great-grandson, Charles I.179 English reports of conventions were attempts to describe an unfamiliar body and some English officials do not seem to have understood the distinction amongst types of Scottish gathering. This further confuses the source material and means we must be especially cautious when working with English intelligence reports. Let us take, for example, the convention which met on 3 September 1532; English intelligence reports, by contrast, claimed that James intended to hold parliament on 6 September 1532.180 Here we might draw a parallel with the papal legate Sylvester Darius’s erroneous description of the May 1532 convention as a second parliament. Both Italian and English observers struggled accurately to describe large gatherings whose membership partly overlapped with parliament and which dealt with important national business. Indeed, the Danish envoy, Peter Suavenius, who was in Edinburgh for the 1535 parliament and recorded a series of council meetings and extra conciliar interlocutions surrounding his mission in the run-up to parliament, eschewed a specific term to describe the parliament in his Latin account of proceedings. Instead, he detailed the procession to the Tolbooth with the King accompanied by magnates and ecclesiastics.181 Returning to our hunt for conventions, this lack of clarity (or perhaps interest) amongst foreign observers means that several large, sketchily described, gatherings mentioned in English spy reports may have been conventions. On 9 July 1534, for instance, English spies reported a gathering of ‘no lesse nombre than twoo thowsand personnes’ to witness the signing of the treaty with England a few days earlier.182 This is likely to have been an exaggeration designed to massage Henry VIII’s ego, but the core of this 179  Peter Holmes, ‘The Great Council in the reign of Henry VII’, English Historical Review 101:401 (1986), pp. 840–62. For the argument of the 1530s revival: Richard Rex, ‘Councils, Counsel and Consensus in Henry VIII’s Reformation’ in Rose (ed.), Politics of Counsel, pp. 135–50. 180  Northumberland to Henry VIII, 3 September 1532, BL Cotton Caligula MS  B I f.132r. For the ensuing war: Richard Hoyle, ‘The Anglo-Scottish War of 1532–3’, appendix to ‘Clifford Letters’, in Camden Society Miscellany XXXI (1992), pp. 23–9. 181  C.  F. Wegener (ed.), Aasberltninger fra det Konelige Geheimearchiv, indeholdende Bidrag til dansk Historie af utrykte Kilder III (Copenhagen, 7 vols, 1852–83), p. 246. 182  Hugh prior of Durham and William Franklin to Henry VIII, 9 July 1534, BL Cotton Caligula MS B VIII f.162r; Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 405.

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gathering may have been a de facto convention. Regardless, the large crowd is a good example of the broader pattern of gathering significant audiences to witness acts that confirmed reconfigured relationships between James and his neighbours or subjects. In April 1537 Harry Ray, a generally accurate English pursuivant then on a mission to Scotland, reported that ‘All the lords, and all other the gentlemen of Scotland, and also the Quene of Scottes, were at Eddenburgh uppon Saturday the xiiij daie of this moneth of Aprill to consult upon their matiers’.183 Ray knew who the Scottish council were—he met with them regularly, including on this very visit—so he was identifying this as something different to a normal council meeting, and the word ‘consult’ suggests this was a discussion based venture as opposed to a judicial event. It is tempting to connect this to the summons for the King’s ‘hamecuming’ issued the previous month, and to suggest that this was a convention of some description preparing for that and dealing with other ‘matiers’.184 Most promising, perhaps, in terms of the quality of the information is a claim that the coronation of Marie de Guise in 1540 would be followed by a convention which was likely to discuss reforms in the Church: the source of this rumour was two of James’s councillors who had met the English border official William Eure at Coldstream.185 We can add to these two reports, as brief as they are frustrating, of unusually large gatherings—one of ‘a greate counsell’ in May 1536 (James was absent at the point they wrote, on 13 May, when the council was already sitting, but, they understood, he was ‘entendinge to bee here on tewesdaye next’—in three days’ time), another a ‘grete assemble’ of unknown people in Edinburgh on 24 September 1540.186 Returning to Scottish sources but looking outwith James’s reign, the late sixteenth-century chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie suggested James ‘caussit the lordis to assembill togither to ane consall haldin at Lawder Kirk’ during the summer of 1542.187 In the context of emerging 183  Harry Ray’s Answer to the Articles of His Instructions, [April 1537], BL Add MS 32646 f.103r; HP I, pp. 46. 184  NRS E21/31 f.24r–25r. 185  Eure to Cromwell, 26 January 1540, BL Royal MS VII C XVI f. 137v. 186  Howard and Barlow to Henry VIII, 13 May 1536, TNA SP49/4 f.123v; Eure to Henry VIII, 4 October 1540, BL Add. MS. 32,646, f. 133; HP I, p. 59. 187  Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First to the ane thousande fyve hundreith thrie scoir fyftein zeir, I, Edited by Æ J. G. Mackay. (Edinburgh, 3 vols, 1899), p. 401.

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war with England, the bare fact of a ‘conventioun or consal’ seems plausible enough, and such a meeting might have granted the tax collected that summer.188 Pitscottie’s claims that this meeting resulted in a row between the gathered magnates and James’s representatives over whether or not war with England was desirable are more uncertain, although, as we have seen, James rarely attended conventions so the idea that the king ‘come nocht himself’ seems plausible. Yet more tentative, Buchanan claimed that a ‘procerum conventu’ or ‘council of the nobility’ met in April 1529.189 John Leslie mentioned a ‘greit conventioun’ but dated it to 16 May—potentially this was the same meeting as Buchanan described.190 Even if only some of these five English reports and two Scottish chronicle accounts described actual conventions, this proliferation of potential conventions suggests a broader political culture in which regular consultation outwith both parliament and council occurred. Cumulatively, we have at least five but perhaps as many as twelve potential conventions to add to the list originally compiled by Hannay. Even acknowledging their existence helps us to reposition James’s personal rule amongst the regimes which immediately preceded and followed it. None of the conventions discussed earlier were included by the Records of the Parliament of Scotland editors in their edition of the parliamentary registers: this was in keeping with their editorial policy to only include meetings where representatives of all three of the estates were present and for which ‘an official record’ survives.191 However, digging a little deeper, we find that some conventions which did not meet this criterion snuck into the RPS edition—in June 1545, only members of the clergy and nobility attended, joined by some lairds; whilst the December 1561 convention had no burgess attendance and only one (nominal) cleric, James Stewart, commendator of St Andrews.192 188  For the tax see: A.  L. Murray, ‘The Exchequer and Crown Revenue of Scotland, 1437–1542’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh, 1961), appendix, pp. 91, 106. See also pp. 211–212 below. 189  George Buchanan, History of Scotland, ed. Dana Sutton, http://www.philological. bham.ac.uk/scothist/14lat.html#32. Accessed 29 July 2021. 190  Leslie, History, p. 141. 191  Gillian H. MacIntosh, Alastair J. Mann and Roland J. Tanner ‘Editorial Introduction: 3. Establishing a new record of Parliament: scope and content’ www.rps.ac.uk: Date accessed: 12 August 2020. 192  RPS, A1545/6/1. Date accessed: 12 August 2020. RPS, A1561/12/1. Date accessed: 12 August 2020.

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This observation is not intended as a nit-picking criticism of the RPS editorial decisions—indeed, the most cursory glance at the footnotes in this book will show exactly how important their edition is! However, such anomalies reveal two important points. First, it highlights the fact that imposing clear modern criteria on what was a flexible and responsive political situation is very difficult and we quickly run into difficulties when we start to try to impose a hard and fast typology on early modern political gatherings. Secondly, the 1545 and 1561 meetings were very similar indeed to numerous gatherings held during the reign of James V. At present, reviewing the list of parliaments and conventions provided by the RPS suggests drastic changes in practice between James’s minority (one great council and three meetings of the estates, all attended by all three estates), his personal rule (no conventions) and Mary’s minority (eight conventions, the sources on attendance for which are poor).193 The increased use of conventions in Mary’s minority apparently survived into her personal rule (two conventions, only one of which was attended by all three estates).194 The RPS editors located the conventions held before 1545 in the register of the lords of council and session, and in the register of the privy council thereafter. This too marks a point of continuity with those conventions of the early 1530s recorded in the register of the lords of council and session (and suggests further meetings may have been noted in the lost secret council register). The identification of similar conventions being held during the 1530s to those in the decades before and afterwards thus suggests considerably greater continuity in practices of government between c.1513 and 1567 than we have hitherto allowed. Returning to the conventions of the 1530s, this overview already allows us to draw some conclusions about their activities. At least two meetings, in November 1530 and March 1532, discussed James’s marriage; both of these were relatively small. Religious concerns were also on the agenda twice—in May 1532 when a possible crusade was discussed (possibly following initial discussions in March) and, if the English reports were correct, a convention tackled questions of religious reform in 1540. Whilst there is evidence for conventions throughout the personal rule, the best evidence and the most frequent incidence of these meetings occurs 193  RPS, A1513/1, A1517/5/1, A1517/10/1, A1522/2/1, A1545/6/1, A1546/6/1, A1547/3/1, A1547/9/1 (also notes October 1547 convention), A1548/2/1, A1549/7/1, A1557/3/4/1. 194  RPS, A1561/12/1, A1566/10/1. Date accessed: 6 September 2020.

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between 1530 and 1533 during the period when James’s regime was occupied by a large raid to the borders, a potential campaign against the Isles, and a war against England. Managing these large-scale undertakings required considerable consultation. This is a point worth emphasising because whilst the connection between warfare and the growth of the state has been well established in a range of European contexts, sixteenth-­ century Scottish historiography has tended to foreground the person of the monarch when seeking explanations for increased central governmental activities and associated state formation with child or female monarchy.195 Yet, in the opening years of James’s personal rule, central governmental activity in fact increased as the monarch grew older. This resulted from James’s desire to assert his authority in the peripheries of his realm, which in turn necessitated consultation to acquire resources, plan campaigns and, in the summer of 1531, publicly witness reconciliation between the regime and its former opponents. For this reason, as we shall see in chapter 5, conventions also played a key role in granting taxes. In this context, the loss of the treasurer’s accounts for the final months of the reign, when Scotland and England once again slid towards war, is especially frustrating, as the 1542 campaign would be a helpful case study to test the correlation between war and increased governmental activities.196 Conventions were thus the preferred forum for dealing with certain subjects. Two of these topics—planning for war and royal marriage—were entirely absent from the extant parliamentary discussions whilst the third, religious reform, as we shall see in the final chapter, only became a major concern for parliament in the final session of the personal rule. Within this, conventions were put to a range of purposes, from making initial decisions to detailed plans. This explains the variations in their size, detailed in Tables A2 and A3 in Appendix A. At their largest, conventions matched, and in some instances clearly outstripped, attendance in parliament: notably the January 1532 convention had much higher attendance (fifty-three) than the parliament of May that year (thirty-eight). In the reign of James IV, ‘general councils’ or ‘considerably enlarged sessions of the royal council’, ranged at about twenty-four to forty-seven.197 During the reign of James VI, meanwhile, attendance at conventions of the three estates

 Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 129–31.  NRS CS7/1/1 ff.1–151 comprises only judicial matters. 197  Macdougall, James IV, p. 191. 195 196

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averaged fifty-three.198 James V’s conventions were thus closely comparable in size to those of his father and enjoyed attendance at the lower end of the range for the meetings of all three estates under his grandson. Evidently, whether a meeting was a convention or a parliament did not make it intrinsically likely to be more or less well attended. Combined with the evidence we have seen for the creation of subgroups within parliament and the committee of the articles which we saw earlier in this chapter, it transpires that  the nature of a meeting had relatively little bearing on whether its discussions were more or less public or private. Indeed, the largest conventions were summoned because a large audience was required. The January 1532 convention, for instance, was needed to give a statement of support for war with England: a small audience would have missed the point.199 Tables A2 and A3 in Appendix A break down attendance at conventions. The most assiduous attenders were the higher clergy many of whom also held royal offices and appear amongst the most frequent witnesses to charters.200 Turning to the nobles, attendance at conventions does not map so closely onto participation in other aspects of the regime’s business. William Graham, second earl of Montrose, and George Leslie, fourth earl of Rothes, were stalwarts of council and convention, but they witnessed few charters.201 Potentially, this type of division of labour suggests their role was less concerned with administrative or legal technicalities, or reflects a need to divide their time between Edinburgh and their own estates. Their frequent attendance at conventions but relatively low witnessing of charters contrasts sharply with Moray, whose absence at conventions is striking for a man who was so integral to the regime—we have already seen him summoned on his own to offer counsel and he appeared regularly as a charter witness. Eglinton too frequently witnessed charters but rarely attended conventions, and the same general pattern is evident for Fleming and Argyll. Despite, therefore, the presence of stalwarts like the chancellor, treasurer, earl of Montrose, or even more humble councillors such as Nichol Crawford, the justice clerk, at conventions, for many magnates who enjoyed a good relationship with James conventions were, perhaps unsurprisingly, not essential. The increasing military concerns  Macdonald, ’Consultation and Consent’, p. 291.  NRS CS5/43 f.140v; ADCP, p. 370. 200  Cameron, James V, pp. 353–5. 201  Cameron, James V pp. 148–50, 353–5. 198 199

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which emerged in 1532 led to an increase in noble attendance as compared to the earlier meetings dominated by clerics, with the January and December 1532 conventions proving highly successful at bringing in men not usually active in central government—notably the lower nobility. Instead, the presence of lower nobility at the largest of these meetings (and in one instance a laird) should give us pause for thought in the context of O’Brien’s characterisation of conventions as ‘private’—conventions offered a mechanism to include individuals who did not enjoy the same type of privileged access to James as the higher clergy, peers and regular councillors.202 Like the great councils of James IV, the burghs were, with one exception in 1536, not summoned to conventions.203 This does not, however, mean that no burgesses were present. Burgess administrators who were members of the council represented a significant group within conventions. For instance, in June 1531 as many burgesses were present as earls.204 South of the border, Henry VII’s ‘New Men’ had facilitated his relations with the towns, and it is probable James’s Edinburgh lawyers did likewise.205 Whilst it is true that the burghs were not being summoned to extra-parliamentary meetings of the three estates in this period, the crown’s need for legally trained administrators ensconced some burgesses at the heart of key political decisions and processes. Looking at the tables of attendance at conventions in Appendix A, it might seem that this group declined in prominence as the personal rule progressed. The difference, however, may not be that stark. From 1533 onwards, we are increasingly reliant on lists of individuals summoned, rather than sederunt lists, to establish attendance. It would have been unnecessary to pay a messenger to summon people already in Edinburgh, such as regular councillors. Bearing this in mind, the apparent fall in attendance amongst burgess councillors is probably a trick of the light caused by the changing nature of the source material.

202  O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament’, p. 156. Lairds were excluded from parliament until after the reformation: Julian Goodare, ‘The admission of the lairds to the Scottish Parliament’, English Historical Review 116.5 (2001) pp. 1103–33. 203  Macdougall, ‘The Estates in Eclipse?’, p. 158. See also: Hannay, ‘General Council and Conventions of Estates’; Chalmers, ‘The King’s Council’, p. 189 (for the decline of the third estate in judicial committees specifically); O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament’, pp. 146–50. 204  NRS CS5/42 f.185r. 205  Gunn, ‘“New Men” and “New Monarchy”’, p. 158.

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Unfortunately, we cannot systematically check this supposition as we would need both the sederunt for the council meeting when a decision to call a convention was made and the list of payments for summons to do so. Lining these up is difficult, but it is possible that both survive for the 17 April 1533 convention of ‘the greatest personages in the realme’, one of the ‘new’ conventions identified in this chapter. A group of nine were present when the decision to call the convention was made on 10 April.206 If the messenger was paid on his return from issuing summons, then the payments made on 19 April for summoning twelve men to ‘a convention’ may well relate to the slightly earlier 17 April meeting.207 Adding those present when the convention was planned to those summoned gives an overall figure of twenty-one, comprising one archbishop, six bishops, three earls, the prior of St Andrews, three abbots, two lords and five administrators who held royal offices or were senators of the college of justice. Whilst this fits the avowed desire to summon ‘prelatis, baronis and utheris’, for a convention designed to be of ‘the greast personageis of the realme’ this attendance list seems underwhelming. Assuming that the men who organised a convention did not need to be summoned but were expected to attend produces hypothetical invitation lists in the mid-­ twenties for the May and September 1533 conventions and of forty for that of 1536, bringing the numbers more (although not completely) into line with the conventions of 1531–2.

James V: Not a Meetings Man Whilst many important magnates, prelates and administrators thus devoted considerable time to attending these conventions, with the exception of the January 1533 convention, there is no positive evidence James attended, and some circumstantial evidence to suggest he did not. This absence from the deliberative portions of meetings seems to be part of a broader picture. We know very little about what happened in the committee of the articles in this period, but a series of marginal notes on the 1535 session suggest that articles were referred to James—this in turn indicates he was not in the room when discussions were ongoing.208 On another day in the same session, the day when burgess lords of the articles were replaced with  NRS CS6/2 f.153r.  NRS E21/26 f.59r. 208  Blakeway, ‘Reassessing the Scottish Parliamentary Records’, p. 423. 206 207

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councillors, we find an ‘articule proponit be my lord secretare in our soverane lordis behalf to the lordis of the articulis’—again, this implies James was absent.209 Beyond parliament, James only rarely appeared on the council sederunt, and after the start of 1533, traces of his presence are vanishingly rate. During the final years of the minority, James tended to appear on the sederunt for meetings dealing with royal finances or settling major noble disputes.210 In the first year of the personal rule this emphasis shifted to meetings setting up the regime—arrangements for officeholding, but, above all, sessions dealing with the Douglases.211 Thereafter, dates on which bonds were entered by prominent nobles for good rule— such as Maxwell and Argyll—secured a royal witness, as did discussions related to the borders and the entry of royal orders, for example, instructions that no private legal matters should disturb the smooth running of the exchequer.212 Sederunt lists can be unreliable, and it is possible James’s presence was not always recorded.213 Occasional meetings in Holyrood palace or the ‘capella regis’ are also plausible candidates for a royal drop-in since meetings when James was present might also be held in these locations.214 Sometimes James was mentioned as taking a decision alongside the lords even though he was not named in the sederunt, for instance, when noting a decision to summon parliament.215 Sometimes we find something ‘diuisit and concludit’ by James and the lords—when this phrase was used in January 1533, it seems likely James was present since assurance for future good behaviour were given ‘in presence of the kings grace’.216 More usually, though, references to the ‘King and the lords’ deciding something probably represent a process of extra-conciliar royal consultation because even taking these possible instances of royal attendances into consideration, the overall picture is clear: James was not in  RPS, 1535/6. Date accessed: 23 August 2020.  NRS CS5/37 ff. 151r, opp. 168v, 170v, 189v. 211  NRS CS5/38 ff. 122v, 131v, 161r, 167v, 187v. 212  NRS CS5/40  ff . 23r, 69v, 153r; NRS CS5/41 f.92v (for the exchequer), 134r; CS5/42 f. 192r; NRS CS5/43 f. 107r. Given how rare royal attendance was, it is especially vexing when the clerks left gaps for dates when James was present and never got around to filling them in: NRS CS5/41 f.93r-v; NRS CS6/2 f.2r. 213  Blakeway, Regency, p. 72. 214  NRS CS5/39 f.56v; NRS CS5/41 f.155v; NRS CS5/40 f.171r. See n.212 for some examples of James attending in these locations. 215  NRS CS5/42 f.35r; NRS CS5/43 f.184v; NRS CS6/13 f. 212v. 216  NRS CS6/2 ff. 38v, 39v. 209 210

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council very much at all.217 We have more evidence for royal letters to the council—which imply absence even if they were an essential facet of administration—than we have for royal attendance.218 This lack of attendance, particularly at judicial sessions, suggests a different approach to that taken by his father, James IV and his father-in-law François I. During the reign of François I, the lit de justice emerged as an event when the monarch attended one of the regional, or the superior Parisian, courts of parlement in person. For historians working before the 1980s, monarchical attendance at the lits was an exercise in absolutism, designed to allow the monarch to control and curtail the assembly’s activities. However, the lit de justice is now understood as an event which originated not in a desire to cow the assemblies but, rather, that the lits served as a ‘forum for issues such as the succession or to define public law, assemblies wherein the magistrates met to support the will of the King rather than oppose it’.219 Returning to Scotland, Macfarlane noted that following his 1503 marriage, James IV ‘began to take a keener interest’ in the work of the council’s judicial sessions, although his attendance at these declined as warfare occupied his attention towards the end of the reign.220 The fact James IV was noted so often in the sederunts of his judicial sessions suggests that James V’s attendance would have been similarly noted. James V’s support for the college of justice and the exclusion of those who lacked legal training from acting as judges was an extension of the work to improve judicial administration during his father’s regime, yet his own absence from judicial sessions accorded perfectly with the principle that judgement should be given by judges learned in the law which lay behind the college of justice project. 217  This is confirmed by an occasion when James was noted as partaking in a decision, but the council also registered a letter he had sent to them a few days earlier: NRS CS6/13 ff.210v-212v. 218  For some examples: NRS CS5/38 opp. f.153; NRS CS5/39 5r-v, 140v, 155, 172; NRS CS5/40 ff. 114r, 154v, 157r-v; NRS CS5/42 f. 52r; NRS CS6/1 f. 104r; NRS CS6/2 f.93r, 132r; NRS CS6/4 f.14r, 20r-v, 131r, 137r; NRS CS6/5 f.39v, 64r, 112v; NRS CS6/6 f.10v opp. 97, 121v–122r; NRS CS6/7 f.42r, 70v–71r, 161r, 188v; NRS CS6/8 f.78v, 91, 113v, 128v, 138v; NRS CS6/10 f.77r, 159r, 170r; NRS CS6/11 19v, 57r; NRS CS6/13 118r; NRS CS6/16 f.36v. 219  M. P. Holt, ‘The King in Parliament: the problem of the lit de justice in sixteenth century France’, Historical Journal 31 (1988), pp. 507–32 at p. 508; Sarah Hanley, The Lit de Justice and the Kings of France (Princeton, 1983). 220  L.  J. Macfarlane, William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland 1431–1514: the struggle for order (Aberdeen, 1985), p. 423.

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Ironically, James’s absence has helped to create a paper-trail revealing some of the workings of his relationship with the council. Twice in 1534, the chancellor appeared before the council with articles sent by the King. One set concerned the ‘commoun wele of our realm & specially for stanching of slauchteris’, the other the punishment of an apostate friar.221 On another occasion, the King sent a list of articles and the chancellor developed discussion on these by enquiring whether the act of parliament against Lutherans could be implemented without prejudice to the Church or not—the answer was that it could.222 These are occasional examples, but may indicate the origins of other lists of ‘articles’ in the council register—potentially these were drafted in consultation with James then given to the council or convention to discuss.223 In the context of debates surrounding the administrative or advisory nature of the council, it is worth emphasising that these lists of articles took the form of topics for discussion rather than positions to be endorsed or points to agree with. We shall explore some of these lists more in the following chapter, but for now, it is worth drawing a contrast with occasions when the King did simply send instructions to the council, such as in August 1538 when the King wrote to the session explaining that he and the lords ‘being here with us for the tyme’ had decided a new coin ought to be struck.224 The lords in Edinburgh, who remained councillors even as they sat on the session, were on this occasion being instructed to deal with something in James’s absence. This order from an absent monarch (advised, perhaps, by the secret council whose register is now lost, perhaps simply by those of his councillors in the vicinity) to the portion of his council in Edinburgh is comparable with enquiries about the progress of tax collection earlier in the personal rule.225 Whilst on such occasions advisory and administrative elements appear separate, at other times, such as March 1535, when James  NRS CS6/4 f.14r-15r; NRS CS6/5 112v; ADCP, pp. 414, 426.  NRS CS6/4 f.131r; ADCP, pp. 422–4. 223  Similar practice prevailed when James was present in the minority: NRS  CS5/34 f. 192v. 224  NRS CS6/10 f. 170r. For this coinage more broadly: N. M. McQ. Holmes, Scottish Coins in the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, Part 1, 1526–1603 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 2, 5–6. See also: R. B. K. Stevenson, ‘The Bawbee issues of James V and Mary’, British Numismatic Journal 59 (1989), pp. 120–56; Elizabeth Gemmill and Nicholas J. Mayhew, Changing values in Medieval Scotland: study of prices, money and weights and measures (Cambridge, 1995), p. 136; Amy Blakeway, ‘Sixteenth-Century Price Rise: New Evidence from Scotland, 1500–85’, Economic History Review 68 (2015), pp. 167–90 at p. 181. 225  NRS CS5/42 f.4v; NRS CS6/1 f.25r; ADCP, p. 379. 221 222

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wrote to the council agreeing to take their advice surrounding the laird of Scraling and asking them to then implement their own advice, we see both elements intertwined.226 In the second part of the personal rule, when the register was used more consistently by the session than the council more broadly, royal letters continued to arrive surrounding appointments to the session, interventions in legal cases, recording fines received as well as, occasionally, commands to implement royal decisions which required access to governmental resources housed in Edinburgh. There are a number of important points to be drawn from these different types of monarch-council correspondence. First, this constitutes very strong contextual evidence that when James appears to have been absent from a convention he probably was: it was not his usual habit to attend meetings. Secondly, this suggests that James’s approach to acquiring advice was somewhat out of step with the theorists of counsel who encouraged face-to-face discussions and listening to a diversity of viewpoints. James clearly consulted frequently and we catch elusive hints of how this flowed into and around institutions in his letters, and this presumably facilitated a plurality of views reaching the royal ears. However, the reports of what ‘the lords thinkis’ extant in the council register and the few letters we have from the council to James do not incorporate any sense of diversity or debate, only a final opinion. This echoes the formula of the ‘hale estatis spirituale, temporale and commissaris of burrowis, all in ane voce’ and its variants in parliamentary records, and the practice of eschewing signatures on letters from the council in favour of the phrase ‘per dominorum consilii’.227 Elsewhere in the polity we see strong parallels with the concern to inculcate a sense of corporate unity in burgh life which served to bind the whole town to a decision made by only a small number.228 By this period, the importance of securing a diversity of opinions before bringing the process to ‘closure’ with a final royal decision had become a recurrent theme in discussions of counsel.229 These articulations of a shared decision or conclusion achieved something subtly different—the King encountered a collective, considered and settled opinion not the diversity of debate which underpinned it. This affirms the strength of the  NRS CS6/6 opp. 97; ADCP, p. 437.  RPS, 1540/12/8. Date accessed: 25 January 2020. See also A1513/1, 1525/7/55, 1527/8; Blakeway, ‘Privy Council of James V’, pp. 40–1. 228  Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority’, pp. 50–75. 229  Rose, ‘Problem of Political Counsel’, p. 19. 226 227

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corporate identity of the bodies issuing such advice, even as it raises questions which take us beyond the extant sources: why did James prefer this final opinion to hearing the discussion which produced it, and how bound did he consider himself to be by it? The practicalities of this arrangement also raise intriguing possibilities. It is tempting to speculate whether on occasions when James did not appear in person but instead sent someone to speak on his behalf, that the ventriloquising may have emphasised royal authority. It underlined the fact that the King could command obedience even when absent, and that although those he summoned were required to attend a meeting, he himself was not so bound. At a more prosaic level, it draws our attention to the importance of royal administrators. Whoever had the job of bringing letters or articles between monarch and council—notably the chancellor and clerk register—presumably enjoyed an extremely privileged access to the King. That contemporaries recognised the importance of such figures too is demonstrated in a report on the 1536 general council of the clergy penned by the exiled earl of Angus. Angus explained that the King was in Crawfordjohn ‘and send his wrytyn to edynbrowge to the clarge the berers off this writyn was schyr Jamys Hamylton & Nycoll off Crawfurd & Mayster Jamys Ffowlys’.230 In a slightly later context, Jane Dawson has drawn attention to the importance of messengers as individuals who conveyed information orally which went beyond the written text of the missives they carried.231 It is tempting to speculate that the men who brought documents from James had been involved in their creation through a process of informal counsel which preceded the officially summoned and minuted meeting, and that on their return, they offered relevant information additional to the final decision which helped James to understand any divisions amongst ‘the lordis’. If this is the case, then strong parallels can be drawn between James and his much younger English cousin, Elizabeth I, who, Natalie Mears has shown, like many of her male contemporaries relied heavily on small ‘probouleuctic’ groups entirely comprising councillors to help her make decisions.232

 Angus to George Douglas, 24 March 1536, TNA SP49/4 f.104r.  Jane E. A. Dawson (ed.), Clan Campbell Letters 1559–83 (Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 4–5. 232  Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge, 2007), p. 84. 230 231

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Closer to home, James’s intermittent attendance at meetings, especially when placed alongside his use of a council in Edinburgh to facilitate his travels throughout the realm, offers a new perspective on the more established debates surrounding his daughter’s involvement in government. Wormald’s claim that Mary’s attendance record in council was ‘abysmal’ constituted a significant plank of her broader case that Mary was a ‘failure’ as a monarch and was swiftly rebutted by Lynch, who drew attention to the precise arrangements made for a continued council in Edinburgh balanced with the practicalities of a monarch on progress, as well as noting that the comparison point against which Mary was measured was the much later practice of her son.233 More recently, Alexandra Johnston has offered a new approach to Mary’s counsel-taking, emphasising the use of the Queen’s bedchamber as a space where ritualised counsel giving might be undertaken by privy councillors and other members of the polity during French-inspired morning conseils as a significant factor in the success of Mary’s new regime.234 The more slender evidence for practice under James V and the fuller evidence for his daughter’s rule each helps to cast light on the other. First, Mary’s practice of what Johnston identifies as a Valois-style conseil in the bedchamber offers a possible explanation for when and where James was informed about discussion in the council chamber and the lists of articles on which such discussion was based were drawn up. Even if James did not enjoy a full levy in the manner of his father-in-law, François I, the evidence that processes outwith the council chamber were important to how counsel was managed during his personal rule, in turn, suggests that this aspect of Mary’s counsel-taking drew on Scottish practices to which her magnates would have been accustomed as well as what she had witnessed in France. It is also possible that if her magnates perceived any change in practice during her personal rule, it would have been increased monarchical attendance at the institutional 233  Jenny Wormald, Mary, Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure (London, 1988), pp. 116–18; Michael Lynch, ‘Mary, Queen of Scots: a new case for the prosecution’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (1990), pp.  69–73; Michael Lynch, ‘Introduction’, in Michael Lynch (ed.), Mary Stewart: Queen in Three Kingdoms (Oxford, 1988), p. 9. See also: Mark Loughlin, ‘The Career of Maitland of Lethington, c.1526–1573’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 115–17. 234  Alexandra Nancy Johnson, ‘Mary Stuart and Her Rebels-Turned-Privy Councillors: Performance of the Ritual of Counsel’, in Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave, 2018), pp. 161–85.

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council. The principle that the council coexisted with significant royal consultation in the chamber or elsewhere was already well established. Evidently, the partial survival of Arran’s privy council register and the complete loss of Marie de Guise’s (not to mention the lost books of James V’s secret council) mean that comparing father and daughter is a tricky task: not only is our picture of James’s council partial but much of what happened during Mary’s minority remains obscure.235 Even though the answers to some questions remain elusive, the fact that James and a range of other individuals participated so frequently in such meetings affirms their importance to political life, whether they were exercises in persuasion, in consultation, in securing endorsement or a mixture of all of these.

Conclusions Overviewing counsel in the late medieval and early modern British Isles, Jacqueline Rose has observed that ‘an effective ruler could combine small councils and wider counsel, but it took a lot of effort’.236 This chapter has shown that James, ably aided by his regular council, was more than willing to make that effort. The regular council constituted the core of a range of other meetings, all of which, with the possible exception of the occasional meetings of ‘the lords of articles and council’ ultimately derived their authority from the council. Such meetings ranged in size from small numbers joining the council to gatherings the size of a parliament which drew in members of the lower nobility usually absent from national politics. Reflecting their differing roles in particular types of governmental business, conventions took many forms and were described in a range of ways. The fact the regime often consulted through meetings held in a series foregrounds the way in which advice and administration intermingled. The November 1530 convention with which we started this chapter, for instance, made initial decisions then planned for a further convention and parliament the following year each of which dealt with distinct aspects of the larger problem of rebellion in the Isles. Even given this culture of frequent meetings, discussions held outwith such gatherings were also an important part of this process—especially since James attended in person only occasionally. The parallels with the practice of the monarch sending 235  Registers are extant for June 1545–August 1547 and March 1550–April 1554, a set of notes covers 1548–57. RPC I; RPC XVI, pp. 1–16. 236  Rose ‘The Problem of Political Counsel’, p. 32.

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articles to the parliamentary committee of the articles but not attending in person are obvious, but James’s absence also suggests that in certain circumstances, rather than listening to a diversity of voices, the monarch was presented with a summary of a discussion or even a majority consensus. Advice giving, decision making and planning occurred in tandem, working as a process integral to which was a series of decisions surrounding the control of who ought to receive information and when. Conventions provided a space for not only the acquisition of counsel but public statements of loyalty and obligation which served to bind those present to further action. We will examine some of the occasions on which they did so, and flesh out the implications this has for notions of conventions as ‘private’, in more detail in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 3

Conventions of the Lords, War and Wedlock: Public Or Private Consultation?

The opening months of 1531 were a busy time in Edinburgh. Between 8 and 9 January, the capital played host to a ‘ane generale conventioun of all the lords’, when fifteen spiritual lords, fourteen secular lords and eight lords of council were tasked with planning for the coming voyage to the Isles, which they delayed until 15 May.1 In February, the council amended plans originally made in November for the forthcoming parliament, bringing that assembly forward in date from 4 May to 24 April; within days of this decision, commissioners of three burghs were summoned ‘for devising of the Stapill’.2 The third estate duly gathered on 15 March to discuss the crucial question which would determine where and under what terms trade would be conducted.3 When parliament met in April, these discussions were presumably relayed by the representatives of the eight burghs who sent commissioners to feed into the deliberations of the lords of the articles on the same topic.4 The articles also dealt with the technicality of securing a respite from treason for Alasdair Mac Dhòmhnaill, against whom the voyage to the Hebrides had been projected.5 The whole  NRS CS5/41 f. 121v, 154v; ADPC, pp. 345–6.  NRS CS5/42 f.35r [Not noted in ADCP, p. 348]; NRS E21/24 f.36v. 3  RCRBS, pp. 512–13. 4  RPS, 1531/5–6. Date accessed: 24 June 2020. 5  RPS, 1531/7. Date accessed: 24 June 2020 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4_3

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parliament, however, witnessed the formal extension of these summons, delaying Mac Dhòmhnaill’s trial to a future parliamentary session.6 This, by any reasonable standard, was a lot of consultation. It was also carefully planned through. By the time parliament met a wider group of lords had been consulted on the best plan for a military campaign. Having secured wider endorsement of the plan for a campaign the council’s change to the schedule of events—ensuring a trial would be held before any actual military venture in the Hebrides—arranged parliament in such a way as to open the prospect of a negotiated settlement or of gaining still more endorsement of the campaign. Experts, in the form of the third estate, had also been consulted on the staple in their own separate meeting. When parliament met, by witnessing the continuation of summons on Mac Dhòmhnaill, those present were not only appraised of the regime’s intentions but were seen to have been informed about, and, conversely, by their presence, endorsed those plans. Just as the details of planning before parliament were dealt with by the council, within parliament technical matters such as the finalisation of a decision on the staple, were remitted to the smaller committee of the articles. Each of these meetings therefore managed a particular aspect of an enterprise and all played a distinct part in bringing it to a conclusion. The regime used the two conventions to secure specialist advice from the groups who had the most experience to offer and would be most affected by the proposed plans. Parliament’s role was twofold: it served as a court, allowing the treason case to be raised, and provided a forum where this case and other business could be made known and so the regime’s actions legitimised. Looking at the numbers present at these meetings—fifty-one at parliament in April versus thirty-five at the January convention—alongside the division of labour, it would be very easy to draw the conclusion, as Rait did, that conventions were in essence meetings attended by a restricted few which in this period gained ground on parliament.7 This understanding was built on by O’Brien, who ultimately assessed that conventions were ‘private’—and that this distinguished them from the ‘public’ space of parliament.8 In one sense, parliament was indeed ‘public’: it was proclaimed at mercat crosses throughout the land in order that the lieges had  RPS, 1531/4. Date accessed: 24 June 2020.  Robert S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland (Glasgow, 1924), p. 363. 8   Irene O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Glasgow, 1980), pp. 142–178, 158 especially. 6 7

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the opportunity to exercise their right to petition. Conventions, by contrast, were not proclaimed and nor did they have a responsibility to receive petitions. However, the public/private dichotomy which is so crucial to O’Brien’s convention/parliament distinction has, in a slightly different context, come under welcome scrutiny in recent years as Claire Hawes has pointed to the absence of these terms from the contemporary vocabulary, and a concomitant ‘conceptual confusion’ in how they are employed by scholars.9 Clarifying the different activities which took place before an audience—demonstrating authority, giving judgement—versus those which took place without an audience—notably the offering of counsel— Hawes helpfully recentres discussion away from a simple dichotomy based on how many people were aware an event was taking place and instead urges us towards a nuanced examination of the different activities to which different meetings could play host and exploring, within this, who had access to what information. Even so, for Hawes, parliament remained distinct from other advice-giving spaces. Whilst ‘outside parliament the king was free to consult with whomever he chose’, in parliament, the King’s choice of counsellors was constrained.10 Hawes’s observations on the fifteenth century offer an insightful way in to thinking about the progeny of the generation she studied—even though, as we saw in the last chapter, James’s council was more than capable of weaseling its way into the committee of the articles and this meant that even in parliament, the monarch found ways to choose with whom he consulted. This already alerts us to the fact that whilst the date parliament was due to sit was proclaimed and so became common knowledge, some discussions within parliament took place in closed, secret, even ‘private’ circumstances. When James’s regime sought to acquire counsel, as our opening example shows, it did so through specialised groups, whether within or outwith parliament. This might seem an obvious point, but focusing on how this need for not only discreet but informed counsel worked alongside a need to inform subjects of plans or decisions and how this developed across different meetings exposes the limitations of employing a public/private dichotomy in understanding the business of early modern institutions. Building on the scholarly consensus we described in the introduction that James’s council gradually segregated into specialised 9  Claire Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority in later fifteenth-century Scotland’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews, 2015), pp. 78–83. 10  Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority’, p. 163.

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fora in this period, this chapter proposes that a similar notion of specialised advice or sharing information with specific groups is a helpful way of understanding other political developments during the personal rule. The first two sections of this chapter examine the roles that council-­ based conventions played during the period 1530–1, when they helped to  manage domestic military campaigns, and 1532–3, when they dealt with international warfare. The frequency with which conventions were held over these years shows that managing important issues, such as warfare, was dealt with not by single meetings but a series of variously sized events. The largest of these shared information with a wide group, who were required to witness major changes in direction for the regime and so endorse, sometimes explicitly, future activities which followed on from what they had seen. These largest groups did not usually consider questions of how resources would be acquired for these campaigns—although the council did tend to expand to a degree when considering demands for money or service to be placed on subjects. Big gatherings tended to base their discussions on lists of articles and these in turn must have been prepared by individuals (for instance, those military men requesting resources) or smaller groups (which would presumably encompass direct consultation with the King). Smaller groups came into play to consider more detailed questions. Clearly, sharing information—managing who should be told what and when—was central to how conventions were used in this period. Characterising conventions as ‘private’ not only is anachronistic terminology but unhelpfully obscures the distinctions between the different activities undertaken by differently sized meetings and the ways in which they worked in tandem addressing different facets of the same concern. Preparations for warfare, in particular, were undertaken by interlocking groups carefully shaped to witness, endorse or advise as the regime required. Having spent much of the chapter focused on warfare, the final section turns to a different subject: the royal marriage. Whilst most actual discussion of matrimonial possibilities and strategies was located in conventions, approval of the estates retained rhetorical force in James’s diplomatic manoeuvrings—the tradition of parliament registering royal matrimonial contracts and the possibility of arguing from this that the estates in fact gave permission for royal marriages, rather than simply registering agreements after the fact, proved a useful diplomatic tool. Like the management of warfare, therefore, the need to control or disseminate information entailed the use of a range of types of gathering to adapt to different phases in negotiations.

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This all builds on the picture drawn in chapter 2 that James V’s regime was alive to the importance of being seen to take counsel. However, the emphasis on the close management of information and restriction of discussion also recalls another element of statecraft. Late sixteenth-century theorists, inspired by Tacitus, would advance further than saying that counsel ought to be delivered away from listening ears to argue that a successful Prince ought to guard his or her information closely, maintaining the secrets of state—arcana imperii—in shrouded mystery. Famously, James’s much younger first cousin, Elizabeth I of England, invoked this concept to demarcate who had the right to proffer counsel.11 She particularly objected to uncontrolled debate on religious reform and royal marriage, both of which were topics on which James closely restricted discussion.12 Throughout Europe this understanding of the need to control information developed in tandem with an increasing significance afforded to the role of royal secretary, a figure whose rise signalled both increasing bureaucratisation and an increased emphasis on Tacitean ‘reason of state’ statecraft.13 It would be going much too far to claim that a close reading of Tacitus amongst James’s administrators directly informed the preference for smaller and more focused groups of counsellors as opposed to gatherings of the three estates in James V’s Scotland—although it is true that Hector Boece was heavily influenced by Tacitus in the penning of his History.14 Rather, this later sixteenth-century comparison highlights the gap between modern scholarship concerned about ‘exclusion’ or the development of ‘private’ spaces and the more contemporary understanding that information needed to be tightly controlled which went hand-in-hand with an acceptance that counsel should not only be honest but discreet. Going to war was one of the occasions on which such discretion was imperative, and we will now turn to how James’s regime

11  John Guy, ‘The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England’, in Dale Hoak (ed.), Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 292–310 at p. 302. 12  Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge, 2005); Susan Doran, ‘Elizabeth I and Counsel’ in Jacqueline Rose (ed.), The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286–1707 (Oxford, 2016), pp. 163–4. 13  Arnold Hunt, ‘The Early Modern Secretary and the Early Modern Archive’, Kate Peters, Alexandra Walsham and Liesbeth Corens  (eds), Archives and Information in the Early Modern World (Oxford, 2018), p. 109. 14  J. H. Burns, The True Law of Kingship: concepts of monarch in Early Modern Scotland (Oxford, 1996), p. 77.

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managed the competing needs for advice and secrecy surrounding this demanding activity.

Conventions, Council and Rebellion, 1530–1 James’s personal rule began with a military campaign against the borders, and historians have long understood the significance of this venture to his assertion of royal authority.15 As this campaign unfolded, however, the regime also planned for a second venture, likewise to demonstrate crown power, directed against the Western Isles. This would have entailed James taking a sea voyage to the Isles, but the plan was called off at the last minute. Managing these two overlapping military ventures was a considerable undertaking. Some of the details of these events are complex and others are missing, but even so, a pattern emerges of large groups witnessing coercive shows of power or endorsing a position, and smaller groups planning or engaging in detailed negotiations for reconciliation or resources. In practice, this meant that campaign management took place in the council and smaller conventions. This is striking, since James V’s use of conventions as the main forum to plan for and manage warfare shows significant differences from his father’s campaign management. The ‘most urgent business’ of the March 1504 parliament had been ‘the arrangements for restoring royal authority in the Highlands and Islands’ which included the allocation of tasks to Huntly as well as identifying who ought to be issued with a summons for treason.16 Indeed, ‘the last three parliaments of [James IV’s] reign—1504, 1506, and 1509—had as their principal political business the settling of the widespread risings in the Isles’.17 The parliament of 1531 had the crucial job of managing treason cases raised in the context of the campaign against the Western Isles, but neither it nor the assemblies of 1532 or 1533 have left any evidence of advising on or planning for ongoing military ventures. Managing campaigns outwith parliament suggests greater similarities with the 1590s than the 1510s, since Goodare has shown that parliament had shed its traditional function of discussing warfare by the last decade of the century.18

 Jamie Cameron, James V: the personal rule, 1528–42 (East Linton, 1998), pp. 75–7.  Norman Macdougall, James IV (East Linton, 1997), p. 182. 17  Macdougall, James IV, p. 175. 18  Julian Goodare, The Government of Scotland 1560–1625 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 92–100. 15 16

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Certainly, as both campaigns began in the spring of 1530, the regime showed no interest in summoning parliament. Of course, the need for military intervention did not suddenly develop at that time—ironically, the crown’s problems in the Isles arose from the 1528 campaign against Angus following James’s escape from his erstwhile stepfather that summer.19 The third earl of Argyll’s absence from the area as he supported James in the setting up of his regime had created opportunities for other families to assert themselves. When Argyll returned, bearing a commission as James’s lieutenant, he caused further disruption by trying to increase crown rental income. In late 1529 and early 1530, Argyll and, following his death, his son Archibald Campbell, the fourth earl of Argyll, were authorised to lead a short campaign in the area.20 This only enjoyed partial success, since on 22 April 1530 a summons was directed from the council to a group of ‘the tenents of the Islis quhais namis salbe gevin in bil be the erle of argyle’ to come to Stirling, Edinburgh or wherever the King happened to be on 24 May. This was ‘because Alexander Johne Canochstone [i.e. Mac Dhòmhnaill] and his complices, rebellis, hes maid insurrection aganis the kingis grace and committit slauchteris and herschippis’. Once at Stirling, the ‘tenents’ would ‘commoun with the Kingis grace for gud rewle of the Ylis and to charge thaim that thai assist not to or souerane lordis rebellis nor makis na convocatioun of his leigis the meyntyme undir the pane of tresoun’.21 Unfortunately, no payments for summons to individuals were itemised by the treasurer, so it is unclear who exactly was ordered to attend.22 Concurrently, preparations were made for military activities against the ‘rebellis’: proclamations were issued in the west part of Scotland for the fencible men should be ready to accompany Argyll to the Western Isles, western burghs, meanwhile, were to arrange boats and  Cameron, James V, pp. 9–69.  Cameron, James V, pp. 229–30. 21  NRS CS5/41 opp. f. 62v, f. 77r. Unusually for this period, two copies of this decision survive, one a clean copy written into the council register (f. 77r), and the other a loose sheet bearing a number of corrections but endorsed with a notary’s mark and ‘de mandato dominorum’ (opp. f. 62v). The loose sheet version names three more attendees at this meeting than those listed in the council register sederunt—perhaps these men joined the meeting late or left early but were specifically present for the business related to the Isles. The original note is not foliated, so must have been added to the volume at a late stage. ADCP, pp. 326–7. 22  A payment on 25 May to Ormond pursuivant might relate to this if he was paid on his return, if, however, Ormond was being paid before the journey this must have related to decisions made on 24 May: NRS E21/23 f. 26v. 19 20

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victuals.23 This marked the beginning of four years of overlapping campaigns which would occupy the regime until the Treaty of London in May 1534. Cameron considered that this charge had been directed to Mac Dhòmhnaill and his accomplices ‘to appear before the king in Edinburgh or Stirling to answer the charges of insurrection made by Argyll’, an interpretation apparently influenced by the fact that those who came to see James were offered a respite—a safe conduct—for their journey and for thirty days after they had seen the King.24 On closer inspection this requires revision. The language of the quoted passage in fact draws a deliberate distinction between those tenants who were due to ‘commoun’ with the King, and the ‘rebellis’, headed by Mac Dhòmhnaill, whom the royal tenants were charged to ‘assist not’. This, then, was not a summons to the rebels to face the consequences of their actions. Rather, it was an attempt to minimise support for Mac Dhòmhnaill by bringing potential rebels into personal contact with the King before they joined the rebellion, effectively playing divide and rule by luring away Mac Dhòmhnaill’s potential supporters. That support would be secured by allowing them to ‘commoun’— to discourse, or to confer, with, or, perhaps, to advise and counsel—the King on future plans as Argyll began to prepare his campaign.25 This already reveals the political utility of meetings for the regime. The situation in the Western Isles was therefore already complex, comprising not only tension between the crown and its tenants but also between Argyll, both as a representative of the crown and in his own interest as a major magnate, and other landowners. Attempting to minimise potential support for rebellion in the Isles through meetings was particularly sensible at this juncture since the Isles were not the only area of the realm which James’s regime had in view at this time. Between 16 and 18 May 1530, a group of borderers were tried for treason, several of whom, including William Cockburn of Henderland, were convicted.26 It seems likely this excited considerable attention and drew a large audience—certainly, the ‘barons and lairds’ from Fife and Galloway who were s­ ummoned  NRS CS5/41 opp. 62v, 77r; ADCP, pp. 326–7.  Cameron, James V, p. 230. 25  NRS CS5/41 opp. f. 62v, f. 77r. 26  Robert Pitcairn, Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, 1488–1625 vol I part I (Edinburgh, 3 vols, 1833), pp. 144–8. 23 24

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to attend a mysterious ‘convention’ to be held on 14 May must have been aware of the trial and might have remained in Edinburgh for it, although no records remain of their own meeting.27 In the immediate aftermath of the executions a larger group seems to have contracted down in size to a smaller corps of advisors. On 19 May, ‘the kingis grace’ had ‘diuisit’ twenty-two men ‘to sitt apoun such grete matteris as he hes presentlie ado’. They originally numbered eighteen, to which four names—Robert Maxwell, bishop of Orkney, William Stewart, provost of Lincluden, Walter Lindsay, lord St John, and Sir James Hamilton—were added after the main list was drawn up.28 The fact that the original list could be added to and that all of the group could immediately begin business allows us to draw some inferences regarding their appointment. First, it shows that all twenty-two were in Edinburgh when the order was written—how else would they be able to immediately begin work? Secondly, the fact the list was necessary suggests that they were not the only people immediately available: why would a specific group be named if they were the only people present? The fact additions could be made to the list also suggests a degree of choice. Therefore, a larger group must have been present from amongst whom these men were selected. More speculatively, the fact the extra names were appended to a fair copy hints towards a process of advice-­ taking and reflection in finalising the list of councillors after the initial list had been reviewed, but before James appended his signature. Whilst the types of theoretical debates surrounding who had the right to appoint the King’s council which preoccupied English lawyers of the 1520s and 1530s do not seem to have perturbed their Scottish counterparts, this example shows that nevertheless considerable attention was paid the council’s composition.29 Frustratingly, our ability to delve further into this process of selection is curtailed by the fact that no dated entries or sederunts are recorded in the council register between 22 April and 19 May, but the broad contours emerge that a large audience had come to Edinburgh to witness the show  NRS E21/23 f. 26v.  NRS CS5/41 f. 78v, opp. f. 78v. The original note signed by James (opp. f. 78v) is dateless, but the copy in the register (f. 78v) is dated 19 May. The lack of foliation on the original note affirms it was bound in to the register at a relatively late stage. The ink on one of the additions is different, two are squashed into a gap between spiritual and secular lords and two are added to the right of the main list, the hand also appears to be different. 29  John Guy, ‘The Kings Council’ in A.  Fox and J.  Guy, Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500–1550 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 121–50. 27 28

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of crown power which heralded a larger campaign, after which a smaller group was selected from amongst the larger one to manage the details. The fact this ‘secreit councel’ was appointed to manage ‘sic grete matters as the King hes presentlie ado’ may suggest a temporary body, gathered for a specific purpose—in the context of flexible terminology this could mark a revival of late fourteenth-century usage of ‘secret council’.30 These ‘grete matters’ included responding to letters from Eachann Mac Gill’Ethain (Hector Maclean of Duart) and five other important islanders, including Mac Dhòmhnaill’s son, who had sent a message replying to James’s summons.31 The islanders were offered a new date of 20 June to come to James, a deadline that they were required to meet if they wished to ‘eschew his utter indignatioun’.32 To ensure that Argyll would not make ‘ony stop or impediment’ to their journey to the King, two members of his affinity would be entered in ward in Edinburgh castle.33 The council also considered whether James ought to attend the campaign on the borders in person. This raises interesting questions about the level of independent action enjoyed by the eighteen-year-old monarch. As Cameron noted, the whole borders campaign was designed to assert the King’s personal royal authority: however, the fact that James’s personal attendance on the voyage was discussed by a council shows that this was in reality a liminal period regarding the assertion of royal independence.34 Hannay argued that the 19 May meeting was the only one held that month, that its records appeared in several places in the register and that it deferred some of its business until October.35 This claim that business would wait five months before it was revisited suggests a political culture in which consultation was infrequent and plans slow moving. In fact, in May 1530, consultation was semi-constant to keep up with fast-paced plans and several meetings were held. However, we need to pay close attention to the make-up of the council register to find them. The appointment of the secret council on 19 May meant that it was in place when the Isles tenants were due to ‘commune’ with the King on 24 May. Frustratingly, we lack either a sederunt or a full council register entry for  Brown, ‘Kings, Guardians and Councils’, p. 53.  NRS CS5/41 ff. 78v–80r. 32  NRS CS5/41 f. 79v. 33  NRS CS5/41 f. 79v. 34  Cameron, James V, pp. 75–7. 35   R.  K. Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, SHR 20 (1923), pp. 98–115, at p. 103. 30 31

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this date, but careful attention to the manuscript makes clear that both the Isles and the borders were discussed on that day. The portion of the council register of interest to us here begins with the date 23 May, under which is recorded some private judicial business. This runs for two pages, the lower half of the verso of the second of these is blank.36 The blank space is followed by a bond of assurance  dated 24 May and signed by John Campbell of Cawdor, John Campbell of Lundy and James Hamilton of Finnart that they would ensure that two out of four named Campbell lairds would be entered in Edinburgh Castle ‘efter the forme of the act maid of befor’.37 This bond is not included in the nineteenth-century foliation, suggesting that it was originally a loose paper which was later bound into the manuscript at the relevant date. Following this is a copy of the bond, unsigned, which is on a page included in the nineteenth-century foliation, the rest of which has been left blank.38 Evidently, blank space was left in the council register in anticipation of copying in the activities of 24 May. Since the copied bond appears following just over half a page of blank space and is the first item copied in it seems likely that the space immediately before it was reserved for a sederunt list. If this supposition is correct, the amount of space left indicates that this was a well-attended meeting.39 A large audience would make perfect sense given the importance of the bond the group witnessed. As the bond only took up a third of a side of paper and the rest of that folio is blank this suggests that the group accomplished a number of other things which were not copied into the register—or, at least, that there were plans for such activities. On the following page appears an annotated list of ‘ponntis that ar to be advisit in this conventioun’ relating to the borders and the Western  NRS CS5/41 f. 80v–82v.  NRS CS5/41 opp. f. 83r. 38  NRS CS5/41 f. 83r. The signed copy is marked with a small ‘o’. This marginal annotation appears elsewhere in the council registers as a finding aid or, potentially, as a symbol to denote an act should be extracted and copied elsewhere. Its appearance here may mean it was also used on loose papers destined to be copied into the council register: Amy Blakeway, ‘Reassessing the Scottish Parliamentary Records, 1528–1548: manuscript, print, bureaucracy and royal authority’, Parliamentary History 40 (2021), pp. 417–42 at p. 441. 39  For example, a just short of half page sederunt of the session from July 1533 recorded fourteen names but a very elaborate opening date and description of the meeting, in June 1531, forty-six names took up a third of a page but had no opening flourishes. In this context, between c. fourteen (if there was a fancy title) and c. fifty (if the entry made do with a simple date) represents the lower end of likely attendance. NRS CS6/3 f. 3; NRS CS5/42 f. 185r. 36 37

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Isles. The list was annotated and this suggests that this copy in the register was actually used during the meeting at which it was discussed.40 Someone—probably the ‘secret council’ working with the King—must have prepared this in advance of the big meeting. The list of ‘pointis’ is, in turn, blank on the verso and is followed by three modern folios of paper. There is no obvious purpose to these, and it seems possible they were added during the nineteenth century rebind in lieu of sheets which were originally left empty or were heavily damaged.41 If this is correct, it may suggest further business was anticipated but not copied in. After this, under the date 24 May, is a sederunt comprising the chancellor, the bishops of Ross and Orkney, earl of Moray, John Campbell and James Lawson, who heard four private cases.42 The new sederunt was thus being used to distinguish this run of the mill judicial session as a separate meeting from the gathering which had dealt with the bond and the ‘pointis’. To summarise, after the notes from the 23 May judicial session were written up, a number of pages were left blank. These were bookended by the notes for 24 May judicial session and partially filled in by what was effectively an agenda (the ‘pointis’) which was annotated during or shortly after the meeting and, probably at a slightly later point, the bond, the original of which corroborates a date of 24 May for rest of the material on the pages between the judicial sessions of 23 and 24 May. Unless someone had really overestimated how productive that meeting was going to be, the amount of blank space suggests quite a lot of material was never copied in—certainly, the lack of proper date and sederunt is evidence enough that the entry as a whole is incomplete. In making his argument that only one meeting took place in May Hannay suggested the list of ‘ponntis’ which appears amongst the 24 May business was inserted out of order and represented discussions begun by a convention which had met on 19 May and then deferred to a convention to be held in October.43 It is true that the council register often contained materials entered out of chronological order. In this instance, however, the close analysis of the manuscript and texts it contains which we have just undertaken tells us otherwise: the structure of the manuscript securely  NRS CS5/41 f. 84r. This is confirmed by the nineteenth-century foliation.  For this practice elsewhere in the CS record series: Athol Murray, ‘Introduction’ to Alma B. Calderwood (ed.), Acts of the Lords of Council 1501–3 (Edinburgh, 1993), p. xiv. 42  NRS CS5/41 f.88r. 43  Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, p. 103. 40 41

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dates the ‘pointis’ and the registration of the bond surrounding the Campbell lairds to 24 May. Hannay’s claim that business in this list was carried over to October also requires correction. First, the title explains this is a list of ‘points that ar to be avisit in this conventioun’: the list was being produced at the time it was intended to be discussed.44 Secondly, the eight points are accompanied by annotations added in a looser hand employing a darker ink than the main text. Points four to eight were bracketed together and marked with the abbreviation ‘qtur’—this stood for ‘continuatur’, signifying an adjournment of business for future consideration. Since five of the points were specifically carried forward, the purpose of the list as a whole cannot have been to outline future business. Thirdly, the fact the annotations were added to the main list after it was completed suggests this was not a list from 19 May copied out of order. If this list was 19 May business being entered on 24 May, then the decisions made on each of the agenda items would have already been known when the scribe began to copy. They therefore would have been recorded at the same time, in the same hand, with the same pen. The notes show this was a working document and appears in the council register when it was discussed, on 24 May. This technical discussion has taken us a long time, but apart from offering insight into the processes of record keeping, redating and recontextualising the ‘pointis’ to 24 May alongside the bond surrounding the Campbell lairds reveals a process of multiple meetings being held in quick succession. For example, next to the article on whether James should attend the raid ‘in propir person’ is a marginal note explaining it was ‘concludit that the kingis grace sall ryd efter the forme of the act maid of before’. Evidently, the decision on 19 May that James would ride with the host in his own person was confirmed on 24 May. This suggests the composition of the 24 May meeting was different to that of 19 May, and presumably this meant it included people absent from the earlier meeting—hence the large space for the sederunt. The fact that the question of James’s attendance in person was broached again strongly suggests that this was controversial, although whether the second group were invited to revisit the discussion or simply endorse the previous decision is impossible to say. James was eighteen, but his heir was John Stewart, duke of Albany, who was currently resident in France. Whilst acting as governor in James’s minority, Albany had been deliberately kept away from Scotland  NRS CS5/41 f. 84r; ADCP, p. 330.

44

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at the request of Henry VIII, during which period Scotland had suffered from internal tensions and was exposed to English threats.45 It seems likely that concern surrounding James’s potential leadership of the raid on the borders was linked to anxiety that if the King were killed a similar situation would arise: certainly, in 1469, James III had been urged not to attend a military campaign in person on the grounds of his young age and lack of an heir.46 Concern surrounding James V’s personal attendance on campaign recurred when the November 1530 convention discussed whether he would travel in person to the Isles, concluding that James should indeed go.47 This is the latest dated piece of evidence for such a discussion surrounding James’s travel plans in the council register, if this indeed reflects a shift in practice, then we are catching sight of one of the ways in which James gradually assumed full adult powers. In 1540 when James actually embarked on a voyage round the Isles he had an heir, albeit a minor, provisions for whose potential minority were laid out by the King before he embarked.48 No discussions about whether the King himself ought to travel were, however, recorded. On the other hand, when discussing a possible meeting with Henry VIII at York, conciliar concerns were cited as a reason why James was precluded from making the journey south to see his Uncle: this might have been a handy excuse, but it does suggest that the question of James’s safety on voyages or campaigns continued to be discussed later in the personal rule even if this was not so tightly structured or formally noted.49 The annotation confirming James would attend in person is followed by a second marginal note reading ‘all personis to mete ye kingis grace on setterday cum 8 dais at peblis’. This tells us something about the convention’s planning process. On 19 May, an initial date of 30 June had been set for the borders raid, which was supposed to depart from Dumfries. James did not go to Dumfries that summer and next travelled to Pebbles on Saturday 2 July.50 Evidently, the 24 May meeting changed the plans for the 45  W. K. Emond, The Minority of King James V: Scotland in Europe 1513–1528 (Edinburgh, 2019), pp. 102–87. 46  Roland Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: politics and the three estates, 1424–1488 (East Linton, 2001), p. 198. 47  NRS CS5/41 f.118v; ADCP, p. 342. 48  Amy Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 47–8. 49  Blakeway, ‘Privy Council of James V’, p. 36. 50  Andrea Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture at the Court of James V’ (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1997), p. 396.

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borders campaign. The slight delay and shift to Peebles, closer to Stirling, may have been suggested to better accommodate the newly planned 20 June meeting with Eachann Mac Gill’Ethain. The marginal note therefore recorded these changes in plans, and it may also have made provisions for when the third point, ‘how his oist and men salbe diuidit in cumpaneis’, would be discussed. When James arrived in Peebles a proclamation was issued requesting that each landowner should bring James his muster rolls the following afternoon ‘that it may be undirstand to his graice thair numer and furnissing’. The concern to ensure ‘that na lordis men mustur with utheris’ prevented double counting as well as facilitating lords remaining responsible for the behaviour of their men to avoid disruptive quarrels concerning ‘auld feid or for new’.51 Clearly, the information to finally organise the army would only be available once accurate muster rolls were produced—even the best laid plans would require last-minute revision. The undecided points included topics such as how ‘prouisoun and furnesing’ would be made for the army and cross-border arrangements for the transfer of thieves who had fled to avoid trial. Arrangements for provisioning could not have been delayed until the host mustered at Peebles so another meeting or meetings whose records are now lost took place in the interim. Likewise, the ‘forder’ discussion on ‘the matter of the Ilis’ and formulating a response to the ‘last writings’ sent from England on the subject of a meeting of border commissioners were set aside for future discussion.52 This later point may have been related to the fifteen-day visit to Scotland made by John Horslie, an English messenger, in the middle of May.53 Perhaps these continued articles were deemed suitable for a normal council meeting; correspondence with England, for instance, was often on the council’s agenda. It is also possible that some of the points required further specialised discussion, perhaps including liaison with Peebles and other towns where the host was due to pass.54 Although some gaps remain, an overall shape is clear. As rumbles of trouble in the Hebrides grew so loud they could not be ignored James used the prospect of personal negotiation to try to play divide and rule  NRS CS5/41 f. 90v. ADCP, pp. 330–1.  NRS CS5/41 f. 84r; ADCP, p. 330. 53  NRS E21/23 f. 26v. 54  For Peebles and the crown in an earlier period see M.  Brown, ‘The Burgh and the Forrest’, in Jackson Armstrong and Edda Frankot (eds), Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe. Scotland its Neighbours c.1350–c.1700 (Abingdon, 2020), pp. 123–138. 51 52

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amongst potential rebels. Turning to the borders, the show of royal power evident during the trials and executions of 16–18 May was designed for a large audience. From this large gathering, a council of twenty-two was selected. This smaller group, on 19 May, made preparations for the raid to the borders. They may also have been appointed to plan for and form the core of the larger gathering on 24 May which acted as witness to the bond regarding the Campbell lairds, as well as revising and expanding upon the initial decisions made on 19 May regarding the borders campaigns. Some of these details must have been referred on to other meetings—perhaps simply a core of councillors or perhaps involving liaison with interested parties. Although there is no evidence for how consultation worked during the campaign to the borders itself, it certainly continued since the 3 July proclamation claimed that ‘gude rule and order’ would be ‘devisit be his grace and counsell’. Going through the May 1530 example has done more than simply clarify the details of when a convention was held. It has shown the complexity of decision making and planning in this period, ranging from the use of displays of coercive control to frame a course of action to a range of meetings tasked with preparing for different elements of what was, after all, a complex endeavour. It also shows that when James’s regime wanted to move quickly, it could do so, with the whole process from trials to arrival in Peebles taking less than two months. By contrast, plans for the campaign against the Isles followed a much slower pace. James arrived in Stirling from Falkland on 21 June 1530.55 There is no evidence suggesting that Mac Gill’Ethain had in the end met with the King, but either way, by August James’s approach had shifted from negotiating with Mac Dhòmhnaill’s potential allies to dealing with the man he perceived as the chief rebel himself.56 The initial outcome here must have been promising since on 16 September Mac Dhòmhnaill was offered a respite in order to facilitate a personal visit to James before Yule.57 However, the month before the respite was due to expire the November 1530 convention put plans in motion for a voyage to the Isles: this suggests Mac Dhòmhnaill had given an unsatisfactory response and negotiations had broken down.58 This brings us back to the 9 January 1531  Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 396.  TA V, pp. 381–2; NRS E21/23 f. 27v. The submission of James Gordon of Lochinver at this time may also indicate the regime had enjoyed initial success in its negotiations with inhabitants of the west coast. 57  NRS CS5/41 f. 112v; ADCP, p. 340. 58  NRS CS5/41 f. 118v; ADCP, p. 342. 55 56

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convention which we met at the start of this chapter revisiting and refining the decisions of the November convention regarding how the voyage would work in practice. The meeting decided when the army should gather (15 May), who should attend (freeholders worth at least £100 per  annum, each bringing with him two men for each £100 of annual income), clarified exemptions from service (borderers, who were to stay at home and keep good rule unless James wrote to them specifically) and made provisions for how the campaign would be funded (a £5000 tax on the spirituality to be raised on those clerics with benefices worth £100 per  annum or more).59 There is an obvious parallel here with events in May 1530 when a second meeting was summoned and began by confirming an article set out by an earlier, smaller, gathering, which set out the broad contours of a plan, before debating back and forth on the nitty gritty details. These arrangements were further revised on 7 February 1531, when the start date for the voyage was delayed to 1 June.60 Frustratingly, there is no record of who was summoned for this meeting and no sederunt recording attendance. Since there is no gap left for a sederunt, however, this might suggest that attendance was very similar to the most recently recorded sederunt and that the meeting was not considered to be out of the ordinary. Even so, it is also notable that the record of the February meeting was not structured around a series of articles. Rather, the decisions were grouped together as a piece of continuous prose, not a series of responses to specific prompts for discussion. This may simply have been an alternative style of recording, but the continuous prose suggests that decision making had been completed by the time this record was made; this therefore could be a minute of a decision made at another time and place. Either way, it is clear that after the larger January meeting had accepted the broad terms of the plan to have a campaign against the Isles, smaller groups were able to revise the details without such broad consultation. This series of changes also altered the projected order in which the campaign against the Isles and parliament would be held. Initially, the campaign was planned for April, before parliament would meet on 4 May. In January, the order was reversed when the campaign was rescheduled for 1 June, so it would commence ten days after parliament had been held. On 6 February, parliament was brought forward to 24 April, lengthening  NRS CS5/41 f. 154v-155r; ADCP, p. 345.  NRS CS5/42 f. 40r; ADCP, pp. 348–9.

59 60

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the period of time between parliament and campaign, and the council noted that parliament would expressly address ‘the forfaltoure of the rebellis and traitouris of the Ilis [i.e. the Hebrides]’.61 Clearly, having secured a parliamentary conviction for treason before beginning the campaign would have served to legitimise any violence against James’s subjects. In this context, the long period between the issuing of summons and the trial in parliament (five weeks longer than the legal minimum), combined with the considerable gap between the projected trial date and the campaign, and the eventual failure to convict in the April parliament require explanation. The point of this drawn out process, which left ample time between each stage, appears to have been to use the threat of a parliamentary conviction to raise the stakes and so force Mac Dhòmhnaill into seriously negotiating in order to avoid a full-scale campaign. For this to work, it would have been imperative that sufficient time was left at each stage for negotiations. Previously Mac Dhòmhnaill had been invited to come to talk with James: now negotiations with the crown were framed by a summons for treason in the one court in the land which, if he failed to attend, could convict him in absentia. This new threat seems to have worked since on 25 March the council acknowledged James’s receipt of letters from Mac Dhòmhnaill and noted that the King was as a result minded to issue a respite for a personal visit, to endure from 4 to 20 April—in other words, expiring four days before parliament would meet to hear Mac Dhòmhnaill’s treason trial.62 Although neither the council register nor other sources show what happened as a result, some negotiations must have occurred. Mac Dhòmhnaill did not appear in parliament on 24 April, but the regime eschewed the chance for an in absentia conviction in favour of a series of short-term extensions to the date of the trial.63 This suggests that discussions were ongoing outwith parliament but that the rolling series of short deadlines for a trial kept up the pressure on Mac Dhòmhnaill. These were matched by the threat of actual force—although provisions for the campaign had been scaled back the ships did indeed depart for the Isles, only to be summoned to return after Mac Dhòmhnaill submitted to the crown.64 Assuming the ships left as scheduled on 1 June, this suggests Mac  NRS CS5/42 f. 35r.  NRS CS5/42 f. 144v. 63  RPS 1531/7, /10. Date accessed 26 July 2021. These continuations are discussed in more detail at pp. 235–7. 64  NRS E21/24 ff. 44r–46r. 61 62

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Dhòmhnaill finally agreed to submit on or around that day. It is therefore unclear whether the forty-six nobles, leading clerics and councillors in Stirling on 5 June had initially gathered in anticipation of departing on a campaign or seeing Mac Dhòmhnaill make his peace.65 Whilst many of those attendance were drawn from amongst the usual suspects in council, Tables A1, A2, and A3 in Appendix A show that a wider constituency such as James Hay, bishop of Ross, and William Chisholm, bishop of Dunblane, also attended. Ross may have been encouraged to attend these meetings with a concern for the western seaboard of his diocese in mind. Diocesan concerns combined with an interest in the welfare of his clan almost certainly motivated John Campbell, bishop of the Isles, and a member of the Glenorchy branch of the Campbells. Campbell’s only other appearance at convention or parliament during the personal rule was the parliament which declared James’s majority in 1528.66 Campbell resigned as bishop of the Isles in 1532 having never been consecrated, but his successor, Fearchard Mac Eachainn (Ferquhard McCachane), also never came to a convention or parliament.67 After witnessing Mac Dhòmhnaill’s submission, the convention contracted to a ‘secret council’ who met on 6 June.68 The fact this council was described as being ‘electi’ suggests that it had been recently chosen, raising the possibility that once the larger group had witnessed Mac Dhòmhnaill’s submission, a smaller group were selected to hammer out the details. The parallel with the large group witnessing the trials of the borderers followed by the emergence of a secret council in May 1530 are clear. In the summer of 1531, the most pressing issue facing the secret council was establishing how the Isles would be managed now Mac Dhòmhnaill had returned to the King’s peace and his interests needed to be balanced alongside those of his regional rival, Argyll. Tensions in the area had in part arisen when Argyll’s father tried to collect rents from crown tenants, the fact that Argyll had inherited this duty along with his position of chamberlain of Kintyre left open the distinct possibility of  NRS CS5/42 f. 185r. Although the submission is not recorded in the council register the other business that date would not secure such a large audience and the dates strongly suggest the gathering was for the submission. The remission was issued on 8 June: RSS II, 938. 66  RPS, 1528/9/2. Date accessed: 6 September 2020. See also Appendix A Table A3. 67  John Dowden and Thomas J. Maitland, The bishops of Scotland. Being notes on the lives of all the bishops, under each of the sees, prior to the Reformation (Glasgow, 1910), pp. 291–2. Mac Eachainn did, however, sit as a judge on a heresy trial in August 1534: LJV, p. 274. 68  NRS CS5/42 f. 185v; ADCP, p. 356. 65

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f­urther tensions which would disrupt the freshly brokered settlement. On 6 June, Argyll asserted his right to be hereditary chamberlain of Kintyre, but conceded he would relinquish the post temporarily to the comptroller—for a year in the first instance.69 This was a practical way of avoiding conflict with Mac Dhòmhnaill arising surrounding rent collection, as well as a way of the crown asserting direct control over both Argyll and the Isles. The fact the arrangement was only temporary, moreover, left the door for a royal rapprochement—and although Mac Dhòmhnaill subsequently entered returns for his own lands in the exchequer, he did not take Argyll’s job.70 The secret council who witnessed this handover comprised ten royal officials and administrators and two earls, Moray and Rothes— even though Argyll ‘comperit’ to relinquish his rights, he did not appear in the sederunt as a member of council.71 This, however, was not the end of the matter. The following day another meeting was held.72 None of the royal administrators attended and their seats were taken by the earl of Bothwell, lords Livingston and St John, as well as a number of high-ranking clerics. Argyll, as well as Moray and Rothes, appeared on the sederunt. The fact they were not described as a ‘secret council’ and that this term does not recur for some time in the record is intriguing. Potentially this means that the group so described on the previous day were indeed the entirety of the secret council, in which case by far the largest constituent group was the royal administrators who, although possessed of legal or other technical expertise, lacked an ecclesiastical or secular title. However, it may also be that only part of those ‘domini electi ad secretum consillium’ attended on each date, with nobles  NRS CS5/42 f. 185v; ADCP, p. 356.  Cameron, James V, p. 237 (curiously Cameron gave a much more detailed and correct account of the complex situation regarding royal rents on p. 233); Alison Cathcart, ‘James V, king of Scotland—and Ireland?’ in Sean Duffy (ed.), The world of the galloglass Kings, warlords and warriors in Ireland and Scotland, 1200–1600 (Dublin, 2007), pp.  124–43, p. 127. Following Cameron’s references (ER XVI, pp. 291, 344) it is clear Mac Dhòmhnaill rendered accounts but was never described as ‘camerario’ of the area. 71  The full sederunt was: archbishops/bishops of: St Andrews, Glasgow (chancellor), Dunkeld, Aberdeen; earls of Moray, Rothes; lords Erskine, Gray, St John; abbots of Cambuskenneth, Arbroath. Those classed as professional administrators: William Scott of Balwearie (later appointed to the session), Sir James Hamilton, Sir Thomas Erksine (secretary), James Colville (comptroller), Adam Otterburn (lord advocate), Nichol Crawford (justice clerk), James Foulis (clerk register), James Lauson, Francis Bothwell (both Edinburgh burgesses, later appointed to the session). 72  NRS CS5/42 f. 186r; ADCP, p. 357. 69 70

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and elite clerics eschewing days when business would be largely administrative but attending when fellow nobles negotiated with the regime, with the professional administrators following the reverse pattern.73 Regardless, it is clear that whilst a large group had been necessary to witness Mac Dhòmhnaill’s submission, the practical changes which arose from this were driven by smaller groups with membership differentiated on the basis of the task in hand. The group more heavily dominated by members of the nobility which met on 7 June received proposals from Argyll and Moray regarding the rule of the south and north Hebrides respectively, and a detailed agreement with Mac Dhòmhnaill. As Cameron observed, Argyll’s first proposition that he ‘lik as my gudschire and fader payt of befoir’ would render accounts for the lands of Kintyre was an attempt to pedal back from the previous day.74 Argyll did so in a way which was designed to offer assurances that he would not depart from the crown’s broader agenda and which would ensure his own integration in James’s regime. The earl promised to diligently collect royal revenues and ensure that Kintyre’s inhabitants would obey royal summons, but, beyond this, requested that ‘the Kingis grace wald geif command to his counsale that I may consort with thame’ in future discussions on the Isles, since the ‘gret experience’ he and his friends had would facilitate both the punishment of disobedient subjects and the reward of loyal servants. He also requested that two royal servants would be sent to the southern Hebrides, to observe his efforts and, in particular, ‘quhat diligence beis made for the inbringing of the men of the south Ilis’, and, finally, the issuing of a formal commission of lieutenantry.75 Moray’s promises were similar, and he also requested that his counsel should be heard.76 However, unlike Argyll, he did not request that royal servants come to observe his efforts or to be issued with a commission, which suggests that Moray remained confident in his relationship with his half-brother the King. In the end, both sets of offers were rejected and Argyll and Moray alike would later be reprimanded for their continued activities in the area. In Argyll’s case, this signalled a serious, albeit temporary, breakdown in his 73  The group who met on 6 June also heard a private action raised by St Andrews on 7 June, evidently two meetings were held that day. NRS CS5/42 ff.  185v-186r; ADCP, pp. 356–7. 74  Cameron, James V, pp. 233-4. NRS CS5/42 f. 186r; ADCP, pp. 356–7. 75  NRS CS5/42 f. 186r; ADCP, pp. 356–7. 76  NRS CS5/42 f. 186v; ADCP, pp. 356–7.

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relations with James.77 As Cameron recognised, this incident reveals much about James’s relations with individual nobles and, in particular, his desire to assert direct crown control in the Isles. However, it also alerts us to the importance which Argyll, Moray and Mac Dhòmhnaill placed on the council, and how the practicalities of negotiating with James worked. Argyll and Moray made their offers in a meeting of the council for which there is no evidence of James’s presence: presumably they must have anticipated that the results of this meeting would also need to be discussed with James. These lists of suggestions therefore constituted the first phase of trying to reach an agreement. Strikingly, Mac Dhòmhnaill seems to have followed the same process, but by 7 June, this had been completed and the agreement was registered. This explained that ‘It is the kingis grace mynd with avis of the lordis of his counsale that Alexander John Canochsoun [Mac Dhòmhnaill], because he has cumin to our said soverane lord and offerit his service in his maist humile maner, like as in certane articulis gevin in be him to the lordis of counsale tharupoun is contenit’ would be allowed to enter the King’s peace.78 Whilst James had personally accepted Mac Dhòmhnaill’s submission it was the council who considered his list of articles outlining the details of his proposal—just as Argyll and Moray approached the council with their ‘articles’. Last, but by no means least, it was the council who produced and retained the official record of the deal. Technically, there was very little in the agreement between Mac Dhòmhnaill and the crown which was incompatible with the Argyll-Moray plan: Mac Dhòmhnaill was confirmed in the lands granted to him during James’s minority, promised to be personally obedient and to pay his rents, to encourage his neighbours to do likewise and to help the chamberlain of Kintyre to fulfil his job. He would release his prisoners, eschew troubling his neighbours and offer no assistance to the sons of Eoin Mac’ill-Eathain (John McLean) of Lochbuie in their ongoing siege of their father’s house. The rub evidently came from Argyll’s and Mac Dhòmhnaill’s mutual animosity which precluded the possibility they could collaborate on rent collection. This required Argyll to relinquish his office of  chamberlain  of Kintyre, albeit temporarily, from which part of his authority in the area derived. Being appointed as lieutenant and having assurance of a direct voice in council would have reasserted this. Securing his brother-in-law,  Cameron, James V, pp. 233–9.  NRS CS5/42 f. 187r; ADCP, p. 358.

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Moray, as his opposite number in the northern Hebrides would only have bolstered Argyll’s position, especially since Moray’s own offers show he enjoyed considerably more security in his relations with the crown. Considered as a whole, the various plans for the Isles campaign reveal a similar pattern surrounding group size and consultation to the borders campaign 1530. The parallels are not exact, but in both cases, a larger group was summoned to witness a display of James’s power over his subjects—the trial of the borderers and Mac Dhòmhnaill’s submission, as well as his projected trial in parliament—and then contracted to a smaller group described as a ‘secret council’ to manage follow-on activities. On both occasions too, initial decisions were made in one meeting and confirmed in another—our evidence regarding the size of the November 1530 convention versus the January 1531 convention shows a larger group being brought in to endorse the decision of a smaller group and the structure of the gaps in the manuscript suggests that the same took place in the two meetings of May 1530. Finally, just as the council’s role was asserted in proclamations surrounding the campaign in the summer of 1530, when Argyll and Moray sought to continue their military activities in the Isles they saw an important role for the council. Argyll asked James ‘to geif command to his counsale that I may consort with thame’ in arranging future ‘daunting’ activities, whilst Moray, more secure in his relationship with the King, requested that ‘it wil ples the kingis grace and lordis of counsale to use my counsel’. The offer might have been rejected, but both Argyll and Moray had correctly identified how this situation was being managed—through the council.

Conventions, Council and the Anglo-Scottish War of 1532–3 It was fortunate for James that Mac Dhòmhnaill submitted when he did, because by the autumn the prospect of war with England began to occupy his attention. The war of 1532–3 was the only full-blown foreign campaign of the personal rule, and it is therefore our best chance to consider how central government managed international conflict. In so doing, many parallels emerge with the domestic campaigns which we have already outlined. First, however, we need to establish the scope of the campaign. Focusing on the summer of 1532 onwards, Cameron saw the war as distinct from a set of earlier negotiations of 1531–2 surrounding Canonbie,

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a priory located on the north-western edge of the debatable lands. At the same time, he emphasised the extent to which James framed events as driven by the activities of his stepfather, Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus, in England, to the point where James attempted to recast the conflict not as an Anglo-Scottish war but a series of raids all prompted by the Douglas connection.79 By contrast, in the most detailed study of the campaign from an English perspective, Richard Hoyle sees the dispute over Canonbie as an integral part to the lead up to the war.80 Cameron and Hoyle concur that the conflict was small scale and the two monarchs were not fully hands on—James was occupied by other matters for large parts of this period and Henry VIII did not make the journey north at any point. Likewise, both scholars emphasise the English capture of Cawmills in the summer of 1533 as the major event in the war and acknowledge the key role of François I in securing its return and, ultimately, in brokering the May 1534 Treaty of London which brought peace. Even given Cathcart’s welcome emphasis on the co-ordination of Scottish efforts in Ireland as part of the campaign (headed by Mac Dhòmhnaill and Eachann Mac Gill’Eathain of Duart), it is clear that the conflict remained on a far smaller scale than those of the 1520s or the 1540s.81 By shifting focus away from the details of cross border raiding to how James’s regime prepared for this war it becomes evident that although serious raiding only took place in late 1532 and into 1533, preparations for war were underway from late 1531 onwards and the negotiations surrounding Canonbie in that period were an integral part of the build up to war. At first at least, these preparations revolved around carefully managing and gradually releasing the information surrounding the negotiations with England. It is clear James wanted to avoid war and that he took any opportunity given to blame Angus for anything with alacrity. However, we shall see that his own subjects and potential allies abroad were presented with an alternative narrative surrounding a land-grab being made by the English towards Scottish territory. This was a reasonably accurate 79  Cameron, James V, pp. 87, 117–24. Canonbie is visible on the plan of the debatable lands produced during their division in 1552: TNA M.P.F.257. See also: Sybil M. Jack, ‘The “Debatable Lands”, Terra Nullius, and Natural Law in the Sixteenth Century’, Northern History 41 (2004), pp. 289–300; W. Mackay Mackenzie, ‘The Debatable Lands’, SHR 30 (1951), pp. 109–25. 80  Richard Hoyle, ‘The Anglo-Scottish War of 1532–3’ Appendix to ‘Clifford Letters’ Camden Miscellany XXXI (1992), pp. 23–9. 81  Cathcart, ‘James V, King of Scotland—and Ireland?’.

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representation of events in the late summer of 1531 and, happily for James, was an angle which suggested England was the aggressor whilst sidestepping the messy issue of the Douglases. The council, meanwhile, summoned a range of conventions to manage the conflict. The four largest of these, held in January, September and December 1532 and in January 1533 (this latter one as the host gathered), served to secure buy-in or endorsement for military action whilst smaller groups managed more focused plans. There is no evidence that either the 1532 or the 1533 parliament discussed anything concerning the campaign. Throughout the summer of 1531, Scottish and English commissioners had been negotiating on the border.82 The Scots comprised William Scott of Balwearie, John Campbell of Lundy and Thomas Scott of Pitgono joined by Robert Charters, laird of Amisfield, who was probably included to provide local knowledge. By this stage, discussion had become focused on whether Canonbie was actually in the debatable lands or was part of Scotland. The Scots had explained to their English counterparts that, traditionally, Canonbie had been conceived of as within Scottish ground. For example, an indenture dating from 1494 describes the prior of Canonbie, his bailiff and tenants as ‘scotishemen’. This survives in a copy produced in September 1531 by the Scottish commissioners for their English counterparts, endorsed with the observation that ‘t’other parte of this Indenture is in Ingland as we suppose’.83 The English response to this, developed over several months, was that the inhabitants of Canonbie had made payments to the captain of Carlisle as rent, and that the inhabitants did not pay custom in the Carlisle market: in economic terms, they were behaving like English subjects. This allowed the English to suggest that Canonbie was at the least ‘not of scotlande’, whilst beginning to assert Henry’s ‘right’ to the area.84 These English claims were  initially known to few in Scotland. By 3 October, the discussions had grown very tense, with each side insisting  NRS E21/24 ff. 35v, 38r-v; NRS E21/25 f. 42r.   ‘The Copy of the Indenture of Canabe’, [copied September 1531] BL Cotton Caligula MS B VII f.169r-v. I have been unable to locate either the original from which this copy was taken or the English part of the indenture to which it refers. The indenture was, however, part of broader peace negotiations at this time. See: Macdougall, James IV, p. 99; TNA E39/99/78. I am grateful to Professor Cynthia Neville for this last reference. 84  ‘Articles for Canonbie’ [Oct/Nov 1531], TNA SP1/68 f. 7r; ‘Answer to be made by Carlisle herald, in the King’s name, to the king of Scots’ credence declared in writing by Thomas Scot’, [autumn 1531] BL Cotton Caligula MS B VII f. 193r. 82 83

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that the other had not provided adequate responses.85 On that date, a proclamation was issued by the Scots commissioners from Dumfries to the inhabitants of the borders focusing upon the need to maintain the peace and the arrangements for exchange of prisoners.86 This was evidently an attempt to avoid further violence leading to a greater breakdown in relations—but it made no mention of Canonbie. By contrast, on the same date, a set of articles from the commissioners was presented to the council enquiring whether or not the wardens ought to be told that the cause of delay in negotiations with the English was ‘for Cannabe’.87 The council evidently decided the wardens should be informed since they revealed their contents to Bothwell, Kerr of Ferniherst and Kerr of Cessford, joint wardens of the middle march. Notably, even though two of the commissioners were councillors and they were located in relative proximity to the warden of the west march, the wardens were required to make the journey to Edinburgh to discuss matters in the council chamber, a decision which suggests a desire to ensure very tight control of discussions. This gradual sharing of information continued into December, when a number of borderers were summoned to assist the council with their ‘consale anentis writings cumin furth of England’ and ‘certane materis concerning the bordouris’ at a meeting scheduled for 15 December—it is a measure of the seriousness of the situation that James was present when the decision to summon them was made.88 We do not have minutes of the 15 December meeting, but it is likely to have fed into the series of articles which the council ‘proponit’ to lord Maxwell, the laird of Cessford, the young laird of Ferniherst and his brother regarding good rule on the borders on 17 December.89 Following questions ‘sperit’ by the council to establish how diligently the wardens had undertaken their duties, the council and the wardens reached an agreement surrounding the latter’s future activities. The Edinburgh-based council was bringing in  local expertise as it tried to preserve the status quo of avoiding war with England, structuring the discussion around specific points and balancing 85  ‘The answer of the commissioners of Scotland’, 3 October 1531, BL Cotton Caligula MS B VIII f. 44r; ‘A breyf replye by the commissioners of England’, 3 October 1531, BL Cotton Caligula MS B VII f.173. 86  ‘A Proclamation made at Dumfries by the Commissioners of Scotland’, 3 October 1531, BL Caligula MS B VII f. 171. 87  NRS CS5/43 f. 53r; ADCP, pp. 362–3. 88  NRS CS5/43 f. 107r-v; NRS E21/25 f. 50r. 89  NRS CS5/43 f. 129v. For the judicial business that day see ff. 124v–127r.

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this with a careful control of information surrounding what exactly the English commissioners had been saying. Presumably, the council feared that if the possibility of war became common knowledge, then its efforts to avoid provoking a conflict by maintaining order on the border would collapse. In this febrile situation, any such disturbance could hasten open warfare. By the turn of the year, however, the decision had been made to discuss this more widely and a convention was summoned.90 The 26 January 1532 convention of fifty-four was not only the largest of the personal rule but inaugurated a two-year period during which evidence for convention activity is especially high. This was driven by the need for consultation as part of the campaign. Since the convention was only summoned approximately three weeks in advance this high attendance suggests that when the political community was convinced of the seriousness of an issue it could and did move quickly. Although James was in Edinburgh at the time, he did not attend.91 Instead, the ‘chancellar in name of our soverane lord’ explained that the English commissioners had refused to offer redress to Scots dwelling in Canonbie on the grounds that Canonbie was not part of Scotland but rather ‘debatable’.92 The chancellor further enquired on James’s behalf whether the Scottish commissioners should ‘leif the saidis landis of Canobe debatable or nocht’. This would have secured resolution for some of the live disputes on the border, but in setting aside claims for redress from Scots dwelling in Canonbie, the Scots would have tacitly accepted the English suggestion the area was not part of Scotland but ‘debatable’. The ‘hale’ company ‘all in ane voce’ decided that the commissioners should seek redress on behalf of those Scots living in Canonbie and that they would rather ‘sustene the aventour of weir nor to graunt the same debattable’. It is unclear whether the English claims to Canonbie would have been a revelation for the assembled company or not: as the wardens had known since October, it seems unlikely that no rumours of the claims had slipped out. However, revealing new information might not have been the point—everyone who attended the meeting had now not simply found out but had been witnessed receiving the information and responding to it. Moreover, this was recorded in the council register. Whether or not this meeting revealed new facts, the set piece question and  NRS E21/25 ff. 50v-51r.  Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 401. 92  NRS CS5/43 f. 140v; ADCP, p. 370. 90 91

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answer would have served as a powerful way of committing those present to supporting any ensuing campaign—even with ‘aventour of thair lyvis’. With such a large sederunt, it is unsurprising that for a number of those present this constituted their only attendance at parliament or a convention during the personal rule. As the tables in Appendix A indicate, this was especially true amongst the eighteen lords who attended. Attendees probably heard reports from the three commissioners, William Scott of Balwearie, John Campbell of Lundy and Thomas Scott of Pitgono, who were present.93 On their arrival at the convention, these commissioners would in turn have recognised their colleagues Adam Otterburn, James Lawson and Francis Bothwell from the council. Beyond these doughty burgess administrators, however, the only potential hint towards consultation with the burghs in January was the fact that James Scrimgeour, Constable of Dundee had been summoned—in any event, he did not attend.94 Given that the convention was called to discuss the borders, notable absentees included the wardens, Maxwell, Hume and Bothwell, in addition to border lairds such as Cessford and Ferniherst. Cameron suggests that Bothwell missed the meeting because, in the wake of his treasonable offer to serve Henry VIII on 21 December, he feared being placed in ward.95 However, if James had wanted to ward Bothwell and had his intention to do so at the convention thwarted by Bothwell’s absence, it seems likely this would have been followed up. The fact Maxwell, Cessford and Ferniherst, and Bothwell, attended a small meeting in December but were absent from the larger meeting held in January to discuss the same topic helps to clarify why both were necessary. Smaller meetings made practical provisions and allowed informed individuals (in this case the wardens and the borderers) to discuss details with the council. Whilst the larger meeting eschewed the nitty-gritty it served an equally important purpose in not only ensuring a large number of people were seen to have been informed about events (in this case, the situation in Canonbie) but in securing their endorsement of the regime’s proposed course of action (the promise ‘to sustene the aventur of war’). The staged series of meetings meant that the regime had, at least at first, controlled the gradual release of information and, when it finally acknowledged the threat outside the confines of a small council meeting, secured  NRS CS5/43 f. 140v; ADCP, p. 370.  NRS E21/25 f. 50v. 95  Cameron, James V, p. 87. 93 94

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advance endorsement of any military campaign should negotiations break down. Having secured agreement from amongst a large group the members of which had witnessed each other’s consent legitimised government action to defend Canonbie and bound those present to support this. Despite the evident success of this piece of political theatre, it is a sign of how reluctant both James and Henry were to engage in war that actual violence between England and Scotland was staved off for nearly another year. By late March or early April, however, rumours of an Anglo-Scottish war had reached the French court and François I wrote to express his concern about this to James. Although this letter is not extant James’s reply is and he explained that the threat of war had arisen when ‘recently the Scots commissioners were dealing with reparations on the borders, and Scottish subjects sought amends for grave injury done by the English, question was raised about part of the realm, which no one ever doubted was Scottish’.96 Nevertheless, he promised, if his honour and kingdom were intact and his magnates satisfied he would be glad to avoid war. Clearly, the Canonbie dispute constituted an important factor in the deterioration of Anglo-­ Scottish relations and provided a good explanation of the descent into conflict for foreign courts. Although the remainder of James’s extant correspondence from this period does not specifically mention the territorial issue, there are hints that this was also a prominent factor in James’s explanation of the war to the papacy. In April 1533, James indicated to Benedict, cardinal of Ravenna, that he sought a remedy from ‘English aggression’.97 Although the phrase is general, it fits the Canonbie land grab more closely than support for Angus. Meanwhile, in a set of instructions to John Lauder issued for an embassy to Rome, Angus was described as the ‘chief cause of the damage the English have done’, but not blamed for the war.98 Instead, Lauder was instructed to explain that, the ‘most regrettable wars between Henry and James’ were ‘mainly owing…to the archbishop’s [James Beaton, archbishop of St Andrews] intrigues’. The deterioration in James’s relations with Beaton which prompted this allegation will be discussed further in chapter 6, but for our present purposes, this confirms that whilst Angus was identified as crucial to the English campaign, he was not considered to be an actual causus belli.

 LJV, p. 219.  LJV, p. 239. 98  LJV, pp. 242–3. 96 97

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The April 1532 letter to François suggests that James considered war to be a likely prospect. Even so, discussion of war is entirely absent from the May 1532 parliamentary records. In the previous chapter, we saw that a convention of some description was held shortly after parliament attended by ‘both orders of magnates’ to discuss a possible crusade.99 If war with England were discussed at this time, it is likely to have been in the convention. Indeed, James connected the prospect of war in the British Isles with wider consequences, explaining that such a conflict would prove ‘disastrous for Christendom, for the overthrow of which the Turkish despot prepares all his forces by land and sea’.100 In the context of the Scots’ claims to be anxious to depart on crusade once war with England ceased during the wars of independence, and James IV’s skilful deployment of crusading rhetoric to extract taxes and in his attempts to ‘secure peace between the Pope and Louis XII’, it is entirely possible that James V found the idea of a crusade useful but had no intention, in reality, of departing.101 Whether or not James did want to go on a crusade, it is clear he wished to avoid conflict on his southern border. Reports that Maxwell was ‘well mynded’ towards joint cross-border judicial activities in late May and plans for further activities in June affirm that the Scots were attempting to avoid full-scale war.102 Anxiety to avoid war may explain why there is little evidence for domestic discussion of the potential conflict with England until the end of the summer when preparations were increasing on both sides of the border. In August, however, the earl of Angus offered an oath of allegiance to Henry VIII in return for restoration to his lands following a successful conquest of Scotland, as arrangements were made for the English to muster.103 This may have been a cocktail of posturing and flattering designed to bolster Angus’s position in the eyes of his now former brother-in-law, but it nevertheless alerts us to the need to avoid approaching this conflict with the benefit of hindsight—contemporaries did not

 CSPV IV, 778; LJV, p. 211.  LJV, p. 219. 101  Alan Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades (Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 72–4; Macdougall, James IV, pp.  199–210 especially p.  206. Macquarrie suggests James IV may have held a genuine commitment to the notion of a crusade (Scotland and the Crusades, pp. 106–13). 102  Dacre to Henry VIII, 29 May 1532, TNA SP1/70 f. 58r. 103  Hoyle, ‘The Anglo-Scottish War of 1532–2’, pp. 23–9, at 24. 99

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know this war would fizzle out and accordingly they needed to take their preparations seriously.104 By late August, the first indications of serious Anglo-Scottish conflict emerged across the Irish sea, when Mac Dhòmhnaill led a force to Ireland—English spies, late to realise what was happening, reckoned it numbered close to 4000—a figure shortly revised upwards to 7000.105 Preparations on the Anglo-Scottish border began in earnest the following month. We have seen how in May 1530 a number of gatherings were held in close succession to deal with the escalating situation in the Hebrides, and the same thing occurred in September 1532. On 3 September, a convention of twenty-eight issued proclamations for the enforcement of parliamentary acts on wappenschawings and the retention of currency within the realm.106 Within ten days, the need for action had become urgent and orders to be ready to meet James or his lieutenant at Haddington were issued, followed by letters from the council to James and the chancellor, summoning the latter to ‘haist him’ to Edinburgh.107 A few days later proclamations ordered all men between sixteen and sixty to be ready on twenty-four hours warning.108 This suggests that the force summoned was the common army of Scotland, not just those who owed service based on holding lands from the crown, and that if a protracted campaign ensured the army would serve in quarters, the practice whereby the realm would be divided into four and each would serve in rotation.109 Alongside these, letters to five named nobles were distributed, suggesting that planning was beginning to draw in a wider group.

104  For the same point in relation to another conflict: Amy Blakeway, ‘The Anglo-Scottish War of 1558 and the Scottish Reformation’, History 102 (2017), pp. 201–224. 105   Northumberland to Henry VIII, 23 August 1532, TNA SP1/70 f.306v; Northumberland to Henry VIII, 3 September 1532, BL Cotton Caligula MS B I f.132r; Cathcart, ‘James V’; Marcos Balé  and Emer Purcell (eds), Annals of Ulster, U1532.15, https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T100001C/. I should like to thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for her kind advice on the Annals of Ulster; J. R. N. McPhail (ed.), Highland Papers I (Edinburgh, 1914), pp. 61–2; A. MacDonald and A. Macdonald, The Clan Donald II (Inverness, 1900), pp. 524–5. 106  NRS CS6/1 f.110v. For one of the wappenschawings held: William Fraser (ed.), Memorials of the Montgomeries II (Edinburgh, 1859), pp. 118–20. 107  NRS E21/26 f. 47r-v. 108  NRS E21/26 f. 47v. 109  For a summary of the debate on the different types of army: Neil Murphy ‘The Duke of Albany’s Invasion of England in 1523 and Military Mobilisation in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, SHR XCIX (2020), pp. 1–20 at pp. 18–20.

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On 19 September, eighteen people described as the ‘lords of counsell’ discussed a set of articles surrounding correspondence which had recently been received from England.110 Many of these were regular councillors, but the presence of John Stewart, earl of Buchan, who only attended the parliaments of 1526 and 1528 and attended no other convention, and David Lindsay, eighth earl of Crawford, otherwise too busy for conventions and who only attended the parliaments of 1525, 1532 and 1535, suggests that the pool of men in Edinburgh was beginning to broaden.111 The group concluded that a response should be penned to Henry ‘schawand that the kingis grace wes informit that an army wes gaderit in Ingland of wageors and uther bordouraris to Invaid his realm for the quhilk caus his grace with his lordis convenit to provyde defence for the samyn’ and emphasising the Scottish desire for a speedy resolution.112 This suggests that James was involved in preparations in general, but his absence from the sederunt means it is unlikely he was actually present at that moment. Centred around the regular council augmented by men such as Buchan and Crawford who had arrived in answer to the military summons, this meeting offers a good example of a convention taking the form of an expanded council meeting which Hannay considered typical of the period.113 A larger meeting was probably held on 20 September. Although no sederunt survives the activities of ‘The lordis spirituale and temporale of this realme being now present in this toun of Edinburgh’ were recorded in the same distinctive hand and using the same unusual layout afforded to conventions.114 If this phrasing and layout does imply a larger group, this in turn suggests that the drafting of diplomatic correspondence accomplished on 19 September was considered more suitable for a restricted group than the broader domestic preparations for war dealt with the  NRS CS6/1 f. 117r.  This may have begun by 18 September when the hand used for the subsequent articles appears and the same layout is employed, but no sederunt is given: NRS CS6/1 f. 115r. 112  NRS CS6/1 f. 117r; ADCP, pp. 383–5. 113  Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, p. 102. 114  NRS CS6/1  ff. 117v-118r. Following the activities of 19 September, a sederunt of seven dated 20 September appears above some private legal business. This is followed by a much more neatly, spaciously laid out, list of articles. This has no separate sederunt, however, the first article begins ‘the quhilk day’. It seems most likely this was business heard after the legal activities of 20 September. Payment was made to a messenger who had told the laird of Billie to keep his house secure on pain of its destruction and loss of his heritage by 24 September, so the discussion must have concluded before this date: NRS E21/26 f. 48v. 110 111

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following day. Plausible candidates for attendance include Eglinton, Gray, Montrose, Sempill and Yester, who had been summoned a few days previously, alongside those listed on the previous day’s sederunt. However, the repeated emphasis on the fact that decisions were made by ‘the lordis’ suggests that James was absent. This group nevertheless promised to remain with James ‘on to the tyme that this murmur laitlie risin of weir be stanchit and sett doun And sall geif to his grace thair counsel with thair body and guds as accords for resisting of our auld Enemys of Ingland geif ony wald pretend to Invaid this realme’.115 It is tempting to posit that the use of the singular for ‘body’ and plural for ‘guds’ recalls the words spoken by individuals and that this reflects the words of an oath or promise made—presumably a general summary of an agreement amongst those present would use the plural ‘bodies’ to describe the actions of a group. This behaviour recalls the performative promise ‘all in ane voce’ to support the campaign which had been given in January. On both occasions, the open nature of these promises served to bind those who made them to future action—indeed they could be read as a sign of concern within the regime that faced with a long campaign some supporters might begin to slink away. As with the January promise, this also legitimised the crown’s cause by implying that Scotland had not instigated the conflict. First, the promise was explicitly given for support in case the English would ‘invaid’—this was not the same as a carte blanche for James to begin a war himself. Secondly, the campaign was justified as being a response to a rumour of war, a phrase which recalls the response to English letters agreed the previous day whilst suggesting that no sure knowledge of the facts was available in Edinburgh and that, therefore, the origins of this aggression must have lain outwith Scotland. Both the January and September promises constituted an in-principle acceptance that the crown’s cause was just made before what was, certainly in January and probably also in September, a large audience. Making good on their offer of counsel, the group immediately suggested that Moray would make a ‘richt convenient’ choice as lieutenant, advised on the fate of two potentially vulnerable border forts, ordered wappenschawings to be made, and declared that the acts of parliament concerning the use of beacons as a warning system should be implemented.116 Examining these suggestions allows us to glimpse, albeit  NRS CS6/1 f. 118r; ADCP, pp. 383–5.  NRS CS6/1 f. 118r; ADCP, pp. 383–5.

115 116

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incompletely, how far this group was able to act on its own authority and when direct consultation with the monarch was required. The lords ordered previous acts on beacons and wappenschawings to be kept—this was simply arranging for laws which already existed to be implemented so the meeting could do this on its own. Monarchical authority was, however, invoked when issuing an order to the laird of Billie to keep his house securely, since this also threatened that if he failed to do so, the King would order it to be destroyed. On one level, the King’s authority offered added force when subjects were being ordered to destroy property. However, this also implies that some form of discussion had taken place with James about, if not that particular property, how vulnerable houses on the borders ought to be dealt with in general. Arrangements for the house of Ramfald also give this impression. Thomas Scott and James Colville, the comptroller, were told to visit lord Hume and the abbot of Jedburgh and explain to them that ‘the kingis grace is informit’ that the house of Ramfald was close to Coldingham. Hume and Jedburgh were ordered to view Ramfald and endowed with the authority to decide whether it should be destroyed or if provisions should be made for its defence. If they were unable to do so, Scott and Colville, who had served as commissioners to negotiate with the English but lacked direct involvement in managing the borders, were instead to ‘vesy’ the fort, but they were simply to report to the King and council rather than taking a decision themselves. Lacking local expertise, the authority of the whole council, rather than just two commissioners, was necessary, and in both cases, monarchical authority had to be invoked even if James was not taking a hands-on role on the day. By contrast, the advice that James should appoint a lieutenant was handled much more tentatively. The language describing this decision walked a tight line: it was ‘thocht expedient that the kingis grace sal chuse’ a lieutenant, and Moray was suggested for the role ‘gif it pleis his grace’.117 When it came to a proposal which amounted to the direct delegation of royal authority, even though the convention might advise, royal agency and ultimate authority needed to be emphasised. Again, this affirms James was not present and needed to have time to consider the proposal. When Moray’s commission was eventually issued on the afternoon of 12 October, it was in front of an audience of twenty-eight; in contrast, only five had attended the morning judicial session and the previous day six had witnessed lord Fleming’s comperance to take on ‘the rewle & guding of the  NRS CS6/1 f. 118r; ADCP, pp. 383–5.

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sherefdome of peblis’.118 This is yet another example of a large group being gathered not to provide a broader range of advice but rather to witness and so endorse a decision which had already been made. The decision to grant Moray his powers was ultimately attributed to the ‘King and council’.119 This reflects the pattern set in 1528, when the orders from a body described as a great/general/universal council in planning documents were issued ‘from the council’, whilst underscoring the fact that conventions in this period derived their authority from the council, even though they were much larger in size. It also cautions us that the neat formula that the ‘King and council’ had made a decision conceals a range of practices including processes which took place over many stages, encompassing meetings of multiple different groups and consultation with the monarch which took place in a more intimate setting. Once again, we see the flexibility which characterised decision-making groups, their processes, and the terminology used to describe those processes. In both January and September, large meetings were summoned immediately after a significant development which made war with England more likely. The same occurred on 16 December 1532 when a gathering of thirty-seven first recalled the recent raids by the English, concluding that these were of such large scale that effectively the English ‘have declarit opin war’.120 The same unusual layout and different hand was used for this meeting as for the September gathering, and as with the May 1530 meetings, it was demarcated from the session’s business of the same day by using two separate sederunts. Between 12 and 13 December, James had visited Haddington and Lauder to supervise military preparations in person—accompanied by the royal artillery and an army summoned from the surrounding sheriffdoms.121 It is possible that this excursion helped to  NRS CS6/1 ff. 123v,124v; ADCP, pp. 386–7.  NRS CS6/1 f. 124v; ADCP, pp. 386. English reports this happened in parliament on 14 October may be a mistake or reflect when this was proclaimed: Northumberland to Henry, 22 October 1532, TNA SP1/71 f.135v. The letter was separated into two parts and is continued at BL Cotton Caligula MS B VII f.179 (see L&P V, p. 616). 120  NRS CS6/2 f.27r; ADCP, p. 390. 121  Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 403; NRS E21/26 f. 53r. The household books on which Thomas based her study suggest James was in Haddington, the treasurers’ accounts suggest the army gathered to meet James in Lauder. The two are about twenty miles apart and the border is another twenty from Lauder. Since the household regularly undertook the journeys between Edinburgh and Linlithgow (eighteen miles) and Linlithgow and Stirling (twenty miles) in a day, and could journey between Edinburgh and Stirling in a day (about thirty-seven miles, depending on the route, and often with a break at Linlithgow), it seems 118 119

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prompt the decision to move to a full-scale campaign. Since no summons exists for the 16 December meeting, this may be an indication that the group was drawn from those already in Edinburgh following the trip to Haddington and Lauder. They determined that on 5 January, all men between sixteen and sixty from five southern and border shires, ‘substantious’ landowners from shires between the Firth of Forth and the Mounth (the eastern Grampian mountains, just south of the Dee), and the great spiritual and temporal lords of the north would gather in Edinburgh to begin the campaign against England. This summons then combined elements of the common army of Scotland, summoned from the five border and southern shires, with elements of the feudal host drawn from further north.122 The fact only twelve days’ provisions were required confirms this was intended as a large raid, not a long-term campaign. This division of labour within the realm would have required a degree of discussion, but following the January and September conventions and, presumably, further conversations during the trip to Haddington and Lauder, there was little need for a specially summoned meeting to discuss whether or not to begin a campaign. By January 1533, therefore, two meetings had declared their support for the war with England, a lieutenant had been appointed, the common army of Scotland had been warned to be ready for a campaign (but had not yet served), the King overseen military preparations first hand, and provisions were in hand for a longer raid. However, none of this was the same as planning for a sustained campaign and as the army gathered this needed to be attended to. The council register lacks sederunts which match these discussions and at least some of the material is inserted out of order so we need to be cautious. Even so the likely series of events can be reconstructed by arrangements for this tax granted at this time. The proportions each burgh would pay were recorded in the entry for 5 January in the council register, and further administrative business related to its collection appeared on 9 January.123 If the proportions of the tax could be finalised on 5 January, this means the total sum to be paid must already have been agreed. This, in turn, means that Moray’s request for a tax must plausible the main household was based at Haddington and James used this as a base to travel to Lauder. It seems unlikely however that he crossed the border since on 14 December the household returned to Edinburgh and the weather at this time of year would usually have been considered too adverse for campaigning. 122  NRS CS6/2 f.27r; ADCP, pp. 390–1; Murphy, ‘Duke of Albany’s Invasion’, pp. 18–20. 123  NRS CS6/2 ff. 33v–34v, 36r; ADCP, pp. 391–4.

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have been made before this. The partial record of Moray’s request for a tax and subsequent negotiations copied into the council register entries dated between 9 and 14 January must therefore have been inserted out of order. This comprised a list of six articles presented by Moray in his capacity as ‘gret wardane and lieutenant of [the] est and middle marches’ outlining requests for support.124 Each demand was immediately followed by the agreement reached, both copied into the register at the same time: this was obviously a record of the decisions made after discussions had concluded, not minutes on the meeting or original documents. The demands were preceded by a number of blank sheets, the copy of Moray’s list begins with an article numbered two, and there is no sederunt for the meeting. Evidently the record is not only out of chronological order, but incomplete. The articles included a request directed to ‘the kingis grace and his counsale’ and a response made ‘be our soverane lord with the avise of the lordis of his council’. They were followed by other business related to the campaign, including a note of assurances which had been offered ‘in the presens of the kingis grace’ by several parties at feud that they would not initiate hostilities during the military campaign.125 James was clearly highly involved in these discussions. Whilst at first glance, it might seem surprising that Moray had accepted the lieutenancy in October without clarifying important issues such as how many soldiers he would have, this planning for the details of a longer-term campaign as the army gathered for an initial foray reflects what happened with James’s own 1530 border raid. During campaigns some decisions had to be left until the most up to date information was secured. Only one further special large-scale meeting appears to have been held in relation to the campaign, namely a ‘conventioun of the gretest personages in the realme’ for ‘Thursday on pasche week’, 17 April. Whilst its own minutes do not survive, the council’s activities around the time it summoned the convention suggest some possibilities.126 Lord Hume had requested further resources for the campaign in early April and the council arranged for him to have more troops and gunpowder. This, however, was only a temporary response to last ‘quhill his grace be forther avisit’—presumably this advice would have been dispensed at the convention.127 The  NRS CS6/2 f.38r-v. See pp. 206-7 below for the tax negotiations in more detail.  NRS CS6/2 f. 39v; ADCP, pp. 394–5. 126  NRS CS6/2 f. 153r; ADCP, pp. 399–400. 127  NRS CS6/2 f. 153r; ADCP, pp. 399–400. 124 125

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council also mandated the continuation of the existing arrangements for the realm to serve in quarters—since four months had elapsed, the first quarter was now due to serve again—this too was a stop-gap measure until further advice was taken. It seems likely that the completion of one round of quarters and the additional request from Hume raised the possibility of further resources being needed. Whilst the council could meet emergency requests for resources and extend existing arrangements, in order for further resources or longer-term provision to be arranged, it was necessary both to secure a wider range of advice and for this to be relayed to James himself—and this prompted the convention. Placed alongside the decisions made by the September convention and negotiations with Moray, this affirms that when a significant boost to resources was needed, some wider input was sought even if this did not extend to consulting members of all three estates. By May 1533, however, a different sort of consultation was required. ‘Monsieur de Beawys’, a French ambassador, arrived in Scotland to try to broker a peace, this was likely to have been what prompted James to summon the chancellor and ‘laif [rest] of the lordis in Edinburgh’—a phrase which suggests the council—as well as some lords who were presumably elsewhere, for a ‘conventioun’ in Stirling.128 The following month James declared himself willing to acquiesce to the French desire for a truce. On 18 June, proclamations ordered that attacks on English ships and cross-border incursions alike should cease as commissioners were appointed to negotiate for a lasting peace to replace the temporary truce.129 The careful arrangements made in January to raise the realm into quarters and for a tax to obtain further footmen lasted just under six months. In dealing with Hume’s request, we have just seen a very good example of the council managing day-to-day facets of the war. This was entirely typical—the council advised on arrangements for the taking of prisoners, for instance, and on another occasion completed the administration and recording of lord Fleming’s agreement to take responsibility for the good rule of Peeblesshire.130 They also oversaw the management of the army. Moray as lieutenant appears to have been managing the quarters, and the border wardens were also in charge of forces. There was no apparent revival of the level of autonomy accorded to the four magnates appointed  NRS E21/26 f. 61r.  NRS E21/26 f. 63r. 130  NRS CS6/1 ff. 120v, 123v; ADCP, p. 386. 128 129

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to lead a quarter each during Albany’s campaign of 1523.131 The council managed the change-over between quarters, offering approximately three weeks or a month’s notice; tried to incentivise attendance—legal actions at the session would be deferred until ten days after military service had ceased and the act of Twizelhaugh was pronounced.132 This was designed to protect the heirs of those who died in the host by releasing them from the customary fees due to the crown when a minor inherited. These comprised ward, a fee paid when a minor succeeded to lands which came with an obligation to provide military service; marriage, paid to the crown for its approval for such an heir to marry; and relief, due on entry to land.133 The council served as the first port of call for queries from men such as the border wardens Hume and Maxwell—in Hume’s case, a request ‘for supple at the kingis grace’ made its way to the council, Maxwell, meanwhile, submitted his own articles to the council, including making the suggestion that the act of Twizelhaugh should be proclaimed and requesting clarification about when border shires who had served in the King’s army would be available to serve under him as warden.134 Whilst on some occasions, such as with Fleming’s paperwork, the council was acting in a recording and administering capacity, the recurrence of the phrase ‘the lordis thinkis’ throughout decisions related to managing the war affirms that they also offered advice: this was not simply an administrative unit but an advisory council acting with a sense of its own authority. We have seen them being summoned to Stirling for advice as the war draw to a conclusion in May 1533, similarly, on 19 March 1533, the clerk register produced a letter signed by James informing the ‘remnant of the cession beand thar for the time not to depart fra our burgh quhill our command thairto for their advice and counsall to be had’.135 Throughout James’s reign, the Edinburgh-based council facilitated his travels across the realm by acting as a fixed point through which correspondence could

131  Murphy, ‘Duke of Albany’s invasion’. Atholl and Argyll were told to attend with the second quarter, which corroborates the idea neither of them, at least, were leading it: NRS E21/26 f. 57r. 132  NRS CS6/2 ff. 79v-80r; ADCP, p. 396. 133  P. G. B. McNeil (ed.), The Practicks of Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich I (Edinburgh, 2 vols, 1962), p. 254 for an explanation of the basic principle of these payments. For previous versions of the Act see: RPS, A1522/7/1. Date accessed: 28 June 2021. 134  NRS CS6/2 ff. 153r, 79r-80v; ADCP, pp. 399, 396. 135  NRS CS6/2 f. 124v; ADCP, p. 398.

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be managed and English officials put firmly in their place.136 In the context of the 1532–3 war, we sometimes catch sight of the council with James (in Stirling, for instance), but we more usually find it in Edinburgh providing ongoing domestic administration whilst managing the campaign and, as the letter delivered by Foulis shows, providing an immediate point of advice for James without the need to summon a special convention. This facilitated both James and, indeed, senior military commanders such as Moray, travelling elsewhere. The presence of a smaller daily council diligently recording decisions and offering advice meeting alongside, sharing membership with (but, after May 1532, jurisdictionally separate from), judicial sessions may by this stage seem too self-evident a point to be worth dwelling on. However, the activities of this regular council help to clarify what it was that larger meetings were needed for and the circumstances which required them. As we have seen, the council expanded beyond its usual core when it needed to decide on the individuals involved in, date and location of a campaign, even though in some circumstances, these might later be tweaked by a smaller group. Such meetings were based around lists of articles. These sometimes came from men like Moray or Hume relating to their military roles, but on other occasions is likely smaller groups drew these up working with James or at least seeking his approval on drafts. Larger meetings were often summoned when resources were required, although there is no evidence of consultation before the April 1530 order to the burghs to provide ships for Argyll, likewise, who exactly consulted with Moray in January 1533 remains elusive. Most importantly, however, the largest meetings served to share information with and so secure endorsement from a larger group. How far these groups offered advice is unknown, but it is clear that their act of witnessing a resolution or agreeing to a course of action served to legitimise or endorse what they had observed. Despite this widespread use of consultative groups, one facet of the 1532–3 war did not pass before council or convention, namely, the activities of Mac Dhòmhnaill and his confederates in Ireland. These raids were an important part of the Scottish campaign and their successes included the capture of the English ship the Mary Willoughby in 1533—James visited the west coast in person to inspect the prize.137 Between his submission in 1531 and return to rebellion in 1535–6, Mac Dhòmhnaill’s  Blakeway, ‘Privy Council’.  Cameron, James V, p. 235; Cathcart, ‘James V’, pp. 128–9.

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prominence in the Isles (which did not extend to helping crown officials) nevertheless helped to contain Argyll’s power there.138 Indeed, the fact Argyll was specifically ordered to serve in a quarter at the same time as Mac Dhòmhnaill was summoned to come to the King to discuss his own campaign suggests that Argyll was being deliberately incorporated into the main army to keep him away from Mac Dhòmhnaill’s ventures.139 It seems probable that we know so little about any interaction between Mac Dhòmhnaill and James V as a result of deliberate secrecy surrounding their discussions. In a letter designed to explain why his own spies had failed to gain information on the Scottish soldiers who had just arrived in Ireland, Henry Percy, sixth earl of Northumberland emphasised the secrecy surrounding James’s dealings with the Irish. The flustered English official reckoned that Mac Dhòmhnaill’s activities in Ireland had been agreed in ‘secret articles’ to which only Gavin Dunbar, archbishop of Glasgow, William Stewart, bishop of Aberdeen, Henry Kemp and Davy Wood were privy. Subsequent correspondence with Ireland, he ruefully concluded, was likewise ‘verye secrete’.140 Glasgow and Aberdeen were chancellor and treasurer respectively, and it is likely ‘Davey Wood’ was David Wood of Craig, who in this period was the Master Lardner, but received the comptrollership in 1539.141 Henry Kemp of Thomaston was a cupbearer in the royal household (a role also held by Oliver Sinclair, whose proximity to James is well known) and Yeoman of the chamber, and was amongst those who witnessed James’s alleged testament produced by Cardinal Beaton in 1542.142 If this is accurate information, then James was employing a mixture of his closest councillors and men drawn from the household in his dealings with Mac Dhòmhnaill, which, in turn, suggests the articles agreed between the King and Mac Dhòmhnaill did not arise from a council meeting. Witnessing a document does not necessarily equate to having advised on its contents, and it is plausible that James consulted other individuals before having this drawn up. However, this witness list (if accurate) does suggest that information regarding the Irish aspects of the campaign was very tightly managed and that no wider  Cameron, James V, p. 237.  NRS E21/26 f. 57r. 140  Northumberland to Henry VIII, 23 August 1532, TNA SP1/70 ff. 206v–207r. 141  Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 352. 142  Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 319, 338; Historical Manuscripts Commission Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Hamilton (11th Report, appendix part VI, London, 1887), p. 220. 138 139

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consultation took place. Presumably this was because the crown was allowing Mac Dhòmhnaill to manage a galloglass mercenary campaign which, unlike the venture Moray oversaw, would not require contributions from other subjects.143 Beyond showing that the 1532–3 war occupied James’s government more than we have hitherto realised, our study of James’s early domestic and international military campaigns has revealed patterns surrounding the respective authority of different types of groups and how they related to each other. The largest of James’s conventions witnessed an important decision or show of royal authority (for instance, Moray receiving his commission, the trials of the borderers in 1530 or Mac Dhòmhnaill’s submission in June 1531). On these occasions, the larger groups served to endorse a decision or course of action already decided upon. Similarly, the highly performative meetings of January and September 1532 when those gathered swore to support the crown in its projected military activities required audiences. This was not about the regime acquiring counsel or information, but about disseminating a message and securing endorsement, either tacitly through witnessing or actively through a declaration. When decisions about the main details of a campaign needed to be taken, such large groups were not necessary, but the council nevertheless sought to swell its numbers. On several occasions immediately after these large groups disbanded, smaller groups, selected, as far as we can tell, from amongst those already present, whose membership was perhaps endorsed by the larger groups, engaged in more detailed discussions or made future plans. It would have been very difficult for those present at the big meetings, or, indeed, those who were at the meetings which suggested or witnessed Moray’s appointment as lieutenant, to subsequently refuse to carry out orders issued by a body or person whose position they had endorsed. Equally, whenever we find a list of articles, it is likely that we are glimpsing the activities of a smaller group in drawing these up for discussion. The parallels with the committee of the articles in parliament are not exact, but the fact that individuals such as Moray or Argyll as well as, presumably, James and a small core of councillors, drew up articles as the basis for discussion amongst a restricted group and the results of these discussions  For the mercenary trade more broadly see: Ross Crawford, ‘Noble power in the West Highlands and Isles: James VI and the end of the mercenary trade with Ireland, 1594–96’, in Miles Ker-Petersen and Steven Reid (eds), James VI and Noble Power in Scotland (London, 2017), pp.  117–135; Seán Duffy (ed.), The World of the Galloglass: Kings, Warlords and Warriors in Ireland and Scotland, 1200–1600 (Dublin, Four Courts, 2007). 143

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would, if appropriate, be considered by a wider gathering does bear some comparison. Of course, endorsing through witnessing did not guarantee compliance—the fact Moray and Argyll continued to harry Mac Dhòmhnaill after they saw him submit is a case in point. Nevertheless, in principle at least this meant that larger groups did not need to oversee every decision made during a campaign: having accepted the war itself was legitimate served as tacit acceptance of future demands the council might make in following through on the ramifications of those decisions. Considering these larger groups meeting nearer the start of a campaign also shifts our focus in terms of understanding how military campaigns were organised. Considerable debate has arisen, for example, surrounding the respective responsibilities of sheriffs versus nobles in raising the host once the decision to hold a campaign had been made, and on the efficacy (or otherwise) of wappenschawings.144 By shifting our focus away from the recipients of orders and their implementation to the meetings which issued them, it becomes clear that (at least in the context of this lengthy build up to war) James’s regime considered managing information surrounding the campaign and securing support to be important activities. Set pieces such as the chancellor’s January 1532 question-and-answer session also raise questions in relation to a later claim made by George Buchanan that the Scottish nobility enjoyed a right to be consulted by their monarchs or, indeed, regents, on military activities and that failure to abide by this ‘custom’ led to almost certain military defeat or, at the least, ignominious withdrawal. Buchanan cited, amongst other disastrous precedents, Albany’s failure to take Wark Castle in 1523, James V’s 1542 campaign which culminated in Solway Moss and the French lieutenant D’Oysel’s failure to consult the Scots sufficiently in 1558—also, aptly, during a campaign around Wark.145 Buchanan’s interpretation of the 1532–3 campaign, however, is straightforward: James was patently in the

144  For a recent summary: Murphy, ‘Duke of Albany’s Invasion of England in 1523’, pp. 20–2. 145  George Buchanan, History of Scotland ed. Sutton, http://www.philological.bham. ac.uk/scothist/14eng.html 18–19, 48–9; http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/scothist/ 16eng.html, 11.

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right when faced with English incursions surrounding Canonbie.146 Buchanan wrote not only with the benefit of some forty years of hindsight but also to argue that Scotland’s monarchy had elective in origins and consequently he sought to show how monarchs acting against the advice of their magnates on what was best for the commonweal reached sticky ends. This in itself is enough to explain his desire to interpret military activities as contingent upon noble support.147 Even so, the practicalities of a campaign would have been easier to manage if the campaign itself was supported or at least considered a legitimate one. Whilst it is tempting to regard the set piece question and answers as attempts to secure endorsement on the regime’s existing position rather than exercises designed to genuinely solicit advice, the fact these were deemed important enough to organise certainly suggests that advice, support and consent were powerful tools in securing legitimacy. Understanding that conventions ranged from large groups designed to bind attendees to action through the sharing of information, making promises and acting as witnesses, to smaller groups offering advice on lists of articles and making practical plans moves our understanding of these bodies in a new direction. It forces us beyond debates treating parliament and conventions as homogenous gatherings which were either ‘public’ or ‘private’, and questions on whether or not the third estate attended. It is instead more helpful to conceptualise differently constituted meetings as appropriate for different types of activities, and that the big sharing/publicising and smaller advising/planning meetings were often dealing with different facets of the same broader endeavour. The fact the council’s authority could be exercised through different types of gathering helped to create a highly nimble and flexible system of governance designed both to bring counsel in to the crown, and to disseminate decisions and information outwards from the crown to its subjects. 146  George Buchanan, History of Scotland ed. Sutton, http://www.philological.bham. ac.uk/scothist/14eng.html, 36. 147  There is a large literature on Buchanan. For an introduction see: Caroline Erskine and Roger Mason (eds.), George Buchanan: political thought in early modern Britain and Europe (Farnham, 2012); Roger Mason and Martin Smith (eds and trans), A dialogue on the law of kingship among the Scots: a critical edition and translation of George Buchanan’s De jure regni apud Scotos dialogus (Aldershot, 2004); Roger A. Mason, ‘“Usable pasts”: history and identity in Reformation Scotland’, SHR 76 (1997), pp. 54–68; Roger A. Mason, ‘Civil society and the Celts: Hector Boece, George Buchanan and the ancient Scottish past’, in Edward J. Cowan and Richard J. Finlay (eds), Scottish history: the power of the past (Edinburgh, 2002), pp. 95–119.

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Consultation and Royal Marriage Whilst managing warfare occupied the regime intensely from 1530 to 1534, the hunt for a wife for the monarch extended from almost the moment James assumed power in 1528 until 1536, when his marriage to Madeline de Valois simultaneously fulfilled the Treaty of Rouen signed almost twenty years earlier and consolidated James’s position as a leading European player. James’s matrimonial activities are amongst the best studied aspects of his rule, and scholars from Bapst to Kellar have demonstrated how they serve as a weatherbell for Scotland’s changing importance as England, France and the Holy Roman Empire each responded to religious developments and shifting patterns of alliances amongst each other.148 Whilst it is clear that keeping so many matrimonial irons in the fire required involvement from a wide range of individuals ranging from the Duke of Albany in France, to the secretary Thomas Erskine, to the lawyer Sir John Campbell of Lundy, to Sir David Lindsay, Lyon King at Arms, to lesser administrators tasked with drafting persuasive missives and maintaining records, it is not yet so apparent how decisions surrounding these various negotiations were made, or, indeed, who advised the King. Parliament had an important role to play in endorsing agreements surrounding royal marriages: James’s great-grandmother, grandmother and mother had the financial settlements made upon them at the time of their marriages approved by the estates.149 This fits with a broader parliamentary concern surrounding the alienation of royal lands, to which we shall return in chapter 5. Parliament also granted taxes for embassies to negotiate abroad for suitable spouses.150 During James’s minority, the estates approved the appointment of ambassadors to negotiate with England for a marriage as part of a broader peace treaty in 1524, and in 1526 decreed that ambassadors should be sent to France and England.151 In 1521 and 148  Edmond Bapst, Les Marriages de Jacques V (Paris, 1889); Marie W. Stuart, The Scot who was a Frenchman: being the life of John Stewart, Duke of Albany, in Scotland, France and Italy (London, 1940), pp. 257–82; Lorna G. Barrow, ‘In pursuit of the hand of Madeleine de Valois: The European marriage negotiations of James V of Scotland 1517–1536’, in Ahlqvist, Anders and Pamela O’Neill (eds), Celts and their cultures at home and abroad: a festschrift for Malcolm Broun (Sydney, 2013), pp. 15–34 at 15; Clare Kellar, Scotland, England and the Reformation (Oxford, 2003). 149  RPS, 1451/6/3, 1473/10/1, A1504/3/147. Date accessed: 23 August 2020. 150  RPS, 1492/2/7, A1493/5/2. Date accessed: 23 August 2020. 151  RPS, A1524/11/1; 1526/6/38. Date accessed: 23 August 2020.

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again in 1523, the Treaty of Rouen was confirmed by the estates.152 Promises that James’s daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, would marry the Prince of Wales or the French Dauphin were likewise registered by parliament as part of the broader treaties of which the infant Queen’s hand was the crowning glory—as was the December 1543 renunciation of the English alliance.153 In Madeline’s case, the fact she died before parliament could be held precluded her settlement being registered by the estates. It is, however, striking that Marie de Guise’s marriage settlement does not appear in parliament’s extant records, although it is possible that the 1538 parliament, for which very few records survive, could have registered Marie’s settlement. This parliament may also have granted a tax to bring her to Scotland, certainly, the 1535 session granted a tax to support royal wife-hunting.154 In this context, it is clear why the idea of ‘the estates’ consenting to the royal marriage enjoyed rhetorical force and was trotted out fairly regularly as an explanation for taking or eschewing a certain course of action during James’s matrimonial diplomacy. For instance, in May 1529, James claimed to be under pressure from his estates regarding his marriage when he told Albany that ‘les Estats de nostre Royaulme et nostre Conseil’ had been pressing him to get married ‘pour evyter la procreation des bastardz’.155 Given James’s lively interest in extramarital liaisons, an enthusiasm which he shared with many of his higher nobility—including Albany, who had an illegitimate daughter—it is hard to see how this could have been written or read with a straight face.156 However, it probably does reflect a desire to see the King married and the succession secured. Whilst the council could press their case on a daily basis, parliament had last met as a full session in November the previous year, and there is no evidence it petitioned James on his marriage. If Buchanan and the later chroniclers were right in  LJV, p. 52.  RPS, 1543/3/51. 1543/12/31, 1548/7/1. Date accessed: 23 August 2020. 154  RPS, 1535/14. Date accessed: 23 August 2020. For the 1538 parliament see pp. 213, 245-6 below. 155  James V to Albany, 10 May 1529, BL Cotton Caligula MS B VII f. 137r. This is printed in: Bapst, Marriages de Jacques V, pp. 137–8. 156  Elizabeth Bonner, ‘Stewart [Stuart], John, second duke of Albany (c. 1482–1536), soldier and magnate’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 29 Aug. 2021; Peter D. Anderson, ‘James V, mistresses and children of (act. c. 1529–1592), monk and pensioner’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 29 Aug. 2021. 152 153

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pointing to a ‘procerum conventu’ in April or May that year, then this may have been a more likely forum.157 Given the burghs provided funding for the wife-hunting embassy which followed later in 1529 (albeit to support the trade-related aspects of the mission), it was perhaps not too disingenuous to suggest they too were anxious to see the King married.158 On balance, whilst representatives of James’s estates might have indicated a desire to see him married, or offered support for him to achieve this, if any comment on this did indeed pass through an institution the council seems the most likely forum for such requests. Similarly, in January 1535, James suggested that he would summon parliament to discuss ongoing negotiations for a French bride. This occurred in the context of instructions for an embassy to France, which also recalled ‘a contract made long ago with the counsel of the three estates of the kingdom so definite and honourable that James cannot depart from it without their mature deliverance’.159 In other words, this recalled that the 1517 Treaty of Rouen had been confirmed by the estates in 1521 and 1523 and went on to claim that no King of Scots had married without the consent of their estates.160 Whilst it was technically true that parliament recorded a number of marriage contracts, James’s 1535 claim he would summon them to discuss his marriage was disingenuous at best. The 1535 parliament met in June, several months after James said he would consult the estates. This session granted a tax to fund a range of endeavours, of which the marriage was one, but even this was accomplished by the lords of the articles, not the whole assembly.161 The text of the grant made no mention of any particular potential bride, only James’s ‘marriage’ in general terms. Whilst it is possible that parliament discussed the proposed change of bride from a French Princess to a Duke’s daughter, this seems unlikely. Several lines of negotiation were open at this stage 157  Buchanan, History ed. Sutton, http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/scothist/14lat. html#32. 158  R. K. Hannay, ‘Shipping and the Staple, 1515–1531’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club IX (1916), pp. 49–77; LJV, pp. 194, 265–7, 277–8; Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland (Amherst, Mass., 1984), pp.  32, 34; Bapst Marriages de Jacques V, pp. 171–9, 204–29; M. P. Rooseboom, The Scottish Staple in the Netherlands (The Hague, 1910), pp.  46–53. The marriage negotiations within the embassy were not noted by the convention of burghs: RCRBS, pp. 507–12. See pp. 149–151 for more on this. 159  LJV, p. 283. 160  LJV, p. 52. 161  RPS, 1535/8, 14. Date accessed: 23 August 2020.

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and James was already vexed by false rumours about his matrimonial intentions, so it seems highly implausible he would have thrown this open to general discussion which could easily have been reported or misreported in Scotland and beyond.162 If discussion of the marriage did occur in the 1535 parliament, this probably took place on 11 June amongst the hybrid lords of the articles and council group.163 Nevertheless, the claim peddled in 1535 that the three estates had offered ‘counsel’ on the subject of the Treaty of Rouen, rather than simply approving it, suggests that James considered parliamentary approval was at least an effective rhetorical strategy. The Scots probably did not expect François to change his mind about Madeline as a result of being reminded that their parliament had approved the Treaty of Rouen over ten years beforehand. Rather, this allowed James to position himself favourably by suggesting an exceptional goodwill in contemplating a lesser bride, as well as buying time in which he could claim to be arranging consultation. The next set of commissions for marital negotiations were issued almost two months after the full parliament disbanded and six weeks after the last recorded activities of the lords of the articles. These referred to James having received the consent of his great council and advice of his estates.164 James’s personal letter to François simply mentioned discussions in council.165 This may reflect two bodies having differing roles (the estates could only offer advice, whereas the great council had to approve), but the appearance of only the council in the letters to François suggests that the council, not parliament, was the main group involved. The mention of the ‘great council’ and ‘council’ accords with other references to discussion on James’s marriage—in November 1530, Sir Thomas Erskine reported back to a ‘convention of the lordis’ and Albany’s commission to negotiate of 1532 was issued on the advice of a ‘magnum concilium’.166 The council was evidently the main forum for managing the details of matrimonial discussions, on some occasions with a widened or augmented membership. Yet other circumstances could call for the wide sharing of information. In 1533, James wrote to the parlement of Paris mournfully recounting that the failure to secure a French princess for his wife in line with the  LJV, pp. 282, 284.  RPS, 1535/5. Date accessed: 23 August 2020. 164  LJV, pp. 294–5. 165  LJV, p. 296. 166  NRS E21/24 f. 36r; NRS CS5/41 f. 119r; LJV, p. 212. 162 163

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Treaty of Rouen signalled the end of the auld alliance.167 Bapst drew attention to the strange nature of this communication and suggested that this move allowed James to express his real frustration without offending François I by writing to him directly to complain. Equally, James could bank on the fact that ‘les indiscrétions’ would ensure François found out.168 This is plausible, although it is also possible James hoped the parlement would then see fit to apply the type of pressure to the French king which James claimed on other occasions that his own estates applied to him surrounding his marriage. Either way, the pair of letters to François and the parlement shows a sharp awareness of the value of releasing information in a controlled manner. As such, it is entirely compatible with the regime’s general policy of confining discussion of ongoing negotiations which needed to be skilfully kept on course to smaller groups. In negotiating for his marriage, James’s regime was required to balance the competing needs of, on the one hand, controlling information and, on the other, creating an impression that James had taken advice and was on embarking upon a widely approved course of action. Parliament did have an important role to play in registering concluded marriage agreements (usually as part of treaties) as acts, and in confirming settlements on new Queen consorts, although there is no extant evidence it did so with James’s wives. Such activities were alluded to rather disingenuously throughout diplomatic correspondence in suggestions the estates had an advisory role, but in reality, this was only true in the sense that James had members of all three estates on his council. Even grants of taxation do not appear to have afforded an opportunity for policy discussions on who might make a suitable father-in-law: in 1535, this was dealt with by the lords of the articles and James’s marriage was listed as one amongst several ‘gret matteris’ which the tax would expedite.169 Frustratingly, there are no records of discussions surrounding the 1536 grant which funded James’s ongoing visit to France and a further grant in 1538 which funded Marie de Guise’s voyage home. We will see in chapter 5 that these were probably issued in a convention and a parliament respectively. Even so, the timing means the groups who granted these taxes cannot have offered guidance on the marriage negotiations: these were straightforward requests for cash to facilitate a done deal. Different-sized groups enjoying different remits  LJV, p. 236.  Bapst, Marriages de Jacques V, p. 192. 169  RPS, 1535/14. Date accessed: 23 August 2020. 167 168

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self-evidently had different functions. We might draw a parallel with the negotiations for the location of the Scottish staple which we will explore in the following chapter. Whilst these were on occasion said to be parliament’s exclusive prerogative, in reality, they moved across several fora. Parliament’s actual (albeit inconsistently exercised) role in confirming contracts and rhetorical importance was matched with an in-practice preference for smaller groups to undertake discussion.

Conclusions Exploring how consultation on, planning for and management of military campaigns, both projected and enacted, at home and abroad, on land and on sea, during the early part of James’s reign has exposed the complexities of gaining and sharing information, revealing that this was channelled through the highly flexible system of conventions centred on the council but drawing in wider membership amongst the secular and clerical elite, as well as lesser secular landowners. Likewise, different stages of discussion surrounding the royal marriage required groups of different sizes, with larger gatherings being drawn in when a final conclusion had already been reached. Whether dealing with war or wedlock, meetings at which the King sought counsel were closely managed. The variety amongst conventions in terms of size arose from the range of purposes to which they were put. Some of these proffered advice and as such were tightly controlled gatherings designed to facilitate secrecy. Others were summoned to share information: these were large and met after a broad decision had been taken. This type of variety amongst conventions makes it impossible to sustain the claim that as a whole these were ‘private’ gatherings. Moreover, we saw in the previous chapter that just as conventions could be both large and small, meetings within parliament which proffered advice, especially linked to foreign relations, were restricted to groups centred around the royal council. In contrast to these meetings in which counsel was closely restricted, every single doom of forfeiture was witnessed by the whole of parliament, likewise, new laws were, after a process of discussion and debate, read and voted upon by the whole of parliament.170 Moreover, 170  Dooms of forfeiture were read on 5 September 1528 (RPS 1528/9/10–14)—there is no sederunt on that date but since parliament had not been dismissed, all those present on 2 September are likely to have attended (RPS 1528/9/2); the April 1531 parliament was summoned to see Canonchston’s trial, in the event they saw his case continued (RPS 1531/2–4);

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after parliament concluded both laws and forfeitures were proclaimed throughout Scotland.171 The division of labour between large groups witnessing, legitimising and receiving important information and small groups dealing with details or advising was evident within parliament as well as outside it. Here we might compare full parliamentary summons issued for Mac Dhòmhnaill’s potential trial and his eventual reconciliation in a large convention. Both parliament and convention were flexible enough to offer secret counsel and to share information, and at the core of both were groups which closely resembled the King’s regular council. Just as conventions as a whole cannot be considered secretive, small or inaccessible, adroit management ensured that not every space in parliament was open to everyone at that assembly. Having suggested that the traditional public/private dichotomy does not reflect the complex reality of how information was shared and managed across multiple meetings, is there anything with which we can replace it? This range of types of meetings can be better characterised as the creation of specialised forums for specialised discussions. Restricting discussion to those with suitable expertise to offer as opposed to relying on a larger group offers compelling parallels to the better understood process of specialisation with the creation of the session, exchequer and secret council out of the larger council.172 It also bears comparison with Sweden where, during the 1530s, although few national-level quasi-parliamentary meetings took place ‘when necessary or desirable, the council meetings were expanded to include prelates (as upon the occasions of the King’s two weddings) to include noblemen (when issues of foreign and domestic security were to be discussed) or to include the townsmen (when matters of trade were at the fore)’.173 The situation in Scotland was of course not exactly the same, in that conventions of the lords encompassed both the the 1532 parliament reduced a forfeiture (RPS 1532/2, 8); forfeitures took place on 10 December 1540 (RPS 1540/12/6, 36–7, A1540/12/1) and 14 March 1541 (RPS 1540/12/52–3). 171  A.  J. Mann, ‘House Rules: Parliamentary Procedure’, in Keith M.  Brown and Alan R. MacDonald (eds), Parliament in Context, 1235–1707 (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 122–56 at pp. 146–8. 172  Rait, Parliaments of Scotland, pp. 402–3; Murray, ‘Exchequer, Council and Session’, p. 105; Mann, ‘House Rules’, p. 142; A. M. Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland: the Origins of a Civil Court (Leiden, 2009), pp. 106–7; Blakeway, ‘Privy Council of James V’. 173  Herman Schück, ‘Sweden’s Early Parliamentary Institutions’, in M. F. Metcalfe (ed.), The Riksdag: a History of the Swedish Parliament (Stockholm, 1987), p. 43.

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lords spiritual and temporal, and that conventions of burghs did not incorporate councillors (with the exception of the treasurer or any burgesses who also sat on the council). Even so, the group discussing the King’s marriage in November 1530 largely comprised clerics, and the group they, in turn, summoned to discuss military preparations largely comprised nobles. Some similarities, as well as differences, can also be found with Hungary where the King was possessed of not one but three councils: the smallest of the two regular councils advised, its slightly larger fellow dealt with judicial business. The third council, which did not meet regularly, the ‘conseil élargi’, as Dénes Harai described it, comprised between sixteen and forty-six members of the first and second estates, and was summoned for the ratification of treaties and to deliberate on peace and war.174 This was similar in size to Scottish conventions although Harai seems to allow for a greater degree of discussion in these Hungarian meetings than that evident in their Scottish counterparts. Nevertheless, across both countries, the division amongst small and big councils and the need to bring in as many people as possible when moving from peace to war and back again (whether to discuss or to witness) is clear. A more compelling parallel can be observed in the guide to French conciliar practice offered to François I by Claude de Seyssel. De Seyssel delineated three forms a council could take.175 The largest of these, the ‘conseil general’, was to be summoned for the ‘grans & communs affaires du royaume’. Attended by the spiritual and secular lords, on occasions when it was necessary to pass a general law or ordinance a few representatives from the chief towns might be invited. The second, ordinary, council would meet daily when necessary—such as during a war—otherwise about three times weekly. Whilst the nobility should be invited to the general council, the ten or twelve in the ordinary council should, de Seyssel averred, be selected without consideration for birth, but only virtue. From amongst these, a president should be appointed to manage the council when the monarch was absent. Finally, the ‘conseil secret’ would comprise three or four of the ordinary council, including the president. These men 174  Dénes Harai, ‘Le Conseil du Roi de Hongrie (1458–1559)’ in Céderic Michon (ed.), Conseils et Conseillers dans l’Europe de la Renaissance 1450–1550 (Tours, 2012), pp. 243–72 at pp. 259–60. 175  Claude de Seyssel, La grant monarchie de France composee par missure Claude de Seyssel lors euesque de Marseille et a present Archeuseque de Thurin adressant au roy tres crestien francoys premier de ce nom (Paris, 1519), ff. xviiir-xxiv. See also the discussion in Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse, p. 85.

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would discuss matters before they were proposed to the ‘conseil ordinaire’—sometimes secrecy might demand this, sometimes the need to manage conflicting interests. This debate before discussion in the ‘conseil ordinaire’ would also avoid the risk of the prince being swayed by a poor majority decision. The French terms do not map neatly onto those employed by the Scots—the French ‘conseil secret’ referred to the inner ring, whilst we have seen this used to apply to the group of around a dozen in Scotland. There is no obvious Scots parallel term for ‘conseil ordinaire’ (used to describe the middle body), and only some of the Scots terms for large conventions bear comparison to the ‘conseil général’ preferred in France for the largest group. Even so, the parallels in terms of the control of discussion and division of labour between groups are striking. James V’s regime was obviously not alone in seeing the potential in specialised forums or in gradually managing who had access to information and the degree to which differing groups might proffer advice or endorsement on what they heard. In fact, even though every country’s governmental system was distinctive, if we were looking for a ‘normal’ way of managing consultation in early sixteenth-century Europe, the French and Hungarian comparisons suggest that Scotland would offer us an excellent candidate for a case study. For the final four years of his life, James was a happily married man: any need for conventions to discuss his matrimonial prospects evaporated in 1538. The same was not, however, true of campaigns. In 1540, James did actually undertake a three-week voyage to the Isles, and in the summer of 1542, tit-for-tat border raids marked the beginning of a new war with England, yet we have very little evidence for consultation on either of these ventures.176 In 1540, James was accompanied to the Isles by a number of his magnates and most of the royal artillery, and several burghs were required to provide furnished ships.177 However, there is no evidence for special summons for preparatory meetings. This suggests a stark change in practice from the early years of the personal rule. Certainly, much had changed since 1530 and it is unlikely that conventions discussed whether or not James should accompany the voyage in person. One reading of this pattern could build on arguments made in older scholarship on the general decline in ‘public’ business in the council register over the course of the personal rule: as James grew older and stronger he no longer  Cameron, James V, pp. 245–8, 286–313.  NRS E21/37 ff. 66v–71r; Aberd. Recs. I, p. 173.

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considered consultation, or at least consultation in a council and recorded in its books, to be necessary. However, it is plausible that the ‘convention’ planned for immediately after Guise’s coronation discussed the voyage and that last-­minute arrangements may have been made at the new Prince’s baptism.178 Indeed, we might speculate that from 1537 onwards, conventions or more informal consultation might have piggy-backed on dynastic ceremonial events and this may partly explain why evidence for their activities declines in the records. In the case of the 1542 war, we are not helped by archival gaps for the closing months of James’s reign. The final extant treasurer’s account of James’s reign ends on 16 August 1542, a week prior to the battle of Haddon Rig.179 Since, as Table A2 in Appendix A shows, we are reliant on payments for summons as evidence for conventions in the second half of the personal rule, this is a serious loss. Indeed, in both 1540 and 1542 if conventions were held and their activities were recorded anywhere, the elusive register of the secret council would have been the most obvious candidate. Whilst we have long acknowledged that council, conventions and parliament were part of a shared political landscape, we have perhaps not appreciated the extent to which they might work in tandem with each other, performing their distinctive roles as well as collaborating on areas of overlap or different aspects of the same project. Goodare has already dispensed with the idea that later sixteenth-century conventions of estates were a ‘rival’ to parliament, laying especial emphasis upon the shared membership of both bodies and parliament’s ability to pass binding legislation where conventions could make only a temporary edict.180 This chapter has shown that even though the conventions of the 1530s were very different to the conventions of the 1560s, the idea of rivalry is no more helpful whilst exploring this period. Conventions of the lords were no more ‘rivals’ to parliament than they were simply a ‘private’ space: both conventions and parliaments were carefully managed in such a way as to secure discussion groups of different sizes and compositions. Alongside appreciating these institutions as part of the same landscape, we need to add an understanding of how similarly they were managed, and how the  Eure to Cromwell, 26 January 1540, BL Royal MS VII C XVI f.137v.  The treasurers’ accounts are lacking from August 1542 until the end of the year (NRS E21/39 ends on 16 August 1542; NRS E21/40 is damaged but contains expenses from January 1543). Nothing relevant is noted in NRS CS7/1. 180  Julian Goodare, ‘The Scottish Parliament and its early modern “rivals”’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 24 (2001), pp. 147–72. 178 179

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blurred line between convention and council was matched by a porous boundary between the committee of the articles and council. In this context, discussion flowed across multiple meetings each addressing a different facet of a complex governmental concern. We have seen this in planning campaigns and discussing foreign affairs. The same can be seen when it came to matters appertaining to the ‘commonwealth of merchandice’ discussed in conventions of the burghs. We shall explore this topic in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 4

Consultation and Access for the Third Estate

On 26 November 1536, James and Madeline signed their marriage contract before witnesses at Blois.1 Back home in Edinburgh, however, eleven ecclesiastics and thirteen temporal lords were summoned by the council to a convention.2 We have seen that conventions could be highly flexible; this was especially true in November 1536 when the guest list also extended to representatives from Perth, Stirling and Dundee. We are probably on firm ground to suggest that Edinburgh would have also attended—but the fact that it was not necessary to issue this set of summons reminds us of the extent of connections between the King’s council and the provost, magistrates and council of the capital. This was the only occasion during the personal rule for which we have evidence that representatives of the burghs were summoned to a national meeting outside the context of a parliament. The extant council register contains no trace of this meeting: presumably it was minuted in the now lost secret council register.3 As we shall see in the following chapter, those assembled almost certainly discussed events in France and agreed to grant a tax for James’s continued expenses whilst he remained abroad. Even faced with a lack of documentation, this unusual  LJV, p. 325.  NRS E21/31 f.22v 3  See p. 19. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4_4

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and enigmatic meeting reveals something about the way in which the burghs were involved in political life in this period. The fact three, probably four, burghs were summoned exemplifies the pattern that only a small number of communities were actively involved in national political life. Part of the third estate usually acted for the whole. The attendance of the burghs at a convention alongside the lords might have been unusual but the appearance of part of the third estate together as a group engaging in national political action was not. Although existing political and diplomatic histories of the personal rule have not paid much attention to urban communities, the first section of this chapter shows that evidence for the burghs meeting amongst themselves increases significantly during the personal rule. This was driven by the crown’s need to consult with the third estate and for the burghs (or at least the wealthier communities amongst them) to consider amongst themselves the subject of international trade—specifically, whether and if so where Scotland ought to locate a staple port, through which the trade in certain goods would thereafter be directed. Despite a repeated rhetoric that the burghs ought to be consulted on this topic, we shall see they enjoyed at best only limited influence. Several competing notions of who should advise on the staple coexisted, most of which afforded consultation with at least some of the burghs a place, and some of which suggested the burghs ought to drive decision making. In practice, however, the decisions surrounding a staple port rested with the crown. Having established that collective action on the staple via their own convention enjoyed only limited success, the second part of this chapter asks whether the burghs had any more effective routes to achieve their aims. Attendance of the third estate at parliament was slightly higher than at conventions of burghs and a small number of general acts can be attributed to their activities. A wider range of burgh communities, however, capably navigated crown administrative structures to obtain royal letters under the seals to confirm their pre-existing rights and to achieve a range of other objectives. This suggests both important contrasts and significant continuities with the preceding and following periods and, cumulatively, this allows us to begin to pin down when change occurred. The crown’s willingness to summon the burghs, and very occasional openness to follow their advice, suggests that by the 1530s, things had developed considerably for the burghs and their participation in national political life since the previous century. Working in different contexts, Macdougall and Chalmers, amongst others, saw that the late fifteenth

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century shift away from meetings of the three estates towards conventions combined with other factors, such as the increasing focus of governmental activities on Edinburgh, served unintentionally to exclude the burghs from political life.4 This position was evidently based on a belief that meetings of the three estates together were the only or at least the most effective route through which the burghs might access central government and, in turn, implied that the burghs might have minded when they were not invited to discuss ‘national politics’. More recently, however, Tanner’s study of the late medieval Scottish parliament and MacDonald’s work on the better evidenced activities of the burghs in the late sixteenth century have approached the question of urban participation in national life from a different angle, by asking what the burghs actually sought from participation in national assemblies.5 According to both scholars, burgh communities were interested in engaging with central government not for the thrill of high politics but, rather, to secure confirmation of their existing rights and statutes to help govern the good management of trade and burgh life. In this context, it is hard to imagine many provosts softly sobbing themselves to sleep when their invitation to the conventions we encountered in the previous chapter summoned to discuss the King’s marriage or wars failed to arrive. Indeed, it was only in 1563 when the burghs procured the right to attend conventions discussing war and peace.6 Whilst the same interests were evident during the 1530s, as we shall see, it was not to parliament but through direct engagement with permanent royal administrative structures that burghs tended to turn when acting on their own, as opposed to collective, interests. This was part of a broader set of changes since, despite the similarities in burgess objectives from the late fifteenth to late sixteenth centuries, MacDonald’s account contained one component which was strikingly absent from Tanner’s 4  Irene O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Glasgow, 1980), pp. 146-50; T. R. Chalmers, ‘The King’s council, patronage and the governance of Scotland 1460-1513’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Aberdeen, 1982), p. 189. Norman Macdougall, ‘The Estates in Eclipse?’, in Keith M. Brown and Roland Tanner (eds), Parliament and politics in Scotland, 1235-1560 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), p. 158. 5  Roland Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: Politics and the Three Estates 1424-1488 (East Linton, 2001); Alan MacDonald, The Burghs and Parliament in Scotland c.1550-1651 (Ashgate, 2007). 6  Julian Goodare, The Government of Scotland 1560-1625 (Oxford, 2004), p. 92.

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discussion of the third estate. This was the convention of burghs, a body which, by the last decades of the sixteenth century, was summoned by the burghs on their own authority. MacDonald has shown how in the second half of the century the convention of burghs facilitated the development of a corporate identity as an estate and, crucially, allowed the burghs to co-ordinate their efforts in parliament by advance planning as a group.7 The convention also sought to deal with burgh matters more broadly, including the implementation of statutes passed in parliament. It was aided in these efforts by the timings of its meetings, held before or alongside parliament. The convention of burghs had its roots in an earlier body known as the court or parliament of the four burghs. Whilst the burghs themselves summoned conventions later in the century, the court of the four burghs was summoned by the crown and met before the chamberlain.8 The court had enjoyed significant judicial powers to manage disputes amongst not only the four burghs who made up the court but the other urban communities.9 By the late fifteenth century, these judicial powers had largely been shed and in the early sixteenth century, the terminology surrounding the meeting was shifting towards the name ‘convention’. The parallels with parliament’s shrinking judicial activity and the segregation of judicial activities away from the main council and towards the court of session are obvious.10 The growing terminological preference for ‘convention’ to describe a range of meetings offers an equally evident comparison to the extra-parliamentary, extra-conciliar meetings held by various ‘lordis’ which we have discussed in the previous two chapters. Yet again, we see that the early sixteenth century was a transitional period characterised by the separation of judicial and political or administrative functions which occurred in tandem with changing political language. Investigating how the parliament of the four burghs transitioned to a body known as a convention of burghs is tricky since the convention of burgh’s records survive only from 1552 onwards—and even then, in a seventeenth-century copy.11 However, burgh councils sometimes chose to  MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, pp. 57-82.  MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, pp. 7-8; RCRBS, pp. vi-vii, 505. 9  Theodora Pagan, The Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland (Glasgow, 1926), pp. 10-25. 10  A.  M. Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland: the Origins of a Civil Court (Leiden, 2009). 11  MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 7. 7 8

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copy materials related to their meetings into their own registers, and a nineteenth-century search of the burgh records identified a number of meetings of the parliament of the four burghs in the final years of the fifteenth century and one in 1500—this meeting made provisions to restrict overseas trade and trade within burghs to burgesses as well as providing to enforce parliamentary statutes.12 Theodora Pagan’s groundbreaking study unearthed additional references to commissioners being sent to meetings of the burghs in 1503 and 1507.13 The agreement surrounding the staple was also probably reached by a meeting amongst the burghs. Records of this gathering do not survive but in 1526 parliament recalled that the 1522 agreement had been secured by ‘procuratioune and consentis of the principale townis of merchandice of this realme’, consent which, we might reasonably infer, was secured in a meeting.14 The next references to a meeting of the burghs to discuss their affairs come in a tight cluster in April 1529, March 1531, March 1534, December 1539 and April 1541.15 Compared to the previous decades, this is a striking increase in activity and it was driven by discussions on the staple.

 RCRBS, pp. 500-506.  Pagan, Convention of the Royal Burghs, p. 13. 14  Matthijs Pieter Rooseboom, The Scottish staple in the Netherlands: an account of the trade relations between Scotland and the low countries from 1292 till 1676, with a calendar of illustrative documents (the Hague, 1910), pp. 36-41; John Davidson and Alexander Gray, The Scottish Staple at Veere: a study in the Economic History of Scotland (London, 1909), pp. 150-1; RPS, 1526/6/27. Date accessed: 3 July 2020. 15  RCRBS, pp. 306-317. The dates of two of these meetings require clarification. Marwick gives one convention as being 15 March 1530 (RCRBS p. 512). This cited what is now ACA CA1/1/13 f.105 which shows the date was 15 March 1530 old style—in other words, 15 March 1531 new style. The same mistake surrounding the new year beginning on 25 March was made by the editor of extracts from Aberdeen’s council registers whose ordering of those extracts for publication suggested that on 13 March 1530 Aberdeen town council selected commissioners to attend parliament on 24 April ‘nixtocum’. No parliament was held in 1530, but one was held on 24 April 1531, and consulting the manuscript dates the selection of commissioners to 13 March 1530 old style 1531 new style. The identities of the commissioners to discuss the staple were announced on the same date (Aberd. Recs. I, p. 129; ACA CA1/1/13 ff.109-110; RPS, 1531/1. Date accessed: 6 August 2021). In RCRBS Marwick transcribed a date of 17 March 1533 (RCRBS, p. 513) for the next convention. Marwick’s notes in Edin. Recs. vol II pp. 66-7, however, clarify this was in fact March 1534. Evidently there was confusion about old/new style dating amongst editors of the burgh records in the nineteenth century and as a result on occasion notes dating from 1 January to 25 March were placed with those for the preceding year as preparations were made for publication. 12 13

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Moreover, there is a strong possibility that further now unrecorded meetings were held. The fact that in 1529 and again in 1539 representatives at the convention declared they needed to go home and consult with their communities before a decision was taken suggests that another meeting amongst the burghs would have been held to report on what individual communities decided.16 It also is possible further meetings of commissioners to discuss corporate action were held in 1526 and 1532. In both years, the burghs were summoned collectively as a party in legal cases respectively relating to the staple and the conduct of the Scottish conservator (the official who oversaw the staple) and planning meetings may have been held in relation to these. The 1526 case ended up being heard in parliament and the burghs almost certainly met as an estate alongside parliament to discuss this and the articles they proposed to become acts.17 In 1532, the evidence for corporate activity is less compelling—only Edinburgh sent representatives to the trial and since it had no complaints against John Moffat, the conservator against whom the action was raised, the case was dropped.18 The fact the action was effectively dropped by non-compearance may point to an agreement having been reached out of court, equally, this may show a lack of interest and suggest that any meetings which were held were poorly attended. Even setting the possibility of meetings in 1526 and 1532 to manage joint legal actions aside, the evidence for the late 1520s and 1530s suggests an increase in meetings amongst the third estate. Typically, attendance at these meetings comprised one or two representatives from five or six communities, wealthier burghs who regularly came to parliament and often had representatives on the committee of the articles, who were joined by the whole of Edinburgh burgh council.19 This raises questions about whether we can indeed consider these meetings as comparable to the later conventions held amongst a much larger portion of the third estate. Language can only help us so far: these meetings were called ‘conventions’ but as we have seen that was a catch-all term. The crux of the matter here is whether the whole third estate (or at least all the  RCRBS, pp. 512, 516.  RPS, 1526/6/27. Date accessed: 3 July 2020. In terms of broader parliamentary activities RPS, 1526/11/10, 53, 58. 56–7 are possible contenders as acts emerging from articles proposed by the burghs, and 54-5 may have been initiated specifically by Edinburgh. Date accessed: 19/8/20. 18  NRS CS6/1 f.99r; Pagan, Convention of the Royal Burghs, p. 20. 19  O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament’, p. 113; RCRBS, p. 513. 16 17

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burghs with a right to attend parliament) were summoned or whether only a select few made up an exclusive gathering. The evidence here is inconclusive. Attendance hovered at around six but others may have been invited, for instance, the March 1534 convention of burghs issued the threat of a £5 fine against those who failed to come to future meetings.20 Regardless of whether these projected meetings eventuated, since those who came to the March 1534 meeting were disappointed by low attendance other communities must therefore have been summoned. There is also the question of crown supervision: by the second half of the century, the burghs summoned their own conventions themselves and no royal officials presided. Whilst crown messengers delivered summons to the March 1531 convention, and the treasurer presided in 1529, there is no evidence for the presence of royal officials after this date.21 Cumulatively this indicates that such meetings were at least beginning to be understood as a gathering of the wider third estate to hold discussions amongst themselves. This, in turn, makes it appropriate to consider the convention of burghs of this period both as comparable in nature to their better-attended late sixteenth-century cousins, and alongside other types of conventions and parliaments held during the 1530s as an extraordinary political gathering. Indeed, the increase in evidence for their activities in this period fits into the pattern we have already identified of specialised gatherings to provide specialised consultation during the 1530s. Such arguments, however, need to be advanced with due caution since our sources for the convention of burghs are even slipperier and sparser than those for the conventions of the lords we have just explored. Aberdeen’s council register contains a number of records of commissioners being appointed and one transcript of a set of ordinances from the 1529 convention. Edinburgh’s council register is not extant for this period although several volumes containing extracts from it are.22 From these, it transpires that Edinburgh’s register was used at least on occasion to record agreements by the convention of burghs. However, both Edinburgh’s partial and Aberdeen’s complete council records contain references to burgh conventions uncorroborated by the other: since neither contains a complete record it is plausible that other meetings were held for which no  RCRBS, pp. 513-14.  NRS E21/24 f.36v; RCRBS, pp. 507, 512-18. 22  For an explanation of the available sources: Edin. Recs. I, pp. xxxi-xxxiii; Edin. Recs. II, p. liv. 20 21

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records are extant. Meetings planned by the burghs themselves, such as those suggested in March 1534, may well have taken place but left no extant records.23 On the other hand, the fact those burghs who made the effort to come to the March 1534 convention were fretting about attendance and threatening fines for those who eschewed the meeting points to anxiety that plans might never get off the ground. Several of the complex schemes surrounding the staple similarly failed to get airborne—it is now time to turn to these.

Conventions of the Burghs and the Staple Although historians of James’s reign have not offered much attention to negotiations surrounding the staple, studies of the staple have long understood the 1520s and 1530s as a crucial period in its development. M. P. Rooseboom, John Davidson and Alexander Gray have shown how the discussions surrounding the location for the Scottish staple port had their roots in James’s minority and provided a narrative of the negotiations during the personal rule.24 Concluding a study of the staple negotiations during the personal rule, Davidson and Gray, who believed that there was a single ‘natural inclination of the merchant class’ against a single staple port in this period, saw the question of burgh agency in bleak terms: in 1541, James simply imposed the choice of Veere as Scotland’s staple port on an unwilling mercantile community.25 Re-examining these events reveals a far more complex situation. Whilst the crown was perfectly capable of imposing its will, this was only one part of a broader picture. The towns were divided amongst themselves and this division within the third estate fed into processes of consultation within urban communities, amongst the third estate as a whole, and, indeed, consultation between the crown and representatives of the third estate in which, predictably, the council played a central role. As we have seen, Pagan and Marwick identified no meetings of the third estate during James’s minority until 1522. Events in 1520 both prompted that meeting and set in motion the chain of occurrences which required subsequent burgh gatherings held throughout the personal rule.  RCRBS, p. 513-14.  Rooseboom, Scottish staple in the Netherlands; Davidson and Gray, The Scottish Staple at Veere. 25  Davidson and Gray, Scottish Staple at Veere, pp. 161-2. 23 24

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That year, following several offers of considerable cash payments from the town of Middelburg to settle the staple there, Albany tested the waters on the subject of the staple by consulting with Edinburgh burgh council in 1520, offering a choice amongst Middelburg, Veere and Bruges.26 Having secured the opinion of the capital that Middelburg was preferable Albany pursued negotiations and by the end of 1522 had reached an agreement with Middelburg that they would henceforth host the staple—this included promises of at least £12,000 to be paid to Albany.27 It is unclear how much of this was sent, or who received it—Albany personally or the Scottish crown.28 The process must have involved consultation with a wider group amongst the burghs, because in June 1526 the hybrid lords-of-the-­articlesand-­council considered a petition from Middelburg on the subject of the staple. Although the text does not survive, the context suggests that it was an attempt to stop the Scottish burghs reneging on the agreement. The lords recalled that previously (i.e. in 1522) Albany had secured the ‘consentis of the principale townis of merchandice of this realme, that is to say Edinburgh, Abirdene, Striveling, Sanctandrois, Sanct Jhonstone and Dundee’ to the contract.29 Since only representatives from Edinburgh and Aberdeen were present in June 1526 to respond to Middelburg’s complaint, the lords of council and articles accordingly ‘ordanis that the commissionaris of all the burrowis of this realme be warnit to compere…for thir interesse in the mater forsaid’ on 14 July.30 From this, we already see that questions of who ought to be consulted were at the heart of negotiations on the staple. Whilst Albany did not consider it necessary to consult all the burghs he did see that consultation with Edinburgh or a small number of communities had a role to play in these negotiations: the general summons to ‘all the burrowis’ as interested parties in the legal action offered an alternative, wider, view of who amongst the burghs ought to be consulted and consent. It is unclear how many communities came to the 14 July hearing, but when the date came the Middelburg representative entered a protest. He had arrived in  Edin. Recs. I, p. 195; Davidson and Gray, Scottish Staple at Veere, pp. 147-8.  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple in the Netherlands, pp. 36-47; Davidson and Gray, Scottish Staple at Veere, pp. 150-1. 28  There is a gap in the treasurers’ accounts: NRS E21/17 ends in 1518, NRS E21/18 starts in 1524. Comptrollers’ accounts cover most of the period where negotiations were ongoing but do not record this money (ER XIV, pp. 451-6, ER XV, pp. 84-88). 29  RPS, 1526/6/27. Date accessed: 3 July 2020; Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, pp. 38-47. 30  RPS, 1526/6/27. Date accessed: 19 August 2020. 26 27

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Scotland in possession of the Emperor’s confirmation of the earlier negotiations. This showed that the staple was indeed based in Middelburg and accordingly ‘he wald nocht enter to pley the said mattir’.31 As far as he was concerned, there was no need for further discussion and entering a plea might acknowledge ambiguity where none, he contended, existed. The case was then continued until the November 1526 parliament. By this stage, the wider third estate seems to have become engaged: nine communities were named on the parliamentary sederunt but the fact the final name on the list is followed by ‘et ceteris’—and others—indicates more burghs had attended.32 The afternoon of 18 November was set aside for a discussion of the staple port.33 No records of this survive—but as the discussion was taking place outwith the main session, it is not entirely unsurprising that it did not make its way into the main register.34 The conclusion of these discussions, however, was that parliament found the contract to be invalid on a number of counts, including that Albany had allowed it to be made ‘without the avise of the thre estatis, quhilk mycht nocht restrene oure soverane lord nor his realme [in] na maner of way and at the ferrest, but during the tyme of his governance, quhilk contracte in that tyme come nevire till effecte nor na execucioune followit herupoune and, therfor, is of nane availe’.35 This robust statement offered an alternative view of who ought to be consulted on the staple—all of the third estate, along with all of the first and second estates, in parliament. It proved a pyrrhic victory. Whilst the burghs had avoided setting the staple at Middelburg the price was raising a tax upon themselves.36 Moreover, the month after parliament was held the town of Veere delivered a payment to crown officers of 1000 merks in cash and a cupboard of silver: this persuaded James’s hard-pressed financial officials to settle the staple at Veere after all.37 Veere’s victory was subsequently confirmed by letters issued under the Great Seal and a set of

 NRS CS5/36 f.45r; ADCP, p. 246.  RPS, 1526/11/4. Date accessed: 19 August 2020. 33  RPS, 1526/11/10, 40. Date accessed: 19 August 2020. 34  RPS, 1526/11/10. Date accessed: 19 August 2020. 35  RPS, 1526/11/53. Date accessed: 19 August 2020. 36  RPS, 1526/11/62. Date accessed: 4 August 2020; ER, XV p. 377. 37   Athol Murray, ‘Financing the Royal Household: James V and his comptrollers 1513-1543’, in Ian B. Cowan and Duncan Shaw (eds), The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 41-59 at p. 48. 31 32

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royal ordinances dated 8 March 1530.38 Reviewing these events between 1520 and 1526, we see that the number of burghs invited to consult on the staple gradually increased, after which the crown promptly ignored everything which had gone before. Cumulatively, this suggests that whilst parliamentary approval was rhetorically useful when seeking to justify a change in policy, and that the concept of parliamentary consent could be used to trump extra-parliamentary consultation, when it came down to exerting lasting influence on the crown lobbying via parliament was of only limited efficacy. The competing claims of Veere and Middelburg, combined with an impetus from some burghs to avoid a staple entirely, and the range of notions about who had the right to be consulted on trading arrangements which these discussions provoked, continued to drive the need for meetings of the third estate in the personal rule. As the foregoing discussion of the 1520s makes clear, we should see these as grounded in the activities of the latter part of James’s minority and in the context of the crown’s financial needs. The possibility of payments from potential staple ports or taxes on the burghs to exert influence gave the crown direct financial interest in this subject: we will discuss the financial aspects of these negotiations in greater detail in the following chapter. However, as R. K. Hannay noted, from 1529–31 Scotland experienced a diplomatic rapprochement with the Empire as a result of the new Anglo-French peace.39 It is well known that these negotiations encompassed possible marriage alliances, but in their earlier stages, they also had ramifications for the staple.40 Although Middelburg and Veere were both located within the Empire, closer relations with Charles V brought an added pressure to ensure that none of his subjects were short-changed. Therefore, any left out of pocket (as Middelburg had been in 1526) would have to be recompensed. We catch the first sign of the impact of this diplomatic shift on the burghs in 1529, when Sir John Campbell of Lundy was despatched on an embassy to Archduchess Margaret, Regent of the Low Countries on behalf of Charles

 RPS, 1531/6. Date accessed: 26 July 2019; Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, p. LXV  R. K. Hannay, ‘Shipping and the Staple, 1515-1531’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club IX (1916), pp. 49-77 at pp. 75-7. 40  LJV, pp. 194, 265-7, 277-8. Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland (Amherst, Mass, 1984), pp. 32, 34; Edmon Bapst, Les Marriages de Jacques V (Paris, 1889), pp. 171-179, 204-229. 38 39

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V.41 The burghs were summoned to a convention to discuss a tax to fund the embassy. This agreed, the burghs requested that Lundy would secure for them their existing trading privileges with the Empire, which had been set out in a treaty now due to expire.42 Once Campbell had departed James received a complaint from Charles V himself (following one from Margaret the previous year) about the way in which Middelburg had been treated.43 This James responded to by distancing himself from the previous regime’s agreement, claiming it was made improperly. This mirrored the techniques that the Douglas regime had employed in 1526 to avoid honouring Albany’s 1522 agreement with Middelburg. Just as the Douglas regime had declared that Albany had not enjoyed the authority to create a lasting agreement, James distanced himself from the previous administration, explaining the contract had been made by men who were now ‘condemned for treason’. Nonetheless, he promised to consult with the ‘magnates and those interested’ to uncover any injury perpetrated by the Douglases when in power and intimated his own personal support for the staple being located in Middelburg ‘if the council finds that to be in the public interest’.44 Whilst ‘those interested’ could extend to cover the burghs, this did not suggest James would consult with parliament, or employ any of the terminology to suggest a special council meeting which we saw in diplomatic correspondence relating to James’s marriage or warfare. Instead, the sense is that this would be dealt with as part of the council’s ordinary business. Despite James’s promises of support for Middelburg, short term, Campbell’s mission was a success from the burghs’ perspective—he came home with an ordinance from Archduchess Margaret in which she permitted the Scots to select a

41  The evidence surrounding this is minimal—there is no record the council discussed it in the month before it was raised at the convention of burghs or in its aftermath: NRS CS5/39 ff.125-174; NRS CS5/40 ff.1-20r. The treasurers’ accounts are missing for this period so we lack potential corroborative evidence surrounding payments for the embassy: NRS E21/22 ends in August 1527 and NRS E21/23 begins in August 1529. 42  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple in the Netherlands, p. 53; LJV, pp. 191-2. 43  It is unclear when exactly Campbell left—although a regular attender in council, from 10 May Campbell’s name is not in the sederunt, which suggests he may have departed at around this time, he was certainly absent by 4 June, when procurators were acting on his behalf in cases before the council: NRS CS5/40 ff.21r-51r, 52r. For the matrimonial aspects of his embassy: Bapst, Marriages de Jacques V, pp. 138-44, 153-4. 44  LJV, p. 152.

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conservator to manage their own disputes but studiously avoided setting a staple port.45 Middelburg, however, was still out of pocket. In 1531, royal messengers delivered the King’s letters summoning Perth, Stirling and Linlithgow to discuss the staple—presumably alongside Edinburgh. Uniquely during the personal rule this convention was held just before parliament and was evidently timed to allow the burghs to consult before the lords of the articles were asked to consider Middelburg’s claims regarding the staple.46 As such, this strongly foreshadows the pattern of holding conventions before parliament which proved so effective for the burghs in the latter part of the century. The Aberdeen commissioners despatched in April 1531 were instructed to remain vigilant that they ‘neither renounce nor over give the privildges granted to us by our maist nobill prince, that we sall be free to pass and repass quhairever we sall be best treit’. On the face of it, the April 1531 parliament offered a victory for those amongst the burghs who shared this mindset. Presumably acting on the advice of the convention of the burghs, the lords of the articles recalled that even though the Scottish crown had taken money from Middelburg (i.e. the 2000 merks paid in 1526), subsequently letters had been issued under the Great Seal ‘to the Lord of Foire [Veere] and thai partis’ authorising alternative trading arrangements whereby the Scots could trade ‘in the partis of Flanderis quhair they pleis best’.47 They therefore suggested that since ‘the towne of Middilburgh has nor optenit thare desire’ the money they had paid ought ‘to be pait and deliverit agane to thame be the kingis graice’.48 On the strength of this, shortly after parliament concluded, James ratified the agreement made with Margaret in 1529.49 Parliament’s choice to emphasise the royal letters as opposed to its own 1526 ruling that the Middelburg contract was invalid is important to note: this undercut parliament’s earlier claims to authority in determining trading matters, instead relegating the role of the estates to that of an investigator or arbiter. On the face of it, these events suggest that collective co-ordination amongst the burghs followed by parliamentary lobbying worked. The fact  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, p. LVIII.  NRS E21/24 f. 36v; RPS, 1531/6. Date accessed: 26 July 2019. 47  RPS, 1531/6. Date accessed: 13 April 2016. 48  RPS, 1531/6. Date accessed: 13 April 2016. 49  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, p. LVIII. 45 46

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that the lords of the articles specified James ought to repay the money represented a considerable victory for the third estate—not only was the setting up of a staple port avoided, but the lords of the articles on this occasion were clear that they could force the crown to pay its dues—even when the money in question had been accepted by a minority regime. Since repaying the debt would presumably improve the Scots’ reputation for trustworthiness abroad, a concern evident amongst Edinburgh merchants at this juncture, this must have seemed like the icing on the cake.50 However, the burgesses who lobbied parliament in 1526 had also departed home pleased with their efforts: unfortunately for the burghs, just like in 1526, this pride would come before a fall. As events panned out, parliament’s verdict that James ought to repay his debts was ignored. The treasurer did pay some money to Middelburg: £7 towards the expenses incurred by the disappointed Middelburg messengers whilst they had been in Edinburgh waiting for parliament’s decision.51 There is no evidence, however, that the crown coffers creaked open to release any more coins. On the contrary, even before the month was out James was trying to wriggle out of the clear parliamentary provisions that the money would ‘be pait and deliverit agane to thame [Middelburg] be the kingis graice’.52 His report to Middelburg on parliament’s decision apologised for their disappointment, but stopped short of offering cash. Instead, he promised to send an unnamed person over to Middelburg at some unspecified point in the future in order to ‘settle the business on sound and just lines without loss to Middelburg or detriment to the Scots’.53 How these negotiations unfolded is unclear, but the eventual conclusion was that the convention of burghs held in March 1534 was required to raise a tax of 450 pounds groote to reimburse Middelburg. The fact that an agreement made in parliament had been ignored and that this resulted in an extra financial burden for the burghs seems to have disconcerted them enough to galvanise them into attempting to create a united front to resist future taxes. Having agreed to repay Middelburg, the assembled burghs (Edinburgh council plus commissioners from Perth, Dundee, St Andrews and Stirling) decided to summon representatives  LJV, p. 159.  NRS E21/24 f.35r. This may refer to expenses incurred in relation to the 1526 parliament as no envoys from Middelburg were apparently present in 1531: LJV, p. 192. 52  RPS, 1531/6. Date accessed: 2 August 2021. 53  LJV, p. 192. 50 51

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from all the burghs to meet on 26 July, the morning after St James’s Day, in the capital.54 This projected assembly was intended to discuss any problems facing the burghs, and the commissioners were to bring with them written evidence identifying any areas where they needed redress. Crucially, however, they would ‘find remeid for taxationis and stenttis that may happan to cum aganis thame’. This suggests that the burghs themselves believed that the collective bargaining planned in the convention then implemented in parliament in 1531 had worked (albeit temporarily) and that it could succeed again. Absentees would be required to pay £5 to those who did appear, presumably to disincentivise non-attendance on the grounds of expense, and henceforth annual meetings would be held. This was in essence an amendment of the 1487 parliamentary statute which ordered annual meetings at Inverkeithing and suggested crown officers would collect the fine—given the additional purpose of seeking to avoid future taxation it is unsurprising that in 1534 the burghs did not consider it wise to suggest they would rely on the crown’s administrators to collect fines for non-­attendance!55 Such anxiety about attendance also exposes the extent to which there was a division amongst the burghs in terms of attitudes to collective engagement—some burghs preferred individual action. Selkirk, for instance, eschewed every parliament and convention of burghs for which we have records in the personal rule, but sent a representative to Edinburgh to seek an acquittance from this tax. Although unsuccessful, this venture suggests that this community at least preferred to take its chances under its own steam.56 Even worse, James may have revived negotiations to settle the staple at Veere only a few months after the tax raised to avoid settling it at Middelburg had been agreed. In August 1534, he penned an enigmatic letter to Odulph, lord of Veere, referring to an unspecified ‘matter of mutual advantage’ negotiations on which had been dormant but which James now wished to revive.57 Regardless of whether James was trying to move the staple to Veere in August 1534, negotiations on the staple between 1526 and 1534 show that although parliament and their own conventions held out the potential for the burghs to resist royal demands,  RCRBS, p. 513.  MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p.  8; RPS, 1487/10/21. Date accessed: 7 August 2020. 56  Peter Symms, ‘Social Control in a Sixteenth-Century Burgh: the Burgh Court book of Selkirk, 1503-1545’, (Unpublished PhD Edinburgh 1986) pp. 326-7. 57  LJV, p. 273. 54 55

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this potential was only rarely realised and in fact parliamentary intervention afforded only temporary protection. In 1526, the burghs secured their objective of avoiding one staple port by promising a tax, only to be tied to another the following month. In 1531, they succeeded in preventing the appointment of a staple and seemed to have avoided paying any financial penalty—three years later they were required to stump up the cash. Whilst the crown did usually ask the burghs for their advice regarding the staple, any attempt to follow this, whether confirmed in parliament or not, ceased the moment that a more financially advantageous offer emerged. The gap in evidence for conventions of burghs between 1534 and 1539 coincides with a period when the staple caused no particular controversy. It is possible that other conventions, such as those ordained in 1534, were held but that general mercantile business left fewer records than arguments about the staple. It is equally probable that the burghs gathered in other ways—for example, the 1535 parliament appointed the provost of Edinburgh to sit on a commission alongside certain (unnamed) lords from the royal council and ‘utheris’ to consider how the craftsmen in burghs could be further controlled.58 No results of these deliberations are extant (although a blank space in the parliamentary register immediately after the entry setting up the commission may have been intended for them).59 This is, however, the type of business with which a functioning convention of burghs might have been expected to deal, and it may indicate a deficit of activity or of authority. The 1535 parliament also ordered provosts and other burgh officers to henceforth present their accounts in person annually for audit at the exchequer, in order that it might be ‘considerit be the lordis auditouris gif the samin be spendit for the commoune wele of the burgh or nocht’. 60 For those who chose to attend this would then have provided opportunities for contact with royal officials and fellow burgh commissioners. Taken together, the commission on craftsmen and the duty to present accounts at exchequer suggests an ambition on the part of the crown administration that burgh affairs would be managed by crown initiatives and subject to increased scrutiny by crown officials. The next evidence for crown consultation with the burghs or of the third estate within itself is likewise connected to a resurfacing of  RPS, 1535/55. Date accessed: 7 August 2020.  NRS PA2/8/II ff. 109v-110v. 60  RPS, 1535/44. Date accessed: 7 August 2020. 58 59

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discussions surrounding the staple. These renewed discussions were accompanied by a similar range of views regarding who ought to be consulted and who had the right to decide to those evident earlier in the personal rule. The early stages of these expose a consistent belief that the crown’s permission needed to be sought to settle any agreement married to an understanding that consulting amongst at least a group of the burghs was equally necessary. We also see continued acknowledgement of Edinburgh’s pre-­eminence and the capital seeking to exploit this to secure its favoured outcome. In October 1539, Edinburgh burgh council received letters from Antwerp setting out the offers they were willing to make for the staple to be moved to their port.61 In December 1539, the burghs were ‘convenit be command of our soverane Lordis letteris’ to consider this request.62 Having been investigating this prospect for some time, Edinburgh immediately declared its support for moving the staple to Antwerp, the commissioners from Perth and St Andrews ‘offrit thame rady to consult with’ Edinburgh for the ‘commoun weill of the merchanttis’ but still wanted to ‘avise with their neighbours’.63 Aberdeen and Dundee were less tractable, with Aberdeen’s commissioners declaring they would ‘no wyse consent’ until they had been provided with a copy of the articles proposed by Antwerp for discussion in their own town: the Dundonian explained that ‘thair commissioun wes nocht extendit to ony change of stapill’ and accordingly shared the view of ‘thair nychtbouris of Abirdene’.64 From this it is amply clear that the burgh commissioners considered that consultation within their communities was necessary to make arrangements to change the staple. Whilst only a limited number of burghs needed to be represented in such decisions (and notably there was no call for other communities to be summoned), it was imperative that the leaders within those towns were properly consulted, although it is unclear when or how the results of this consultation were shared. By February James had received letters from Antwerp ‘requesting the King’s authority’ for the change of staple from Veere to their town. In response, he had ‘called some burgesses before the council, whose opinions differed’, accordingly ‘for the present he has permitted them to go to such port as suits their  LJV, p. 394.  RCRBS, p. 515. 63  RCRBS, p. 515; Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, pp. 54-55. 64  RCRBS, p. 515. 61 62

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interest’.65 A few days later, Simon Preston, provost of Edinburgh, penned two follow up letters, one in his own name and one jointly with the burgh council. Both letters emphasise that ‘the merchants from the chief royal burghs were much divided in opinion’, and the letter from the council explained that ‘after hearing the royal will the council intends to fix the staple port’ without saying where this might be.66 The provost’s letter struck a more encouraging tone. This suggested he personally favoured moving the staple to Antwerp, even though ‘the merchants…prefer a free choice to the compulsory use of any one port’.67 Both of these survive in a royal letterbook into which James’s correspondence was also copied.68 This strongly suggests Edinburgh’s missives were sent with at least the knowledge of the royal administration. Potentially the crown was simply keeping an eye on what could develop into a tricky diplomatic situation, although it is also possible James would have been willing to transfer the staple to Antwerp if this entailed a significant payment from that city to his own coffers. Regardless, the correspondence with Antwerp suggested that consensus needed to be secured within urban communities, then amongst the burghs as an estate, and crown permission sought before any change to trading arrangements was effected. It also exposes considerable division amongst the burghs regarding not only where but whether there even ought to be a staple port. Given this emphasis on consensus amongst the burghs alongside crown oversight and permission Edinburgh’s next actions are surprising. In April 1540, Edinburgh and ‘others their allies of the kingdom of Scotland’ finalised a contract with Antwerp.69 Neither parliament nor the crown was mentioned, and the word ‘others’ studiously avoided suggesting that the entire third estate was involved—given the events of the previous December, Perth and St Andrews are obvious candidates for having lent support. In the longer-term context of seeking crown permission (occasionally mediated via parliament) to make contracts with foreign towns, cutting to the chase like this could be read as at best disobedience and at worst an accroachment of royal powers—as Odulph of Veere recognised and made clear to James when he complained about Scottish merchants  LJV, p. 391.  LJV, p. 394. 67  LJV, p. 394. 68  NRS GD149/264. For a discussion of this: LJV, pp. xi-xii. 69  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, p. LX. 65 66

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having ceased to visit Veere in August 1540. Odulph explained to James that the change of staple had been effected by pressure from the Edinburgh magistrates on other Scottish merchants to behave in a manner which was ‘directement contraire et en contremenement de vous bons statutez et ordonnance’ published at Edinburgh on 8 March 1530.70 Framing events in terms of disobedience to the royal will may have had an effect: James’s response claimed that Odulph’s letters had been the first he had heard of any compulsion directed towards merchants and promised that such acts would be punished—though he stopped short of recognising that the staple had been settled at Veere, instead explaining that Scottish merchants were free to trade where they saw fit.71 There is no further evidence surrounding the Antwerp experiment, so on the balance of probability, it seems likely that the crown refused to endorse the contract made by Edinburgh and ‘part of the burghs’. Why James allowed Edinburgh to offer initial encouragement to Antwerp then (presumably) pulled the rug from under their feet once a contract was signed is unclear—perhaps the capital became overconfident or perhaps the crown encountered more resistance than it had anticipated and pleasing the Edinburgh magistrates was not worth the pushback from elsewhere. These events show that even though the staple itself had been settled at Veere for nearly a decade, a considerable range of opinions still existed surrounding how changes to these arrangements ought to be made and by who. James’s statement that the burghs were free to trade where they saw fit shows that a range of views existed on how tightly binding the Veere contract was. This created a space for further discussion. By early 1541, the expatriate Edinburgh burgess James Henderson was floating the prospect of negotiations between his city of origin and his new home, Middelburg, to set the latter up as a staple port.72 In April, the burghs held a convention to discuss these, to which the Aberdeen commissioner arrived with permission ‘to consult upon ane port in pairtis of Zeeland quhair all the merchantis sall hant, and stapill beand evir free, nocht bunding nor thirlet to ane stapill’.73 This then was not a complete rejection of any sort of coordination amongst the burghs, but rather a preference for fewer restrictions on the location of trade. Despite the Aberdonian  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, p. LXV; LJV, p. 409.  LJV, p. 415. 72  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, pp. 56-9, LXV. 73  RCRBS, p. 517. 70 71

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caution, by the end of the convention, the burghs present had ‘consentis and thinkis at the next mercat to pass to the port and town in Flanderis of the Dukis landis that will gif and grant to thame maist and greitast priuleges’. They were even willing to follow ‘the Kingis Grace plesour’ to locate the staple in Middelburg rather than Veere, ‘sua that the town of Campheir grantit nocht nor gaif thame larger priuieleges nor Myddilburch’.74 There are a number of points to take from this. First, we should note that the format of the minutes for this is considerably briefer than that of 1539, with no individual community opinions recorded. This was probably because discussions were not yet closed—the offers from Middelburg and Veere needed to be seen and assessed against each other first. This may explain why no dissent was minuted: discussions could not really start until the competing bids were in. Secondly, we see again a clear emphasis on the need to secure the King’s permission—but this was framed as contingent upon burghal economic advantage: they would do what James said so long as he told them to take up the best deal on the table. Presumably the fact that the burghs also granted a tax to fund Cardinal Beaton’s embassy to France in this meeting helped with their sense of confidence in asserting a right to reject what they saw as a poor deal.75 Just as in 1539, the convention ended with an agreement that more consultation was necessary, but, again, just as in 1539, subsequent events bypassed this process. Six days after the convention sat James despatched letters to Odulph’s successor as lord of Veere, Maximillian, refusing to give a definitive answer to the ongoing problem of the staple and instead referring the matter to his council.76 This seems consistent with his previous descriptions of the body dealing with this matter and eschews any sense this meeting would be special—this did not, apparently, merit a gathering of the wider first or second estates. However, it is unclear what the council actually did since the following month, May 1541, James Henderson issued a contract in the name of Edinburgh ‘and other burghs’ allowing Middelburg to henceforth hold the staple.77 Eager to adhere to this contract, the Edinburgh magistrates attempted to ensure all ships departing from Leith would sail only to Middelburg. The fact that these activities prompted James to commission Cardinal Beaton to launch an  RCRBS, p. 517.  RCRBS, p. 517. 76  LJV, pp. 423-4. 77  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, pp. 58-9, LXVI. 74 75

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investigation affirms that Edinburgh had acted without prior approval from either the whole community of burghs or the crown.78 This is a sign of a strikingly self-confident capital, as well as continued variety in understandings of who had the right to decide on the location of the staple. In July, James wrote again to Maximillian to explain that he had decided to give his subjects freedom to trade wherever pleased them best—but that he wished to reward Maximillian and his predecessors for the service they had offered him. Accordingly, James understood that Maximillian would shortly receive a messenger to make ‘offers raisonables’ to him, presumably to locate the staple at Veere.79 The following month he ordered Edinburgh burgh council to cease negotiations with Middelburg. Although James explained that he understood a majority of Edinburgh merchants wanted the staple to move to Middelburg (Cardinal Beaton had found only two amongst them who demurred), he had chosen to listen to the other burghs who favoured a staple at Veere.80 The parallels with the circumstances surrounding the Antwerp contract—the disagreements amongst the burghs, Edinburgh’s attempts to act independently of its fellows and the crown, and the decisive final crown intervention—are striking. James’s letters had been delivered to Edinburgh council by two of his ‘familiar counsalaroris’ James Foulis, clerk register, and Henry Sinclair parson of Glasgow.81 Foulis at least would have been amply familiar with the complicated backstory: an Edinburgh burgess himself, in 1526 he had acted as procurator for the delegation from Middelburg seeking to press their rights.82 Even though James made the final decision, he was apparently swayed by the wider community of burghs, and our evidence of earlier disagreements in 1539 corroborates royal claims in 1541 that Cardinal Beaton had found that other burghs dissented from Edinburgh’s preferences regarding the staple. In terms of what it offered merchants, Veere’s offer was a slight improvement on that made by Middelburg regarding provisions for restitution of lost goods. Moreover, it may well have proven more attractive to James since it provided for all cases amongst expatriate Scots to be heard before the conservator, keeping his subjects  Edin. Recs., pp. 106-7.  LJV, p. 427. 80  Edin. Recs. III, pp. 106, 109; Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, p. 61. 81  Edin. Recs. III, p. 109. 82  NRS CS5/36 f.45r; ADCP, p. 246. 78 79

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under his jurisdiction, rather than foreign courts.83 Equally, Veere had already agreed to provide munition to James, who was anxious to enhance his firepower at this juncture, and this too may have been an influential consideration.84 Whichever factor proved the tipping factor, Veere’s winning offer closed discussion of the staple not only for the personal rule but for much of the sixteenth century. These negotiations simultaneously reveal that whilst, in practical terms, royal permission was decisive, most of the time the crown made efforts to gain advice from—or at least to have been seen to have been advised by— representatives from the burghs. Within this, a range of notions surrounding who had the right to decide trading conditions co-existed. In December 1526, the staple was settled at Veere by royal dictat against the express wishes of the burghs as endorsed by parliament. We also see the crown behaving in a high-handed way regarding the tax of 1534 and, potentially, in opening further negotiations with Veere that year. More frequently, the crown conceded it should make decisions surrounding the staple in consultation with representatives from some, but by no means all, of the towns. In the early 1520s, Albany’s initial consultation with Edinburgh thereafter extended to a small group of prominent communities—their consent was sufficient to determine where the staple ought to be. James’s report that ‘some burgesses’ had discussions with the council in February 1540 seems to have described a similar situation.85 The resolution of this whole tricky situation in 1541 to settle the staple at Veere was framed as the crown endorsing the viewpoint espoused by the majority of merchants. An alternative understanding afforded a more prominent role to the capital. In February 1540, Edinburgh council acknowledged consultation with other burghs but explained it would ‘fix the staple port’ once the ‘royal will’ was known.86 This placed responsibility for decision making in the hands of the crown in consultation with the wider community of burghs whilst suggesting that Edinburgh would be in charge of the nitty-­ gritty aspects of the deal. A few months later, when it signed the contract with Antwerp, and again in May 1541 with the Middelburg deal, Edinburgh advanced beyond this position and asserted its own authority to make a contract with a foreign port, even if this was approved by only  Rooseboom, Scottish Staple, pp. 64-5.  LJV, pp. 427, 432; RPS, 1540/12/66. Accessed 2 August 2021. 85  LJV, p. 391. 86  LJV, p. 394. 83 84

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some of the burghs. A third broad conception ascribed some authority to parliament—the 1526 session asserted that only parliamentary consent was sufficient for an agreement on the staple to be binding. In 1531, something subtly different occurred as parliament acted as an arbiter for competing claims, but made its decision not on the basis of parliamentary precedent but instead on royal letters. The notion that parliament’s consent was necessary to settle the staple only came into play when the Scots wanted to renege on an agreement made elsewhere. Whilst the reality of negotiations rarely encompassed the estates, their voice still carried rhetorical force and the Scots evidently considered this would add gravitas and legitimacy to their changes of plan. Stepping back from this range of understandings, consultation within burghs, amongst the towns, and between the crown and the third estate was evidently the norm in dealing with matters of the staple but there was no single way to achieve this. In practice, royal authority was necessary to secure a lasting agreement which would effectively bind all of the third estate. How such authority might be swayed and then secured, however, was open to debate—usually the crown undertook some consultation but with whom and in what forum varied. This led to a situation which we could either characterise as highly confused, as various claims to hold the staple competed with each other, or highly flexible, since pitting these competing claims against each other allowed policy towards the staple to change in response to different pressures. A convention of burghs was an important part of this process, but these meetings were surrounded by other fora—consultations within burghs, for instance, as well as communications with the crown. This occurred through the royal council summoning burgh representatives to meet with it, as well as individuals such as Cardinal Beaton tasked with a specific commission. This, in turn, raises questions about how involved crown officials were in conventions of burghs. The summons to the 1529 convention of burghs explained that the treasurer would be present, and the fact that in 1540 the treasurer wrote to the burgh of Ayr (and, presumably, other towns) ‘chargeing the town to send furth thar articlis to the parliaments [sic]’ suggests that the treasurer had assumed a degree of responsibility for crown-burgh communication.87 Even so, no royal officials appear on the sederunt lists for the

 G. S. Pryde (ed.), Ayr Burgh Accounts, 1534-1624 (Edinburgh, 1937), p. 82.

87

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burgh conventions of 1534, 1539 and 1541.88 Comments in the 1541 meeting that the burghs delegated responsibility to Edinburgh to ‘advise the King’ affirm that there was no royal official in the room whose job it was to do so. This represents a considerable change in practice. Earlier meetings of the parliament or court of the four burghs were supervised by the royal chamberlain, and the chamberlain’s subsequent absence fits with a broader picture of the decline in the importance of this office.89 Equally, the treasurer’s assumption of a role previously held by the chamberlain, followed by his apparent disappearance from actual meetings and retreat to a role of co-ordination, points to the 1530s as a period of transition.90 The treasurer’s subsequent absence did not entail that the convention of burghs met secluded from the prying eyes of crown officials. In 1531, Edinburgh’s provost was Adam Otterburn, James’s lord advocate: although we have no record about what that convention did, if, like other meetings of this nature, the convention was hosted by Edinburgh and attended by its provost and entire council this would have provided an ample opportunity for either crown views to be made known or burgh preferences to be passed on. By 1534, James Lawson, an active royal councillor, had taken up the reigns of the provostship. Since the March 1534 convention grumbled more than the other meetings about royal activity— or, at least, it was the one assembly which recorded firm plans to convert its grumbling into a strategy to avoid further taxes—his presence evidently did not place a stranglehold on discussions. By the time of the final two conventions of the personal rule, James’s councillors had lost their control of the provostship and Simon Preston, who did not sit on the King’s council, had been appointed. It is possible that this lack of supervision by crown officials emboldened Edinburgh to sign the Antwerp and then the Middelburg contracts. However, we should not overstate this—we have seen Edinburgh’s correspondence copied into royal letter books. Moreover, Preston’s grant of the provostship for life in 1540 speaks to royal favour, and given Edinburgh’s small and closely connected civic elite the royal councillors in the burgh were doubtless appraised of events. Nevertheless, the lack of a senior royal official in the convenor’s chair marks a distinction between the 1530s and earlier meetings of burgh

 RCRBS, pp. 513, 515, 517.  MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 7. 90  MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 7. 88 89

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commissioners—these meetings were becoming occasions for the burghs to talk amongst themselves. At the same time, the pattern of meetings between 1529 and 1541 also suggests some significant differences between these conventions and the post-1550 conventions which were summoned in large part as ‘preparatory meetings’ for parliament.91 Whilst the 1531 convention did meet just before parliament and helped to score a considerable (albeit temporary) victory for the burghs, the conventions held in 1529, 1534, 1539 and 1541 met unconnected to parliamentary business. The fact the timing of these meetings was dictated by a focus on specific international concerns suggests similarities to conventions of the lords which we encountered in the previous chapter even as it distinguishes them from later burgh conventions focused on the domestic parliamentary agenda. Whilst the timing of these meetings was dictated by the staple, there are hints that their purview spread beyond this. For example, the commissioner from Aberdeen in March 1531 anticipated discussing ‘privileges…and how the multitude of wyle sallaris may be repressit’, and the annual meetings which the March 1534 convention ordered to take place were intended to take a wide view.92 Our only clear evidence as to resolutions in one of these meetings extending beyond the staple, however, dates from the 1529 convention, which made a number of broad provisions concerning trade.93 Relatively low attendance at these conventions may offer corroborative evidence that the staple was indeed the main focus of discussion. Burghs, MacDonald has shown, tended to trouble themselves with national meetings when they could clearly see their own interests were at stake—namely ‘trade and inter-burghal relations’.94 Even when these meetings had a wider invitation list (and we have seen that at least some of the time discussion was restricted to a few communities), the staple, after all, would have been primarily of interest to wealthier burghs with ports and considerable quantities of international trade: whilst Dundee or Aberdeen might easily become exercised about the location of the staple it is hard to see a smaller community, such as Lanark, being quite so worried. Lanark did,  MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 59.  RCRBS, p. 513. 93  RCRBS, p. 508-11. 94   Alan R.  MacDonald, ‘Tedious to Rehers? Parliament and locality in Scotland c.1500–1651: the burghs of North-East Fife’, Parliament, Estates and Representations 20 (2000), pp. 31-58 at p. 49. 91 92

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however, regularly send commissioners to parliament—and it is now time to explore what that body offered to the towns.

Parliament, the Burghs and Royal Intervention We have already observed that the 1531 convention of burghs was unusual in that it was held directly before parliament and that it successfully influenced (at least in the short term) the parliamentary agenda. This is one of several ways in which the relationship between burghs and parliament, and indeed between convention of burghs and parliament, during the 1530s was significantly different to their counterparts in the second half of the century. Considering attendance highlights some of these issues. Burgess attendance at parliament was consistently higher than those who attended conventions of the burghs. As we have seen, attendance at conventions was usually five or six communities, in parliament, by contrast, nine communities attended in 1528, eight in 1531, three in 1532, five in 1535, eight in December 1540 and eleven in March 1541.95 Even given that sometimes only a limited number of burghs were summoned to a convention, these patterns of attendance strongly suggest that whatever was happening in parliament was of greater interest to a wider range of burghs than the staple-focused discussions in conventions. The March 1541 parliament and the convention of burghs which followed in April offer a helpful comparison. Representatives from Ayr, Irvine, Lanark, Cupar and Inverkeithing who had come to parliament did not return for the convention.96 Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Perth, Linlithgow and Dundee, gluttons for meetings, were represented at both. Only Stirling attended the convention but not parliament. The March 1541 parliamentary session had a significant legislative programme, including passing an act confirming burgh privileges.97 Clearly, for smaller burghs, the opportunity to manage domestic trade, for instance, by restricting the trade in wool, hides and

95  RPS, 1528/9/2, 1531/2, 1532/2, 1535/2, 1540/12/2. Date accessed: 2 August 2021. 96  The Ayr burgh accounts only note expenses for parliament not convention, offering corroborative evidence the sederunts were correct in this case, though the commissioners named as receiving expenses were not those who appeared in the parliamentary register: Pryde (ed.), Ayr Burgh Accounts, p. 71. 97  RPS, 1540/12/79. Date accessed: 29 August 2020.

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skins to free burghs, was more important than how foreign trade would be managed.98 Other parliamentary sessions fit equally snugly with MacDonald’s findings that burgesses attended parliament when they wanted something from it. In 1532, the main business was surrounding the college of justice, a project which did not affect burgh interests, but the December 1540 session engaged in a significant legislative programme within which burgh concerns were well represented. By contrast, the high attendance in 1528 and lower numbers in 1535 cannot be so easily explained by related legislative concerns. The 1528 parliament was the final in a series of assemblies held that year to legitimise and secure James’s personal rule, and heard the treason trials of Angus and his associates.99 The fact that a few months later the convention of burghs turned its attention to the type of controls and restrictions on trade which could have appeared in parliament affirms just how tightly parliament’s focus had been on securing the new regime.100 Even so, showing loyalty to the King as he took government into his own hands was evidently important for some burghs—perhaps especially since the burghs too felt the effects of James’s policy to drive Douglas supporters from positions of political influence.101 It also bears comparison with the high number of burghs attending the first parliament of Arran’s governorship during Mary’s minority—indeed, the number of burghs at parliament in the 1530s was very similar to the 1540s.102 The 1535 session, in contrast, did pass a large quantity of legislation. Several of these laws, moreover, directly reflected concerns earlier voiced by the burghs in the 1529 convention, for instance, the lords of the articles diagnosed the cause of the problems which had led to a decline in burgh life as lying in the appointment of ‘outlandis men’ to burgh office and proposed remarkably similar solutions to the convention of burghs of 1529.103 It is possible that the comparative lack of burgh representatives on this occasion was due to parliament’s unusual decision to delegate its powers to the lords of

 RPS, 1540/12/80. Date accessed: 29 August 2020.  Cameron, James V, pp. 9-69. 100  RCRBS, p. 509-12. 101  Mary Verschuur, ‘Merchants and Craftsmen in Sixteenth-Century Perth’ in Michael Lynch (ed.), The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London, 1987), pp. 36-54 at p. 41; Lynch, ‘The Crown and the Burghs’ in ibid., pp. 55-80 at p. 59. 102  MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 203. 103  RPS, 1535/44. Date accessed: 9 July 2019. 98 99

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the articles.104 If the burghs were aware this would happen, sending a commissioner may have seemed a waste of energy. Beyond using parliament to pass general acts, the burgesses of the late sixteenth century were adept at using it to secure their own privileges, especially when these were threatened with encroachment by a new neighbour.105 This marks a considerable point of contrast with the personal rule when only general confirmations of burgh privileges were issued, in 1535 and in 1540.106 Moreover, amongst all the burghs, only Edinburgh went to the trouble of securing private acts. One of these arranged for the relocation of the meal market away from the high street and the sight of visitors and residents who might be disturbed by the ‘multitude of vyle, unhonest and miserable creatouris’ shopping and working at the market.107 Similar concerns lay behind an act regarding the location of the fleschours (butchers) and the removal of unsightly buildings to facilitate the creation of a new wall.108 Internal building works and the locations appropriate to particular activities were not usually matters for legislation: burgh councils were more than equal to the task of discussing such matters.109 On the one hand, the suggestion for compulsory purchase of lands if the owners did not repair their property may have driven the council to secure parliamentary back up. It may also be explained in part by the exact location of the proposed new wall, ‘becaus the est syde of the said wynde pertenis to the abbot and convent of Halyrudhouse, it is ordanit that the ballies of the Cannongait gar siclik be done upoune the said est syde’.110 This act, therefore, was in part an intervention in the relationship between Edinburgh and their neighbours in the Canongate which would force the latter community to comply with the plans of the former. Even though parliament was not technically exercising its competence as a court here, this private act was essentially a form of dispute resolution—a binding  RPS, 1535/4. Date accessed: 25 August 2020.  MacDonald ‘Tedious to rehers?’, passim. 106  RPS, 1535/40, 1540/12/79. Date accessed: 29 August 2020. 107  RPS, 1540/12/75. Date accessed: 25 August 2020. 108  RPS, 1540/12/74. Date accessed: 25 August 2020. 109  Edin. Recs. II, pp. 57, 93, 104. The location of the Haddington fish market was also the subject of much discussion:  Haddington, John Gray Centre, HAD4/6/5  ff. 178, 184v, 186v, 188r. 110  RPS, 1540/12/74. Date accessed: 29 August 2020. The two burghs and the abbot of Holyrood had earlier been in dispute about the calsay connecting their communities: NRS CS6/7 f.42v-43r. 104 105

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decision had been made, whether or not the community of the Canongate were happy with the order. The statute concerning the location of the meal market, by contrast, continued the efforts of a burgh council initiative to remove both beggars and unsightly trade-related activities (including moving the meal market) from the sight of the town in July 1538—these were part of a general effort to spruce the capital up for Guise’s coronation.111 In this case, we see statute used as a back-up when a council injunction had, presumably, failed to achieve its objectives—although it is unclear whether only the meal market remained from amongst the unsightly trade activities or whether this was simply the most egregious. With the exception of these acts it is hard to discern particular communities behind burgh-related parliamentary provisions.112 Instead, when burghs needed their privileges confirmed (or, indeed, a host of other activities) they turned not to parliament but to the process of gaining letters under the royal seals. As we have already seen in the disputes surrounding the staple, royal letters under the seals could offer considerably more security than a parliamentary act. Scottish towns recognised this. On 14 March 1541, parliament passed a general act confirming previous burgh privileges—Lanark, however, secured back up by having its own privileges confirmed under the seals on the same day.113 Perhaps the town was especially cautious or perhaps it anticipated a dispute in the wake of the general confirmation, certainly, the fact it registered some of its older charters in the register of the lords of council and session in the summer of 1540 suggests a commendable concern for the state of its records.114 On other occasions, letters under the seals confirmed the existing privileges of individual communities such as Annan, Selkirk, Haddington, Rutherglen and Renfrew.115 Such letters also confirmed privileges previously granted to Kinghorn by the earl of Morton when his lands passed to the King.116 There is even some tantalising evidence for corporate action or groups who shared an interest obtaining letters under the seals to secure their own position. On 3 June 1529, the privy seal was affixed to a letter

 Edin. Recs. II, pp. 88-9.  See p. 273 below. 113  RPS 1540/12/79; RMS III, 2310. 114  Lanark’s council register is missing for this period: Robert Renwick (ed.), Extracts from the Records of the Royal Burgh of Lanark (Glasgow, 1893) pp. 18-19. NRS CS6/13 f.85r-86v. 115  RMS III, 1919, 2207, 2705, 2847; RSS II, 4688. 116  RMS III, 2437. 111 112

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which ‘restored’ the right to trade to craftsmen.117 This directly countermanded a statute from 1487 requiring individuals to restrict themselves to either trade or to craft, and the April 1529 convention of burghs’ ordinance that ‘na manner of craftismen within burgh sall nor wiss [sic] merchandice’.118 Ten years later, the 1487 Act was confirmed under the seals—the fact this was shortly before the December 1539 convention of burghs raises, but leaves unanswered, questions about how it might have related to that assembly.119 Especially intriguingly, in October 1541, Peebles secured royal letters confirming and ordering the implementation of parliamentary acts against forestallers passed in the previous session.120 New acts of parliament ought to have been proclaimed, so this was going above and beyond normal activities. It is therefore puzzling that these royal letters were not pronounced until March 1542. Regardless of the reason for the delay, this example shows a burgh which attended neither parliament nor convention during the personal rule seeking to afforce parliamentary authority with a royal letter. For the inhabitants of Peebles, a special note from the King was considered more effective to deal with a specific concern than a general pronouncement of statutes. Cumulatively, these examples suggest that attitudes towards parliamentary authority versus royal authority changed during the course of the century. MacDonald has shown how by 1600 parliamentary confirmation was considered to be essential alongside a royal grant.121 The 1526 parliament affords us a couple of examples of parliament confirming communities achieving a new status as burghs of barony—these confirmations, however, primarily served the interest of the noble or religious house that enjoyed the superiority of that community.122 In these examples from the personal rule, by contrast, burghs actively sought for a general parliamentary grant or injunction to be backed up by specific royal endorsement. This marks instead a point of continuity with the strategies of  RSS II, 134.  RPS, 1487/10/17. Date accessed: 29 August 2020. RCRBS, p. 509. 119  RSS II, 3216. 120  William Chambers (ed.), Charters and documents relating to the burgh of Peebles, with extracts from the records of the burgh. A. D. 1165-1710 (Edinburgh, 1872), pp. 59-60. For Peebles and the crown in an earlier period see M. Brown, ‘The Burgh and the Forrest’, in Jackson Armstrong and Edda Frankot (eds), Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe. Scotland its Neighbours c.1350-c.1700 (Abingdon, 2020), pp. 123–138. 121  MacDonald, ‘Tedious to rehers?’, pp. 37-41. 122  RPS, 1526/11/77, A1526/11/1. Date accessed: 25 August 2020 117 118

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fifteenth-­century burghs when, for example, Peebles and Ayr secured royal letters, proclaimed them and recorded the fact they had done so.123 Grants under the seals could create new and special relationships as well as confirming existing privileges or making a general act more specific and pertinent. In March 1531 (having chosen not to attend the convention held that month), Dumbarton secured a letter of protection under the privy seal—this venture seems to have been prompted by the fact that the local magnate, Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox, was himself seeking letters to confirm his own rights, including the captainship of Dumbarton castle.124 On this occasion, the whole community turned to the crown when faced with a potentially disruptive local lord. Although it is less obvious why Irvine sought out royal letters of protection in 1529 or Peebles did the same a decade later, again, this shows the value attached to royal letters under the seals.125 Royal letters also enabled part of a community to engage the crown’s support against its fellows. The month after Dumbarton had received its letters of protection, the provost of Aberdeen informed the burgh council that he had received the ‘kings grace letteres under his signet, impetrate be their awiss, chargand the neichbours of this burgh, that nane of thame suld refuss whatsomeuer office of honor thai happin to be chosin to the said communite’ on pain of losing their tacks.126 The office the provost had in mind was that of the lords of Bonnacord, the local version of the abbot of unreason or lord of misrule. The council agreed that since this was an office of honour if the two men selected that year refused, then the King’s letters would be executed. One of the men chosen said he would accept the office only if the council would ‘findand ane marrow sufficient furth filland his part’. The other objected to being made a lord of Bonnaccord on the grounds that others in the town were more able ‘and had greater proffite therof’, also explaining that he had not been present at the election and he had a royal discharge—however, he would set these concerns aside if the council would ‘gif him the auld fee quhilk thai had wont to pay for the samyn’.127 The ‘office’ of lord of Bonaccord was, of course, clearly distinct from those of provost and bailies which the 1529 convention had ordered no one could refuse to serve in  Brown, ‘The Burgh and the Forrest’.  RSS II, 864, 889-90. 125  RSS II, 212, 3214. For fifteenth-century precedents of Peebles seeking royal protection: Brown, ‘The Burgh and the Forrest’. 126  Aberd. Recs., p. 140. 127  Aberd. Recs., pp. 140-1. 123 124

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once they had been elected. Even so, since the role, like that of similar misrule figures in other communities, entailed expense, it could prove just as unattractive as other burgh offices.128 Eila Williamson’s study of the career of a Peebles based lord of misrule has shown that the men who held this office could do so as part of a broader career in burgh politics: these offices were important to burgh communities and to individual careers alike.129 Here, the royal letters affirmed provisions made by the 1529 convention of burghs that those elected to burgh office could not refuse to undertake it, and framed a discussion in the burgh council which went beyond the provisions of the convention by expanding the category of ‘officers’. Waiting for another convention or meeting to amend a general statute would simply have taken too long—letters under the seals offered a quick and authoritative fix. As these examples show, the burghs did not have to wait for a summons and then trudge to Edinburgh to achieve their aims. For those burgh communities on James’s itinerary, royal visits occasionally offered the chance to secure confirmations, as the Websters of Dundee did during James’s sojourn there in March 1531.130 However, most confirmations of rights or requests for royal letters under the seals were not obviously connected to a royal visit. Instead, royal visits could foster important connections—the royal pitstop in Perth in 1541 held advantages for the incumbent bailies, as James wrote to the council thanking them for their hospitality and indicating that ‘notwithstanding ony our Lawis actis or stautis maid in the contrar thairof with the quhilks We dis[pence]’ that the bailies should continue in post at the next election.131 Here, James overrode a statute made by his grandfather.132 Royal intervention to suspend statutes relating to burgh officers was not isolated to Perth—Simon Preston’s appointment as provost of Edinburgh for life in 1540 required the same statute to be suspended.133 In a slightly different context, in August 1532, acting with 128  E. Patricia Dennison, ‘Robin Hood in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, in Julian Goodare and A. R. MacDonald (eds), Sixteenth Century Scotland: essays in honour of Michael Lynch (Leiden, 2008), pp. 169-188 at p. 181. 129  Eila Williamson, ‘Drama and Entertainment in Peebles in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Medieval English Theatre 22 (2000), pp. 127-44. 130  RMS III, 996; RSS II, 841. 131  Perth, A. K. Bell Library, B59.2.12 f.131r. 132  RPS, 1469/19. Date accessed: 8 July 2020. 133  RMS III, 2193.

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the advice of ‘our counsall’, James dispensed with the act of parliament which required the conservator to return to Scotland on an annual basis.134 On all of these occasions burghs or, in Moffat’s case, an individual appointed to act on behalf of their trade interests, received royal letters which released them from obedience to general acts. If statutes tried to create one law for everyone issuing letters under the seals was a way of creating exceptions to the rule. James’s willingness to dispense with statutes in respect of burgh governance suggests far stronger parallels with the behaviour exhibited by his grandson in the 1590s and beyond than we have hitherto appreciated.135 These examples of communities making direct contact with James or his administration raise interesting questions surrounding Edinburgh’s role amongst the burghs. Scholarship on the later fifteenth century has emphasised the difficulties which the concentration of political life on Edinburgh posed for burgess involvement in parliamentary committees.136 Meanwhile, research on the late sixteenth century has emphasised Edinburgh’s importance as a ‘conduit’ between the third estate as a whole and the court, which was increasingly settled at Holyrood.137 Both observations are rooted in an understanding that Edinburgh’s increasing prominence as the capital and home of the crown administration significantly shifted dynamics of the relationship between the burghs and central government. In terms of physical access to the monarch, however, the situation in the 1530s was substantially different to that later in the century: whilst parliament, convention of burghs, and the court of session were all firmly ensconced in Edinburgh, James himself roamed far and wide beyond the confines of an EH postcode. Between 1528 and 1542, there were only four years when James spent more nights in Edinburgh than he did enjoying the comforts of his childhood home (and new renaissance palace) of  RSS II, 1380; RPS, 1504/3/51. Date accessed: 6 August 2021.  For James VI: Lynch, ‘The Crown and the Burghs’ in Lynch (ed.), The Early Modern Town, pp. 57-8; Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 101-102; Stephanie Dropuljic and Adelyn Wilson, ‘Elections and Local Governance in Early Modern Aberdeen’, in A.  M. Godfrey (ed.), Stair Society Miscellany Eight (Edinburgh, 2020), pp.  231–263 at p. 238. For a view that the crown was not consciously seeking to infringe burgh privileges by dispensing with statutes: L. A. M. Stewart, ‘Politics and Government in the Scottish Burghs, 1603-1638’ in Goodare and MacDonald (eds), Sixteenth-Century Scotland, pp. 437-8. 136  Chalmers, ‘King’s council’, p. 189; Macdougall, ‘The Estates in Eclipse?’, pp. 158. 137  Amy L. Juhala, ‘An Advantageous Alliance: Edinburgh and the Court of James VI’, in Goodare and MacDonald (eds),  Sixteenth-Century Scotland, pp.  337-63; MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, pp. 110-116. 134 135

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Stirling, and in 1533 and 1535, he spend as many nights in Falkland as in the capital.138 In these circumstances, especially combined with evidence of attendance at conventions and parliaments, the gap in Stirling’s records from 1530 to 1544 is most unfortunate.139 Placed alongside the evident divisions between Edinburgh and some other burghs, notably Aberdeen, during the row about the staple in 1539–41, James’s wanderings raise an important question: is it fair to assume that Edinburgh in the 1530s provided the same sort of strong connection between towns and crown as it would later in the century? On one level, Edinburgh was extremely well placed to offer this. The connection between the lawyers who dominated Edinburgh’s civic elite and James’s regime is crystal clear. We have seen a few examples of this in the preceding chapters, but another bears considering. The Edinburgh provost appointed to chair the 1535 committee to consider restraining the craftsmen, James Lawson, was also a regular councillor and lord of session.140 Men such as Lawson and his fellow burgess councillors Francis Bothwell and Adam Otterburn, the king’s advocate, combined an active role on James’s council with careers in burgh politics: we find them hearing disputes surrounding building works and repairs and acting as amicable compositors for burgh disputes frequently in the first half of the 1530s.141 During the 1560s, privy councillors or presidents of the court of session who held the provostship were especially important in securing Edinburgh’s access to the crown.142 Even noble provosts could seriously engage with burgh interests.143 For example, in 1536, lord Maxwell was both provost of Edinburgh and one of James’s regents appointed during his absence in France. Despite this (to which we must add his ongoing duties on the border), Maxwell attended meetings of Edinburgh council in person.144 Whilst the potential channels of communication from burghs to capital to councillors to crown and back again are evident, as Lynch has observed,

 Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 386.   Stirling, Stirling Council Archives, B66/15/1 covers 1519-1530, B66/15/2: 1544-1550. 140  RPS, 1535/55. Date accessed: 25 August 2020. Lawson had attended parliament as provost: RPS, 1535/32. 141  Dean of Guild, 1529-1557, ECA, SL144.1.1 ff.3v-8v. 142  Godfrey, Civil Justice; MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, p. 118. 143  Lynch, ‘Introduction’, The Early Modern Town in Scotland, pp. 20-2. 144  Edin. Recs. II, pp. 76, 78. 138 139

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finding evidence that these were actually used is much harder.145 Our examination of the ways in which burghs used the seals to secure individual grants shows that when a community was looking out for its own interests it could simply bypass the capital. Negotiations on the staple, meanwhile, reveal a mixed picture—Edinburgh might well have led the parliamentary charges in 1526 and 1531 (although there is no evidence either way), but in 1539–41 faced with divisions amongst the burghs the crown’s interests aligned with those who opposed the capital. In July 1526, a young James Foulis had agreed to act as procurator for Middelburg in their ongoing case against the Scottish burghs regarding the staple, but he wanted it registered in the council books that ‘he wald procure na thing quhilk might be prejudice to the commone weal of merchandice in this realme, because he is sworn to the fredom of this burgh’.146 On this occasion, Foulis clearly connected the welfare of the capital, individual burgesses, and the wider interests of the merchants of the realm, but they did not always align so neatly. For Edinburgh to work effectively as a conduit between towns and crown, the third estate first needed a clear shared agenda. This only really emerged surrounding tax. In 1541, despite ongoing disagreements about the staple, when faced with the need to haggle with the crown regarding the details of a tax, the other burghs ‘consenttis to do thairin as the burch of Edinburgh, thai being referrit thairto’.147 This was part of a larger role played by Edinburgh in managing taxation which included settling questions about the rate at which burghs ought to have been taxed.148 In this context, it is tempting to suggest that the successful negotiations to reduce the burgh’s overall tax burden during the Anglo-­ Scottish war of 1532–3, which we will explore in chapter 5, were headed by men such as Otterburn or Lawson acting on behalf of the third estate. Again, the picture remains mixed: as Selkirk’s attempts to avoid the 1534 taxation show, not every community was always willing to be guided by decisions made by Edinburgh, or even Edinburgh plus some other wealthier burghs. Even so, taxation is the one area where we have clear evidence that at least those amongst the burghs who sent commissioners to conventions were willing to delegate to Edinburgh, and where the capital can be seen acting as an intermediary between crown and the third estate. In this  Lynch, ‘Crown and the Burghs’, p. 66.  NRS CS5/36 f. 45r; ADCP, p. 246. 147  RCRBS, pp. 517-518. 148  NLS Adv MS 31.4.9 f.148v; ST A UL B65/23/275c. 145 146

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context, further research on the 1540s, when the taxation burden on the burghs increased significantly, might well prove fruitful in understanding how Edinburgh’s position as intermediary for the third estate gradually assumed the significance it had clearly achieved by the end of the century.149

Conclusions Drawing general conclusions about the third estate’s political activities in this period is an activity best undertaken with a health warning: what we know about is only the tip of an iceberg. However, placed alongside the range of conventions summoned from amongst the first and second estates, the increase in meetings amongst members of the third estate to consider the vexed issue of the staple fits into a bigger picture of seeking out specialised groups to undertake discussion. Such a process built on earlier foundations, including attempts to have annual burgh conventions and the parliamentary ‘tradition of the different estates meeting separately to consider legislation’, whilst offering compelling parallels to the better understood process of specialisation with the creation of the session, exchequer and secret council out of the larger council.150 Moreover, although our evidence is sparser for these meetings than for gatherings held to discuss warfare, we see hints of how different types of meetings played different roles in consultation and decision making. In fact, James said as much in his letter to the Burgomasters of Middelburg, sent in the aftermath of the May 1531 parliament. Clarifying why they had lost out on the staple, James explained that although he had initially referred the matter to his council, they had in turn decided to wait until parliament, which had already been summoned. Meanwhile, however, ‘the burgh commissioners, considering the occasion most opportune, took counsel as to what James for his part should do’.151 Council, meetings amongst the burghs and parliament all played their part in reaching a decision—albeit that it was apparently a happy coincidence parliament was available.

 Blakeway, Regency, p. 104.  Mann, ‘House Rules’, p. 142; Rait, Parliaments of Scotland, pp. 402-3; Chalmers, ‘The King’s Council’, passim; Athol Murray, ‘Exchequer, Council and Session, 1513-1542’, in Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart Style, 1513-1542: essays on the Court of James V (East Linton, 1996), pp. 97-117, at p. 105; Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 128-9; Godfrey, Civil Justice, p. 5; Blakeway, ‘Privy Council of James V’, passim. 151  LJV, p. 192. 149 150

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This also reveals an expectation that the burghs should be included in decision making when those decisions directly affected the ‘commonwealth of merchandice’, even if the questions of how involved, who amongst, and even whether, the burghs ought in the end to be heeded elicited a cacophony of discordant replies. The burghs obviously believed they had a decent chance of influencing royal action. The tax offered in 1526, the repeated instructions to commissioners from Aberdeen not to give up privileges, the provisions for the crown to repay Middelburg in 1531 (and, when that backfired in 1534, attempts to ensure this would never happen again) and the insistence on being allowed to consult further with their communities before signing up to a decision on the staple in 1539, all show the third estate believed itself to have a right to take considered consultative decisions and for those decisions to be headed when it came to the ‘commonwealth of merchandice’. Examining how this process of decision making worked for the burghs, however, exposes more dissatisfaction and discontent than the conventions of the lords of the previous chapter apparently provoked—both directed towards the crown and amongst different elements of the third estate. When the burghs were able to act collectively—in 1526 and 1531— they were able to use parliament, combined with the promise of taxation, to influence the crown. The successes these meetings enjoyed were temporary and should not be overstated. In the final years of the personal rule evidence for collective action on the staple declines: Edinburgh disagreed with many of its fellows. Whether the 1541 settling of the staple at Veere would have felt like a victory to Aberdeen, which preferred fewer restrictions on trade, is hard to say, but it is clear that Edinburgh’s attempts to coerce other burghs and sidestep the crown’s authority to make international contracts under its own steam came to nothing. One lesson easily drawn from these failures was that if the crown wanted to it could and would find a way around an act of parliament. Unsurprisingly, in this context, when seeking to achieve their own particular objectives, individual communities looked outwith parliament or convention. Instead they contacted the King or council or simply used the existing administration to secure royal letters under the seals. On one level, the fact James used royal letters to suspend or overcome general parliamentary statutes to create exceptions to those rules is not surprising. The practice of royal remissions, whereby an individual was allowed to exchange punishment for a fine, has already garnered significant scholarly attention.152 Beyond  For a summary of this: Blakeway, Regency, pp. 165-8.

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offering these get-out-of-execution-not-entirely-free cards, for the individual, a royal letter could bring legitimacy to a child born outside wedlock, exempt them from paying taxes (including both to a burgh and the crown) and allow them to ignore the general provision of military service.153 Some of these letters explained they were able to dispense with the normal rules for these particular subjects by reason of James’s ‘kinglie power’.154 In this context, the fact that Pittenweem received its royal charter transforming it to a royal burgh with the right to attend parliament in 1541 but did not bother to have this confirmed by parliament until the seventeenth century reveals a profound attitudinal shift regarding the relative importance of crown versus parliamentary confirmation took place over the course of this century.155 Accordingly, it is perhaps unsurprising that relatively few communities chose to engage with conventions or parliaments and that only Edinburgh thought it was worth the bother to seek a private act of parliament to manage its position amongst its neighbours and facilitate control of the ‘vyle creatouris’ of the burgh. Taken collectively, the ways in which the burghs were consulted by and engaged with crown authority during the 1530s were profoundly different to those of their successors a generation later. In part this dynamic can be explained by the fact the staple remained in dispute and so successive regimes in the 1520s and 1530s chose to consult with or had to intervene amongst the burghs in settling the staple as part of a broader portfolio of crown diplomatic and financial concerns. This created a particular dynamic around the convention whereby it was less well attended than parliament, which presumably offered a broader range of opportunities—not least, perhaps, the chance to see and be seen by a wider range of political actors. Circumstances in the 1530s might have created different dynamics to those with which we are more familiar from the better-evidenced latter part of the century, however, the ample and active engagement of some burghs with central government (even if those efforts enjoyed only mixed success) offers a thread of continuity across the century. Perhaps the issue on which such engagement mattered most was taxation. We turn to this subject in the next chapter.

153  Some (not exhaustive) examples: RSS II, 1486, 1489, 1490, 1505, 1584, 2205, 2485, 3822, 4482. 154  RSS II, 4482, 2399. 155  MacDonald, ‘Tedious to Rehers?’, pp. 37-8.

CHAPTER 5

Taxation and Finance

The foregoing chapters have shown that James had pressing military and diplomatic concerns. Therefore, he had an equally pressing need for money, and crown expenditure during the 1530s rapidly outstripped income.1 James’s mother, Margaret Tudor, was entitled to a third of the crown’s lands—this considerably reduced the crown’s ordinary income until her death in 1541.2 Even though the minority regimes encountered financial difficulties, as an adult, James was spending far more than any previous government which had ruled in his name—whilst the campaigns and diplomatic endeavours which we have examined in the previous two chapters did not come cheap, nor did a court and lifestyle fit for a man who was the Emperor in his own kingdom. Between 1500 and 1544, the crown experienced an approximate doubling of prices, but between 1539 and 1542, prices began edging higher at a faster rate—driven, ironically, by James’s own policy of debasing the coinage, itself an effort to raise 1  Athol L. Murray, ‘Exchequer, council and session, 1513-1542’, in Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart style, 1513-1542: essays on the court of James V (East Linton, 1996), pp. 97-117; A. L. Murray, ‘Financing the Royal Household: James V and his comptrollers, 1513-1543’, in Ian B. Cowan and D. Shaw (eds), The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland: essays in honour of Gordon Donaldson (Edinburgh, 1983), pp.  41-59; Amy Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 102, 113, 115. 2  Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland, pp. 93, 116.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4_5

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cash.3 We have seen in the previous chapter how the need for money prompted negotiations with the burghs and foreign towns for the staple and drove the crown to renege on agreements. Whilst financial pressure could drive James’s regime to extreme exigencies, it also prompted it to summon meetings to consent to taxes, and at least some of these resulted in the crown reducing its demands. In many early modern polities, the raising of taxation and the summoning of meetings of the estates were intimately connected topics.4 Whilst parliaments of course granted taxes, as in other areas of political life, the existence of conventions created a substantially different situation in Scotland to that which prevailed elsewhere. Conventions, of the burghs, the ‘lordis’ or, later in the century, the three estates, granted taxes, and the council too might on occasion grant a tax.5 Even so, the relative significance of parliament, convention and council in grants of taxation has provoked disagreement. Athol Murray’s pioneering study of crown finance before 1542 argued that ‘taxes falling upon all three Estates were imposed by Parliament, or, on, occasion, by the Council’.6 Roland Tanner’s examination of parliament between 1424 and 1488 broadly concurred: taxation, Tanner contended, was a major (if not the major) source of disagreement between monarch and parliament. James I’s siphoning off of taxes raised for his ransom to fund other initiatives engendered subsequent distrust and disputes on the subject of tax in parliament and great council alike, whilst taxes provided opportunities for the estates to ‘extract concessions’ from James III and most of that monarch’s requests for taxes were successfully resisted.7 By contrast, considering the reign of James IV, Norman Macdougall acknowledged that since ‘parliament was clearly not the only body which might authorise taxation…we must look further than Parliament’s fiscal role to explain the reasons for its demise’ in the years

3  Amy Blakeway, ‘The Sixteenth-Century Price Rise: Scotland, 1500–85’, The Economic History Review 68 (2015), pp. 167-190. 4  M. A. R. Graves, The Parliaments of Early Modern Europe (Abingdon, 2001), pp. 85-86, 115-122. 5  I.  E. O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ (University of Glasgow, PhD thesis, 1980), pp. 180-1. 6  A. L. Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue of Scotland, 1437-1542’ (University of Edinburgh, PhD thesis, 1961), p. 326. 7  Roland Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: politics and the three estates 1424-1488 (East Linton, 2001), pp. 53, 219-1, 250-1.

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immediately after 1500.8 Julian Goodare, meanwhile, has demonstrated that in the period 1566–1603, parliament granted only four of the seventeen taxes imposed.9 However, since conventions of estates after 1566 were far more similar to parliament than the conventions held between 1528 and 1542, the taxes they granted can de facto be treated as ‘parliamentary’. Clearly, the relative significance we should afford to parliament in studies of taxation (and, indeed, taxation in studies of parliament) varied over time. Turning to the reign of James V, although parliament’s role in granting taxation has not previously been considered, taxation has secured a considerable level of attention from scholars primarily focused on his religious policies and considerable debate still exists surrounding how far this crown pecuniary interest weakened the Kirk in its efforts against heresy.10 James’s taxation was far from innovative: we have seen over the previous two chapters in passing that he generally requested taxes for military campaigns and embassies, notably to discuss trade and his marriage. The exception was the most famous tax of the personal rule, the novel requests for a £10,000 annual grant from the clergy, requested to fund the college of justice but later described as being for the King’s own use. This chapter builds on our existing understanding that the first estate proved the most lucrative source of taxes for James V to show that conventions, often working in coordination with the council, were far more profitable than parliament, whose main contribution to crown finances in this period was through legislation to annex lands to the crown and so enlarge the royal demesne. This identification of conventions as a major source of taxation raises questions about representation and taxation which taxes granted by late sixteenth-century conventions of the three estates do not. The idea that all those to be taxed should be consulted on and consent to taxes was common currency in Scotland by this period, indeed, it had been clearly

 Norman Macdougall, James IV (East Linton, 1997), p. 172.  Julian Goodare, ‘Parliamentary Taxation in Scotland, 1560-1603’, Scottish Historical Review 68 (1989), pp. 23-52 at pp. 48-51. 10  R. K. Hannay, ‘A study in Reformation History’, SHR 23 (1925), pp. 18-33; W. Stanford Reid, ‘Clerical Taxation: the Scottish alternative to the dissolution of the monasteries’, Catholic Historical Review 34 (1948), pp. 129-153; J. Wilson Ferguson, ‘James V and the Scottish Church, 1528-1542’, in T. K. Rabb and J. E. Seigel (eds), Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of E.H. Harbison (Princeton, 1969), pp. 52-76. 8 9

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articulated by no less a person than the scholar John Mair.11 Mair’s formulation of the Roman law maxim that what touches all should be approved by all, fashionable throughout Europe, was partly reflected in practice: generally, by the fifteenth century if a burgh was to be taxed, it had a right to attend parliament, and in 1504, parliament passed an act specifying that the burghs needed to be summoned to advise on any proposed tax.12 Throughout James’s personal rule, this dictum was either forgotten or ignored since the practice of granting taxes in conventions attended by only the ‘lords’ limited burghal involvement. Even so, as we shall see, burghs were not totally excluded from discussions surrounding taxation. Our starting point for crown finances in this period remains Athol Murray’s magisterial study which identified thirteen taxes granted between 1528 and 1542.13 However, Stanford Reid and Fergusson each made claims that further taxation not discussed by Murray was granted in the period 1541–2.14 As we shall see in the first section of this chapter, discussing clerical taxation, taxes were granted to James by the Church in 1541 and 1542, but there is some confusion about the details of these. After beginning with the clerical taxes, which are most familiar to us from existing scholarship, we will move to continue taxes paid only by the burghs and dealt with in conventions of burghs. The final two sections will explore taxes paid by two or even all three estates, in conventions and in parliaments. Taxes granted by conventions are especially complex, since ascertaining who was actually involved in securing these is a trickier task. Having compared these sources of taxation income and briefly contextualised them alongside James’s other revenues, we will consider the other area where parliament contributed to royal finances: the annexation of lands to  J. H. Burns, The True Law of Kingship: concepts of Monarchy in Early Modern Scotland (Oxford, 1996), p. 69. 12  Alan MacDonald, ‘The Third Estate: Parliament and the Burghs’, in K. M. Brown and A. R. MacDonald (eds), Parliament in Context, 1235-1707 (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 95-121 at p. 99. RPS, A1504/3/130. Date accessed: 28 April 2017. This was repassed in a slightly revised form in 1560: RPS, A1560/8/13. Date accessed: 4 August 2017. For other examples of the influence of the ‘quod omnes tangit ab omnibus comprobetur’ dictum see: Herman Shück, ‘Sweden’s Early Parliamentary Institutions from the Thirteenth Century to 1611’ in M. F. Metcalf (ed.), The Riksdag: a History of the Swedish Parliament (Stockholm, 1987), pp. 5-60 at p. 10. 13  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue: appendix’, p. 106. 14  Stanford Reid, ‘Clerical Taxation in Scotland’, pp. 129-153; Ferguson, ‘James V and the Scottish Church, 1528-1542’, pp. 52-76. 11

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the crown. Whilst parliament’s role in securing taxes for James was minimal, its contribution to royal finances through its activities as a court by forfeiting traitors and passing legislation designed to protect the royal lands and customs revenues was highly important. By the early sixteenth century, taxes were, when due from all three estates, apportioned on the basis of half from the clergy, a third from the nobility and a sixth from the burghs.15 However, there were also occasions on which the burghs and the spiritual lords were taxed separately. The nobility do not appear to have ever been taxed by themselves, but did retain a duty to serve in person in military campaigns—on such occasions, the spirituality and burghs might be taxed, but the burghs at least might instead be required to serve. In these complex circumstances, it is unsurprising that securing a grant of taxation during the personal rule was a process which invariably took place across several meetings dealing with different aspects of the venture. First, the crown needed to secure approval for its pursuit of a pursue a policy or activity. Since activities such as an embassy or a war would obviously necessitate a tax, approving such a policy tacitly accepted the need for such a contribution. Subsequently, the crown (at least sometimes) needed to secure an explicit in principle agreement for a tax. After this, the details of the amount and timescale for payment could be negotiated. These steps might take place concurrently, but more commonly they were spaced out over several meetings. Cumulatively, this created opportunities for differently constituted groups to endorse, modify or resist royal demands. This is nicely illustrated by the events of September 1524, just following the declaration of James V’s majority and ejection of Albany from the regency. On this occasion, Murray argued that a tax was granted by the council. Believing that such an event would have been highly unusual, Murray esteemed it possible that the body which ordered the tax may have been ‘reinforced’ by a general council or convention when it did so.16 Murray cited evidence relating to a meeting on 12 September, when the details of the split between the clergy (£1500), barons (£1000) and burghs (£500) were recorded and arrangements for collection finalised.17 This 15  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p.  326. Tax was first divided unevenly in 1497: Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament p. 197. 16  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, pp. 326, appendix 87-8. 17  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, pp. 326, appendix 87-8; ADC iii, pp. 208-9. The fact the burghs paid £500 means this may be the dateless tax roll cited at Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p. 331.

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meeting was attended by Margaret and a group of eight councillors.18 However, this decision actually represented the culmination of over a month of political rumination stretching across several bodies. On 4 August 1524, a group of 36 nobles and clerics issued James Hamilton, first earl of Arran, with a commission to treat with Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk.19 Arran had returned by 19 August, when he next appeared in council, and it is therefore highly likely that Arran’s mission was discussed during the parliament which met on 20 August.20 As Emond argued, this parliament was summoned with fewer than forty days’ notice and before Albany was due to return—its legality, therefore, was questionable.21 There is no Scottish register containing the activities of this parliament, instead, we are reliant upon reports procured by English agents.22 Eight days later, another meeting occurred. Our source for this is a report sent to Albany by his agent Antoine Gonzolles, who he had left as the commander of Dunbar castle, which recounts a meeting in the Edinburgh Tolbooth on 28 August attended by James, Margaret and Arran, the latter of whom forcefully argued for a break with France, rejection of the Treaty of Rouen and instead negotiating for the marriage of Princess Mary of England to James V, who would henceforth be described as Prince of England. Arran was supported in making his case by ‘quatre mil’ armed men, headed by Maxwell, ‘auec tous celux des marches’.23  NRS CS5/34 f.203r; ADCP, p. 206.  W.  K. Emond, The Minority of James V: Scotland in Europe, 1513-1528 (Edinburgh, 2019), pp. 196-7; NRS CS5/34 f. 193r; ADCP, pp. 206-7. For the sederunt NRS CS5/34 f. 191r. 20  NRS CS5/34 f.193r. Parliament is also likely to have discussed the composition of a council to ‘remayne in Edinburgh with the kingis grace or within the abbay for the administratioun of Justice and ordouring of all matteris and attemptatis sall happin to occur within the realme’. NRS CS5/34 f.192v; ADCP, pp. 205-7. 21  Emond, Minority of James V, pp. 195-7. 22  ‘Statutes Made in the Parliament at Edinburgh the 20th day of August the year of God 1524’, TNA SP49/2 ff.115-16. See: RPS, A1524/8/1-9. Date accessed: 12 May 2020. 23  Gonzolles to Albany, 16 September 1524, BL Cotton Caligula MS B I ff. 51v-52r. They were accompanied by another group whose identity is unclear. Brewer suggested the phrase describing this group translated as ‘all of the petty little (?)’ based on the transcription ‘du petit litle’ (L&P IV:1 p. 295). This, however, does not make sense, and ‘litle’ or an obvious spelling variant does not appear in Randal Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 1611). I would suggest in fact this conflates two words and propose an alternative transcription of ‘du petit Lit Le Parlement’—or ‘from Leith. The Parliament…’. This would make sense since the previous group of men were described by geographical origin and the French did often refer to Leith as ‘little Leith’ or ‘petit Leith’ throughout the century. 18 19

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Even though the number is probably an exaggeration, this show of force effectively cowed most of the temporal lords into agreement. This meeting Gonzolles described as a ‘Parlement’.24 As we have seen in the previous chapters, foreign observers repeatedly described meetings which were not in fact parliaments as such erroneously, but Gonzolles was a long-term expatriate and it seems unlikely he would have fallen in to this trap. Our records of this parliament are poor, so it is entirely plausible the estates or a portion of them did gather on this date and that a menacing crowd amassed outside the Tolbooth whilst parliament sat inside. These discussions evidently informed the appointment of a new set of commissioners to negotiate with England, the earl of Cassillis, William Scott of Balwearie and Adam Otterburn. Reflecting the examples we have encountered in previous chapters of using generic terms designed to suggest widespread consent, the commission itself blandly stated that Margaret and the ‘Lords’ had been consulted.25 Since there are no further discussions in either the council or parliamentary registers, it is therefore unclear who, exactly, authorised the commission. By 7 September, the commissioners had returned and met with twenty other men to discuss their meeting with their English opposite number, the duke of Norfolk.26 Recording their deliberations in the council register, this group concluded that ‘[con]forme to the promise made by the lordis commissioners’ a full embassy would be arranged.27 Since a tax would be necessary to fund this, two representatives were appointed from each estate, by whom the details of the tax would ‘be diuisit and ordanit’. These included Adam Otterburn, the only burgess present at the meeting, and David Learmonth, provost of St Andrews, the only collector not at the meeting, for the burghs. Precepts for the tax issued on 12 September detailed that although it was the council who had ‘devisit’ the tax, the three estates had first ‘devisit’ the embassy.28 In view of Gonzolles’s description of the events of 30 August, this seems to be a reasonable summary of what happened, even if it obscured the fact that Arran behaved in a threatening and coercive manner. By November, the tax was being raised  Gonzolles to Albany, 16 September 1524, BL Cotton Caligula MS B I ff. 51v-52r.  Thomas Rymer (ed.), Foedera VI part II (London, third edition, 1741), p. 10. 26  NRS CS5/34 f.198r-198v; ADCP, p. 207. The treasurers’ account is missing for this period and the witness lists of the seals do not show unusual activity which might have offered corroborative evidence. 27  NRS CS5/34 198v; ADCP, pp. 207. 28  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue: appendix’, pp. 87-8. 24 25

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and parliament, following ‘mature deliberation’ approved the granting of ‘ane ample and honest commission’ for an embassy to England.29 In summary, then, in the first part of the summer, a convention of nobles of some description sent commissioners to England. These men reported back in August in a session of parliament whose records are now lost, further discussions may have followed thereafter and this resulted in a second commission. When this mission returned in September, its results were discussed by a group of nobles and clerics who decided things were sufficiently promising to justify a full embassy, for which they granted a tax. This group appointed two commissioners from each estate who decided on the details of the tax. Once the tax was raised, all three estates met in the November parliament which approved the identity of the ambassadors and the terms of their commission. This was a substantially different process to that prevalent later in the century, when taxes were discussed by parliament (or a convention) before they were approved.30 Parliamentary involvement here was focused not on taxation but on approving and then endorsing the policy which would require a tax: the pivot away from France towards England and the resultant need for an embassy. Before turning to the taxes of James’s personal rule, it is worth noting that the focus here is on grants of taxation. Gathering in money granted as taxes posed considerable difficulties for successive early modern governments, and the expediencies James’s regime was driven to, from traditional legal pursuit to the more innovative earmarking of sums received in feu charters to pay tax debts, shows that Scotland in the 1530s was no 29  RPS, 1524/11/12; RPS, A1524/11/1. Date accessed: 8 January 2018. The Latin reads: ‘ex nostra certa [scientia] et matura deliberatione trium regni nostri statuum in nostro parliamento congregatorum cum consilio carrissimae matris nostri’. The RPS editors summarise this as ‘with the consent of the three estates assembled in parliament, and with the counsel of [Queen Margaret Tudor], the king’s mother’. In fact, the Latin does not mention the ‘consent’ of the Estates only that the decision was taken following their ‘mature deliberation’ after the reference to James’s ‘certa [scientia]’. The original of this document has not been traced and the RPS editors drew on Thompson. Whilst it is therefore impossible to say how he arrived at ‘scientia’—suggesting the commission proceeded from the King’s ‘certain/sure knowledge’—to fill the gap, it seems more likely that the blank would have contained a word for will. The commission would thus have been issued ‘By reason of our fixed [will] and the mature deliberation of the three estates of our realm gathered in our parliament with the advice of our dearest mother’. Given the subject matter of the parliament the emphasis on James’s will, if correct, would have proven especially fitting. 30  Julian Goodare, The Government of Scotland 1560-1625 (Oxford, 2004), p. 32.

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exception.31 Assessing how much of each tax eventually reached crown hands is, moreover, an inexact science at best since the accounting situation was complex. Taxation in this period could be accounted for either by the treasurer, as a form of extraordinary revenue, or separately, and was usually gathered in several instalments which means that a tax might have been accounted in several different documents.32 Equally, arrears might not be paid until several years after a tax was granted. Whilst the extant accounts reveal many examples of compliance, as Murray noted, ‘the loss of a large portion of the special accounts makes it impossible to tell with complete certainty how efficient was the collection of taxes’.33 Goodare’s research on the 1590s, however, reveals a complex situation which included attempts to charge individuals twice for the same tax, deductions made by collectors at a local level, exemptions, and feet dragging, amongst other behaviours which cumulatively mean that ascertaining how much money actually reached the crown is fraught with difficulty.34 We will encounter examples of all of these behaviours in the 1530s. Whilst this means that we cannot simply assume that the amount granted equated to the amount received, it is still worth considering the sums granted since these offer valuable evidence of expectations, levels of buy in, and an insight into negotiations. For the purposes of the present study, the sums granted are in many ways of more interest than the actual sums raised, although we will (cautiously) consider this where possible. Caveats aside, it is now time to turn to taxes on the first estate.

Taxes on the Kirk James’s taxation on the Kirk is the best studied aspect of his financial policy, with scholars such as Hannay, Stanford Reid and Murray showing how James’s ability to extract resources from the church must be understood in the context of his broader diplomatic posturing as a loyal son of Rome beset from the south by his heretical uncle, and his search for a foreign

31  For difficulties raising taxes in other contexts: Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp.  207-8; L.  A. M.  Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution: covenanted Scotland, 1637-1651 (Oxford, 2016), pp. 197-9. 32  Goodare, ‘Parliamentary Taxation’, p.  36; Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, pp. 334-7. 33  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p. 335. 34  Goodare, ‘Parliamentary Taxation’, pp. 23-36.

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bride.35 This extended to his canny appointment of his illegitimate sons to lucrative benefices, the income from which James could then ‘manage’ until they came of age, as well as heavy clerical taxation in addition to the clerical contributions to taxes on all three estates, all of which bore striking similarities to his father’s activities.36 In 1531–2 and again in 1541, James, the Scottish clergy and the papacy negotiated intensely surrounding these taxes. On both occasions an initial set of proposals including multiple strands of tax was tabled and then modified as the discussions progressed. The relationship between these taxes is thus complex, so it is worth going through this in some detail, building on and clarifying the findings of Hannay, Reid and Murray. In 1531, the Pope granted James two taxes. These were known as the tax of the three teinds and the great tax. The tax of the three teinds, granted on 17 July 1531, obliged the Church to give James three-tenths of the fruits of benefices for three years.37 The great tax, granted on 13 September 1531, was an annual contribution of £10,000 to endure as long as James and his successors remained faithful to Rome and was intended to endow the college of justice.38 Following the announcement of the second papal tax of 1531 critical clerical chatter became audible as far away as Rome and Silvester Darius was despatched to Scotland by the Pope to aid with on the ground negotiations and smooth over any crown-­ church tensions over the tax.39 Indeed, cumulatively these two taxes would have been highly burdensome for the clergy (even given that some of the great tax would have reached the pockets of clerical judges appointed to the college), and so a compromise was agreed in 1532. The tax of the three teinds was collected for at least two years, but the great tax was commuted into a one-off payment of £72,000 over four years.40 Unhelpfully, 35  Hannay, ‘Study in Reformation History’, pp. 23-6; Stanford Reid, ‘Clerical Taxation’, pp. 129-53; Ferguson, ‘James V and the Scottish Church, 1528-1542’, pp. 52-76. 36  Macdougall, James IV, pp. 146-164, 214. 37  R. K. Hannay, ‘A study in Reformation History’, SHR 23 (1925), pp. 20-6; Stanford Reid, ‘Clerical Taxation’, p. 138; NRS CH7/53A. 38  Transcript of the process upon a bull of Pope Clement VII providing for a contribution of 10,000 ducats from the rents of ecclesiastical benefices to the College of Justice, 1531, NRS, CH7/52. This is transcribed in: Ilay Campbell (ed.), The Acts of Sederunt of the Lords of Council and Session from the Institution of the College of Justice In May 1532 to January 1553 (Edinburgh, 1811), pp. 85-7. 39  Hannay, ‘Study in Reformation History’, p. 23; For other aspects of Darius’s mission: LJV, pp. 223-4. 40  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenues: appendix’, p. 106.

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this £18,000 per annum was subsequently described as the ‘great tax’.41 At the same time, the King ‘transactit’ with the prelates for a further tax which would fund the college of justice, specifically the judges’ salaries. This was an annual grant, which it was presumably anticipated would be permanent. Initially this was agreed at £1400 but later increased to £1425 18s, due from specifically assigned benefices.42 Little evidence survives surrounding the negotiations to commute the papally granted £10,000 per annum ‘great tax’ into the still hefty but less burdensome £72,000 paid over four years plus a permanent annual grant of £1425 18s, although these have traditionally been dated to August– September 1532.43 In fact these took place earlier in the summer, in the immediate aftermath of the May parliament (which passed the initial legislation surrounding the college of justice). James sent ‘ane mass off letteris’ to James Beaton, archbishop of St Andrews, on the subject of the tax in June.44 These were probably orders for payment which Beaton had to endorse or distribute since on 15 June James explained to the treasurer and council that because the prelates had granted the great tax ‘to be expendit and varit to [spent on] our necessaris and honour regal’ absolutely no discharges for payments should be allowed—apparently as an afterthought, in a postscript of the letter, the same interdict was applied to the tax of the three teinds, due from not just the prelates but ‘al utheris kirkmen’.45 This helps to clarify who amongst the clergy was responsible for each tax. It also suggests that by this stage the remit of the tax originally intended for the college had already been widened, and may speak to an especial concern surrounding non-payment. Finally, this makes it obvious that James and his council understood that a firm agreement regarding the tax had been made by this date. This, in turn, raises the tantalising prospect that the meeting of ‘both orders of magnates’ in St Andrews which followed the May 1532 parliament and discussed the possible crusade and the threat of Lutheranism was also the site of serious negotiations

 NRS CS6/18 f.100v; ADCP, p. 515.  R. K. Hannay, ‘On the foundation of the College of Justice’, SHR 15 (1917), pp. 30-46, at p. 39; NRS CS6/15 f.102r. For a summary of the process surrounding the College see: Godfrey, Civil Justice on Renaissance Scotland, pp. 128-9. 43  Hannay, ‘Study in Reformation History’, pp. 24-5. 44  NRS E21/25 f.52v. 45  NRS CS6/1 ff.6r, 25r; ADCP, pp. 373-9. 41 42

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surrounding the financial contributions of the prelates to domestic matters. 46 Nevertheless, there was certainly important tax-related administration in August: that month specific benefices were identified from which the £1425 due annually to pay the salaries of the judges of the college could be paid.47 This corroborates the case that the main negotiations for this tax must have taken place earlier since the total sum must have been agreed before the nitty gritty of which benefices ought to be assigned to the tax could be sorted out. Indeed, this is yet another example of decisions being made and then the details thrashed out over several meetings. It is possible that after negotiations had concluded, the possibility of a new papal bull to confirm the arrangement was discussed since English spies suggested that, having already granted James 10,000 crowns a year, James Beaton, archbishop of St Andrews had obtained a new papal bull allowing the King a further £4000 sterling to be paid over four years.48 If this indeed reflected a firm plan, any corroborative paperwork is no longer extant. This process of negotiating James down raises the question of clerical resistance to taxation. Despite the fact that the great tax was granted contingent upon James’s continued fidelity to Rome, Margaret Sanderson has emphasised the level of clerical non-payment of the tax and suggested that the fact the college’s finances were not discussed in either the 1532 parliament or in the 1541 session when the college’s foundation was ratified is itself evidence that the clergy were resisting the tax.49 Although Sanderson is right to point to staunch clerical resistance, her suggestion that the fact the tax was not debated in parliament constitutes evidence of such resistance requires qualification. As we have seen, parliamentary consent was not a prerequisite for a tax on the first estate, and in this particular case, since the initial grant was from a papal bull, it is hard to see what parliament’s role would have been in either approving or resisting a tax. The May 1532 meeting of ‘both orders of magnates’ or another meeting between crown representatives and the prelates held before 15 June are more likely locations for discussions of the tax.50 Moreover, contextualising the 1541 ratification alongside the revocation issued in the same  CSPV, IV, 778; LJV, pp. 211, 223-4.  Hannay, ‘Study in Reformation History’, p. 24. 48  Northumberland to Henry VIII, 3 September 1532, BL Cotton Caligula MS B I f. 132r. 49  Margaret Sanderson, Cardinal of Scotland: David Beaton c.1494-1546 (Edinburgh, revised ed., 2001), pp. 49-51. 50  LJV, pp. 211, 223-4. 46 47

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­ arliament suggests that the timing of former was necessitated by the latp ter: namely, that parliament was re-registering a grant which James had originally issued before he attained ‘his perfite aige of xxv yeris’ on the occasion of its confirmation of his revocation.51 The revocation had taken place in April 1537, during James’s visit to France, and doubtless its issuing whilst he was abroad was designed to enhance his image as a powerful and secure monarch in the eyes of his new in-laws.52 In this context, we should refrain from reading too much into parliament’s lack of involvement in the taxes raised for the college of justice or the delay before parliamentary ratification was secured, but the sources leave the questions of how and where the clergy resisted the tax open. Clearly, it is unlikely that once cynical prelates became believers in the tax overnight, and the fact that James had to be content with less reveals successful clerical pushback, but this took place outside parliament. Only a portion of this tax reached crown coffers. By the 1533 exchequer, £16,441 had been raised of the £72,000, and the following year a further £7605 was added to this.53 Combined with smaller amounts which occur in later accounts this means we have firm evidence of a little over £20,000 of the £72,000 reaching crown coffers, although further payments were being made as late as 1540.54 In 1532–3 and 1533–4, the tax of the three teinds was also collected. In the 1533 exchequer, £2557 was accounted for from this tax, the following year a little over half of this was received.55 Since these accounts included totals derived from local collectors it is unclear precisely to which period the sums collected related. There is no clear evidence surrounding central receipt of the £1425 due annually to pay the Judges’ salaries; however, in 1532–3, the bill for salaries came to just over £1000: at this rate of pay, £1400 would have been a more than ample annual fund.56 In this context, it is unsurprising that taxation was on the agenda at the sole provincial council of the personal rule. The desirability of holding a provincial council had been discussed in the 1535 parliament when the  RPS, 1540/12/64. Date accessed: 25 July 2017.  Cameron, James V, p. 133. 53  NRS E21/27 f.9r; NRS E21/28 f. 60r. Murray erroneously gives this as the 1534 and 1535 exchequer respectively: ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p.  339. For some other materials relating to the fate of this tax: NRS CS6/5 f. 126r-v; ADCP, p. 428. 54  NRS CS6/13 ff. 118r 191r; ADCP, pp. 491, 493. 55  NRS E21/27 ff.7v-9r; NRS E21/28 ff.58-60. 56  NRS E21/27 f.11v. 51 52

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lords of articles met with full parliamentary power.57 This group included the archbishop of Glasgow, six other bishops and seven lesser clerics, and they evidently anticipated that Archbishop Beaton might resist their calls for a council, since they laid out a plan to be followed in the eventuality he refused to summon the council.58 The long lead-in time of nine months might also be evidence of concern Beaton would not comply. The fact that ‘the papis brief for the generale counsell to be had’ reached Scotland in January 1531 but that no meeting took place may imply that Beaton had already once refused to convene such a meeting.59 This clerical involvement in planning the provincial council is worth emphasising because it reminds us that senior clerics were integral members of James’s regime and shows that a range of views existed amongst the Scottish clergy regarding the appropriate level and division of taxation—both for the college of justice and for other crown expenditure. Given that William Stewart, bishop of Aberdeen from 1532, had held the office of treasurer from 1529 and that Archbishop Dunbar of Glasgow served as chancellor from 1528 they would have been well aware of the crown’s financial concerns, and they were named by English spies in September 1532 as two of the three bishops (alongside Dunkeld) who had not joined with Beaton in negotiating James down.60 Even so, in 1535, ten members of the articles were also lords of session (four of whom were clerics), so any delay in the payment of judicial salaries would have been equally well known to the group.61 The two anti-heresy acts passed by the 1535 parliament may also suggest that the provincial council was summoned in part to deal with a broader portfolio of concerns about religious reform.62 At the least, these acts were a sign of crown support for religious orthodoxy in the run up to the council—and, at the same time, a reminder that such support was essential to maintain and protect the Church. What exactly happened at the provincial council held at the Blackfriars of Edinburgh in March 1536 is unclear since its own records are not

 RPS, 1535/4, 12. Date accessed: 12 May 2020.  RPS, 1535/12. Date accessed: 3 September 2021. 59  NRS E21/24 f. 35r. 60  Northumberland to Henry VIII, 3 September 1532, BL Cotton Caligula MS B I f. 132r. 61  These were the chancellor, Cambuskenneth, Richard Bothwell, Henry White, John Campbell, Adam Otterburn, James Colville, Nichol Crawford, Francis Bothwell and James Lawson. 62  RPS, 1535/10-11. Date accessed: 2 June 2020. 57 58

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extant.63 However, some details can be inferred from a legal summons issued against David Beaton, by now archbishop of St Andrews, regarding non-payment of his tax in 1541. The summons on Beaton explained that the initial plan to fund the annual tax had fallen at the first hurdle because the benefices from which the £1425 18s would be paid annually had not fallen vacant quickly enough, leaving a shortfall in payments. To make up this shortfall until the benefices fell vacant, the 1536 council had agreed that ‘ilk man eftir the raitt and quantitie of the benefice assigned by tham’ would pay the sums due from another source until the benefices fell vacant.64 David Beaton, and, before him, his uncle, James Beaton, had failed to do so and this was the cause of the legal action against them. The fact that this legal action related to a tax which was already being collected before the provincial council opened is worth emphasising, since Robertson used the 1541 legal case against Beaton to argue that ‘at least one object of the King and parliament in convoking the council [in 1536] was the imposition of a yearly tax’, in fact, no new tax was granted: the provincial council was instead concerned about the payment of a sum which had been agreed in 1532.65 Moreover, this was probably only one amongst several financial subjects discussed. The exiled Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus, secured information that tensions had emerged surrounding mortuary dues and the payment of teinds by secular tenants to their spiritual overlords, following which James threatened the forced feuing of all temporal lands held by the church at below market rate.66 This latter claim may have been a jumbled account of the fact that by this point some payments on feu charters were being used to recoup sums still owing from the great tax.67 Although nothing came of this argument, since there were no changes to mortuary dues or teinds, and enforced feuing was not introduced, it seems likely that discussions at the council led Archbishop Beaton to refuse any further contributions. The fact that David Beaton was sued in 1541 for non-payment of sums owed from both his own former abbey of Arbroath and from the Archdiocese of St Andrews owed by his Uncle and himself from 1536 onwards strongly suggests that both Beatons had 63  David Patrick (ed.), Statutes of the Scottish Church (Edinburgh, 1907), pp. 238-40 for summons to the council. 64  NRS CS6/15 f.102r. 65  J. Robertson (ed.), Conciliae Scotiae: Ecclesiae Scoticanae statuta tam provincialia quam synodalia quae supersunt 1225-1559 I (Edinburgh, 2 vols, 1866), pp. cxxxvi-cxxxvii. 66  Angus to George Douglas, 24 March 1536, TNA SP49/4 ff.104r-105v. 67  Sanderson, Cardinal of Scotland, p. 50.

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been ­absolutely up-to-date with all tax payments prior to this.68 We might reasonably speculate that it was the events of the provincial council which caused their subsequent non-compliance. We have seen that James’s regime had clerical taxation on their minds in 1541, and this interest extended considerably beyond the pursuit for nonpayment of taxes raised the previous decade. In January 1541, Cardinal Beaton paid his portion of a £5000 grant from the Scottish clergy to the King.69 How does this relate to evidence from later that year that a tax had been recently refused? In July 1541 the English border official William Eure reported that at the ‘last’ parliament, the spirituality had offered a grant of 10,000 crowns—or £5000—to be paid to James’s infant son, but that this had subsequently been blocked by ‘the same spiritualitie’ at Rome.70 The claim about parliament is uncorroborated by the records— but since our knowledge of the December 1540 and March 1541 sessions comes from a draft for the printed edition of the statutes, it is unlikely this manuscript would have noted a tax or other contribution.71 Equally, given the lack of evidence for the clerical taxes of 1531–2 being dealt with in parliament, it is more likely any such grant would have been mooted in a separate meeting of the spirituality at about that time. It is also surprising that Eure thought the grant had been blocked, since Beaton had already paid his portion. In April 1541, James wrote to Paul III expressing his disquiet that a grant already approved by the spirituality of Scotland had not yet received papal approval.72 This expression of surprise would have been premature if the gift was granted only a month beforehand in parliament, but it could refer to the grant which Beaton was paying his portion of in January. These details are important since they help to demonstrate that Stanford Reid’s claims that at this juncture James sought a ‘permanent taxation’ from the clergy in return for having refused to meet Henry VIII  Sanderson, Cardinal of Scotland, p. 51.  R. K. Hannay (ed.), Rentale Sancti Andree (Edinburgh, 1913), p. 126. 70  William Eure, ‘Articles of thaffaires occurrent in Scotland’, Joseph Bain (ed.), Hamilton Papers I (Edinburgh, 2 vols, 1890), p. 83. 71  The 1535 tax was included for consideration for printing, but was not selected. It does not bear any of the marks used to indicate that it was selected for inclusion: NRS PA2/8/III f. 127r; and Actis (1542) contains no mention of it. For the significance of the marks in NRS PA2/8/III see: Amy Blakeway, ‘Reassessing the Scottish Parliamentary Records, 1528-1548: manuscript, print, bureaucracy and royal authority’, Parliamentary History 40 (2021), pp. 417-442. 72  LJV, p. 424; L&P XVI, 719; Thomas Ruddiman (ed.), Epistolae Jacobi Quarti, Jacobi Quinti et Mariae, Regum Scotorum…1505-45 II (Edinburgh, 2 vols, 1744), p. 109. 68 69

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at York are incorrect.73 Stanford Reid made this claim on the basis of a calendar entry of James’s April 1541 letter to Paul III which states that the ‘clergy assigned him [James] a token of money for certain years’.74 This accurately reflects the emphasis in the original manuscript that the grant was temporary.75 It is possible that two taxes were under discussion, since Beaton’s accounts seem to be discussing a one-off payment of £5000 which the cardinal had already paid, and James’s letters appear to be discussing a temporary grant which had not yet been paid, but the evidence is inconclusive. This could explain why Beaton had paid but Eure thought the grant was blocked—each source could have been referring to a separate payment. Reid’s claims surrounding the motivation for the grant are likewise unsustainable, although they have a long pedigree: by the late sixteenth century, Pitscottie averred that the clergy offered an astronomical bribe of £30,000 p/a as an attempt to prevent a meeting at York, Buchanan, meanwhile, claimed the sum was double that amount.76 This claim or something like it seems to have informed Reid’s opinion, and indeed numerous historians believed an approximation of the idea that a meeting was definitely planned between Henry VIII and James at York but that James, swayed by clerical advice and possibly the offer of a financial sweetener, failed to attend. In fact, as Hoyle and Ramsdale have shown, this interpretation of the events of 1541 was based on untested assumptions and confusion between several distinct phases of discussion surrounding a possible Anglo-Scottish monarchical meet up. 77 Whilst in 1535 James did indeed row back from a promise to meet his Uncle at York citing his 73  Stanford Reid, ‘Clerical Taxation’, p. 145. He also cited R. K. Hannay (ed.), Rentale Sancti Andree (Edinburgh, 1913), p. xxii, but this only discusses the fact that the £5000 was framed as a voluntary gift. 74  L&P XVI, 719. 75  ‘pecuniarum gratitudinis symbolum in certos assignavit annos’. Thomas Ruddiman (ed.), Epistolae Jacobi Quarti, Jacobi Quinti et Mariae, Regum Scotorum…1505-45 II (Edinburgh, 2 vols, 1744), p. 109. 76  Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First to the ane thousande fyve hundreith thrie scoir fyftein zeir Edited by Æ J. G. Mackay (Edinburgh, 3 vols, 1899) I, p. 386; George Buchanan, Rerum Scotticarum Historia ed. Dana F.  Sutton 14eng (bham.ac.uk) section 45. Buchanan put the sum at 30,000 ducats, each ducat minted in 1540 was worth two pounds. J. D. Bateson, Coinage in Scotland (London, 1997), p. 84. 77  Richard W.  Hoyle and J.  B. Ramsdale, ‘The Royal Progress of 1541, the North of England, and Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1534-1542’, Northern History 41.2 (2004), pp. 239-65.

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c­ouncillors’ concerns, in February 1540 James ‘had evaded Henry’s request [to meet] in a polite and tactful manner’. Faced with disturbances in Yorkshire in April 1541 Henry decided to travel north and he departed in June ‘without any arrangement to meet James V’.78 James did make a tentative offer to meet Henry via Thomas Bellenden in July, but this was withdrawn in September. According to Hoyle and Ramsdale, both the offer and its withdrawal were a deliberately crafted strategy to head off a potential English invasion by confining Henry to York whilst he waited for a potential meeting with James. Although clerical anxiety, as well as fear of offending François I, was indeed used as an excuse for the change of plan it seems unlikely James had ever intended to leave Scotland. At the most, James ‘knowingly offered more than his council would back in the expectation he would renege’ on the offer.79 This chronology means that the grant or grants paid in January 1541 and discussed in April 1541 cannot have been offered by the clergy to halt a meeting at York: the money was already on the table well before the April 1541 disturbances which prompted Henry’s initial entertaining of the plan to go north. Evidently, papal approval was not easily forthcoming—in October 1541, Cardinal Beaton, then in France, reported on a number of James’s financial matters, including the ‘contribution’. Despite having written to the Pope and ‘spokin diverse tymes’ to the papal ambassadors, Beaton made little progress.80 This contribution was not described in any of these extant sources as a tax, and we have no financial records relating to its collection. This may explain why Murray omitted it from his list of taxes.81 However, the vocabulary surrounding taxes was flexible and even though the questions of when and where the grant was awarded, papal confirmation, and whether we are looking at one or two sums, remain out of sight we seem to be on firm ground to count this as a grant of a tax totalling at least £5000 from the spirituality made in or around late 1540.82 A knockback from the papacy did not, however, discourage James from asking again. On 9 November 1542, James penned a letter to inform Paul III of the deteriorating situation with England—although James did not ask for a clerical tax specifically he did hint in broad terms that support from other  Hoyle and Ramsdale, ‘Royal Progress’, p. 250.  Hoyle and Ramsdale, ‘Royal Progress’, p. 262. 80  Cardinal Beaton to James V, 25 October 1541, BL Add. MS. 19,401, f. 41v. 81  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue: appendix’, p. 106. 82  For the vocabulary on taxation see pp. 215-216. 78 79

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‘Christian Princes’ would be n ­ ecessary if he were to be able to resist Henry successfully, especially given that his Uncle’s campaign would be bankrolled by his ‘vast new and ill-gotten resources’.83 Two months later, Paul replied that he had indeed heard ‘that Henry, son of perdition and of Satan, who bears himself as king of England, had made war upon him [James]’, accordingly, the Pope ‘without James’s asking, granted him sixtenths of the fruits of the Church in his kingdom for two years towards the support of the war’.84 Paul also recalled that he had refused such a grant the previous year, but stressed that this was not through lack of goodwill towards James. Paul’s earlier refusal does not survive so is not clear to what exactly he was referring here—failure to confirm the 1540–1 ‘contribution’ or another, now lost, request. The Pope’s half-apology for a previous failure to approve a grant is especially worth noting since Ferguson suggested that a ‘private arrangement’ for another tax had been made between James and the clergy before Paul agreed the six-tenths.85 Ferguson’s sources here are worth interrogating. First, he considered five English spy reports and Cardinal Beaton’s accounts, all of which show general clerical involvement in and expenditure on the campaign, but which do not actually support the contention that ‘the clerical party promised to raise a substantial force from their own resources’.86 Meanwhile the nineteenth-century translation of Buchanan’s history cited alongside these suggests only that the Scottish nobility held reservations about the war with England, offering no comment on clerical cash, although Buchanan did elsewhere discuss clerical offers of cash and these may have informed Ferguson’s case.87 The idea of the clergy making  LJV, pp. 444-5.  Paul III to James V, 9 January 1543, L&P 18:1, 31. Printed in full in: Cesaris Baronii, Annales Ecclesiastici, 1542-1557 xxxiii (Paris, 1878) p. 57. 85  Ferguson, ‘James V and the Scottish Church’, pp. 67-8. 86  Ferguson, ‘James V and the Scottish Church’, n. 81 citing: L&P VII 1117, 1124, 1136.1, 1140, 1157; R. K. Hannay (ed.), Rentale Sancti Andree (Edinburgh, 1913), p. 140. 87  James Aikman (ed.), The History of Scotland Translated from the Latin of George Buchanan II (Glasgow, 4 vols, 1827), p. 322. He also cites John Herkless and R. K. Hannay, The Archbishops of St Andrews IV (Edinburgh, 5 vols, 1907-15), p. 75, and D. E. Easson, Gavin Dunbar (Edinburgh, 1947), p. 76, neither of which mention the tax. At p. 74 Easson notes the April 1541 letter to the Pope and suggests this tax was that mentioned by Buchanan and valued at £10,000. This seems to be a conflation of Buchanan’s claims that the clergy would offer 30,000 ducats ‘year by year’ from their own revenues and suggested that the proceeds of heresy trials could amount to 100,000 ducats. George Buchanan, History of Scotland ed. Dana Sutton, 14eng (bham.ac.uk) sections 45-6. 83 84

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a ‘private arrangement’ for a tax may also have been based on remarks from Knox that the Church promised James ‘montanes of gold’, specifically 50,000 crowns a year, as long as the war with England of 1542 lasted.88 There was indeed a tax granted by the clergy that summer—Cardinal Beaton made a series of payments towards it between August and October.89 However, it is unlikely any such tax was a ‘private arrangement’—rather it is likely to have been issued alongside the tax on the burghs as part of national preparations for war. Indeed, the fact Knox explained that the offer came in response to James asking how the spirituality would contribute to the war, and that the clergy also promised that even their servants who had previously received exemptions from military service ‘should nocht the less serve in time of neccesitie’, suggests that this tax was negotiated as part of the broader preparations for the campaign.90 Temporary grants for warfare did not usually provoke a search for papal approval: although it is likely the clergy were taxed in the summer or autumn of 1542, this would have been neither ‘private’ nor in need of papal endorsement. This, therefore, cannot be the grant discussed in Scoto-papal correspondence over the winter of 1542–3. Whilst much of what we have seen in this section covers well-trodden ground emphasising the importance of clerical taxation amongst James’s revenues, it is nevertheless worth stressing the extent of the negotiations which lay behind these taxes. This is certainly not an attempt to claim that the clergy were bolder or better able to resist royal requests than previous scholars have emphasised, but rather to reveal the complexity of the processes which underlay final agreements. Foregrounding the process of negotiation, and, indeed, the difficulties of collection, potentially casts a new light on why James made such large demands in the first place: if James knew he was likely to have to compromise and then would struggle to collect what he was owed, asking often and starting high might have seemed like a sensible negotiating strategy. Moreover, although the papacy’s involvement in confirming some grants made these negotiations unusual in their protracted and international nature, as we shall see, James’s clerics did not enjoy a monopoly on the ability to argue, grumble, 88  D.  Laing (ed.), The Works of John Knox I (Edinburgh, Woodrow Society, 6 vols, 1846-64), pp. 77-8. Fergusson was using the Croft-Dickinson edition, so would have seen the remark in: William Croft-Dickinson (ed.), John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland I (Edinburgh, 1949, 2 vols), p. 31. 89  R. K. Hannay (ed.), Rentale Sancti Andree (Edinburgh, 1913), p. 143. 90  Knox, Works I, p. 78.

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and heel-drag their way to a lower tax burden. With the possible exception of the 1541 grant, this negotiation and resistance took place away from a meeting of the three estates. Nevertheless, the fact that legislation in support of the Kirk was passed in both 1532 and 1541 shows that even though parliament was not the forum for these negotiations on tax, its ability to pass binding legislation and utility as a gathering at which messages about the regime’s intentions might be disseminated made it a significant space in the broader context of James’s relations with the Kirk of which taxation was only one amongst many constituent parts.

Taxes on the Third Estate Just as clerical taxes were negotiated outside parliament, so too were sums due from the burghs. Equally, parliament’s activities were nevertheless crucial to facilitating the broader negotiations and managing the relationships of which granting a tax was only one part. In addition to their contributions to the general taxes, which we will discuss in due course, the third estate granted three further taxes in the personal rule. Each of these was for diplomatic endeavours which related very closely to trade and the negotiations surrounding the staple, which we discussed in the previous chapter. The first was granted in the burgh convention of April 1529 comprising 1600 ounces of ‘siluer maid work’ towards John Campbell of Lundy’s embassy to Flanders: sadly, there is no evidence of which burghs sent commissioners to discuss the contribution.91 This equated to approximately £1570.92 The silver had been ‘desirit by the kings grace’ on the grounds that the ‘commond weill of merchandis’ would benefit from the embassy.93 The commissioners at the convention thought the desire ‘resonable’ but needed ten days to consult with their burghs before firmly agreeing. There is no evidence for a tax on the other estates in this period. The fact that the burghs were requested to provide ‘siluer maid work’ is intriguing. Presumably the object of the exercise was not because James wished, magpie-like, to acquire a large quantity of inexpensive silver paraphernalia. This might reveal a belief that silver objects could be more  RCRBS, pp. 508-512.  In February 1534, 5.25 oz of silver made work was worth £5 3s 1d, costing just under a pound an ounce (TA 6, p. 188). If the rate was the same in 1529, this equates to £1570, but as we do not know the quality of the ‘made work’ an exact value is hard to come by. 93  RCRBS, p. 512. 91 92

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quickly procured than cash. However, the request for items of finished silver potentially suggests that rather than a cash contribution, the burghs were being asked to provide objects to be sold or given as presents by Campbell whilst on his embassy—had the metal been destined for the mint presumably old silver coins or unworked metal would have been adequate. It also raises intriguing questions about how the tax might have been raised from smaller burghs and divided amongst communities. It seems probable that individuals or smaller communities contributed in cash and that this was used to buy silverware of an appropriate value. Whilst we are sadly left with more questions than answers about how the details of how collecting this tax worked in practice, it is clear that just as rent might be paid in kind, so might general contributions or taxes. The second tax, for which the burghs were ‘stentit’ in 1534, was agreed to by the March 1534 convention and as we saw in the previous chapter was intended to reimburse Middelburg for the money they had given to the crown in their unsuccessful campaign for the staple during the 1520s. The burghs agreed a payment of 450 pounds ‘greit’ to Middelburg, a description which suggests the currency in question was Flemish pounds groote, not pounds Scots, in which case, the sum involved would be equivalent to approximately £1687 Scots.94 It is not, however, immediately clear which of the several sums Middelburg paid to the Scottish crown that this was intended to make good. As we saw in the previous chapter, Middelburg offered several payments to the Scottish crown for the staple, the final of which was in 1523, comprising 11,000 golden guilders to be paid once Scottish ships had actually dropped anchor in Middelburg, although it is unclear how much of this (or the money previously promised) actually arrived in Scotland.95 Even so, these were substantial sums. In 1495, guilders were worth 12s Scots each, at this rate (although forty years out of date), the 11,000 golden guilders would be £6600 Scots.96

94  RCRBS, p. 513. For Ayr’s portion of this: George S. Pryde (ed.), Ayr Burgh Accounts 1534-1624 (Edinburgh, Scottish History Society, 1937), pp. 16-17. Based on the £1:£3 15s rate from 1525: J. M. Gilbert, ‘The Usual Money of Scotland and Exchange Rates Against Foreign Coin’, in M. Metcalfe (ed.), Coinage in Medieval Scotland (Oxford, 1977), p. 146. 95  M. P. Rooseboom, The Scottish Staple in the Netherlands (The Hague, 1910), pp. 36-38. 96  ‘Gulden n.’. Dictionary of the Scots Language. 2004. Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd. Accessed 4 Jul 2017

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In 1526, however, Middelburg definitely did pay out a further £1500 Scots to confirm the staple for their town.97 The tax offered by the burghs in the November 1526 parliament to avoid the staple slightly outbid this at £2000 Scots—but as we saw in chapter 4, James took the offer of the tax, Middelburg was not repaid, and James instead granted the staple to Veere.98 The 1531 parliament resolved that the crown ought to reimburse Middelburg but there is no evidence this occurred.99 On balance, although the amounts do not match exactly, it seems most likely that the 450 pounds groote, worth c.£1600 Scots, which the burghs were required to raise in 1534 was intended to reimburse the £1500 which Middelburg had actually paid to the comptroller in 1526. Whilst the convention of burghs and parliament alike were involved at various stages of these negotiations, ultimately, the fact that pressure on royal finances drove the negotiations for a staple, combined with a diplomatic imperative to ensure that the Emperor’s subjects were satisfied, meant that these were insufficient to offer financial protection from the crown’s demands. The final tax granted to James by a convention of the burghs was approved in April 1541 for an embassy to France to negotiate on customs duties. There is no mention of a possible embassy or tax in the March 1541 parliamentary record, but the idea may have been discussed informally at that time. Certainly, when Aberdeen’s council was preparing to send a commissioner to the convention, they already anticipated that the meeting would ‘consult and deviss ane herald to be sent to the King of France’.100 The word ‘deviss’ offers a tantalising hint that the initiative here was at least in part with the burghs, and it is tempting to suggest that in this instance conversations amongst the burgh commissioners were held whilst parliament was in session, and perhaps soundings from members of the royal council at the same time, sowed the seed of the idea of the tax. The amount the burghs ‘consentis’ to contribute varied on a sliding scale depending on the status of the person sent. Clearly, this would entail 97  Murray, ‘Financing the Royal Household’, pp.  46-8; Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenues’, pp. 253-4. 98  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenues’, pp.  253-4, 338; Murray, ‘Financing the Royal Household’, p. 48. 99  With the exception of some expense payments to messengers from Middelburg ‘quhilk remanit on the parliament’: NRS E21/24 f.35r. This, however, may refer to expenses incurred in relation to the 1526 Parliament as no envoys from Middelburg were apparently present in 1531: LJV, p. 192. 100  RCRBS, p. 517.

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f­urther negotiations and so the burghs as a whole delegated responsibility to Edinburgh to negotiate how much the burghs would contribute to an ambassador ‘of les degre’. Having reached a conclusion amongst themselves, the burghs decided ‘till aduertise oure Souerane Lord for expiditioun in the said matter’.101 This offers a possible example of a how an idea transformed into a decision and, ultimately, action across a series of meetings, beginning in informal conversations which were facilitated by and took place around an institutional meeting, before moving to a different forum which could lend legitimacy to a decision that then provided the basis for further extra-institutional discussion direct with the monarch. However, this incident highlights two further points. First, a portion of the third estate was sufficient to consent to a tax on behalf of the whole— indeed, this should not surprise us since the same principle applied to the first estate, in January 1531, for instance, the clerics who attended ‘grantit [a tax] for thame and the remanent of the kirkmen’.102 Secondly, that once a tax had been agreed in principle power could be delegated to Edinburgh to negotiate the amount on behalf of all the tax-paying communities. Without waiting for the sums to be collected, James ‘lent’ the money to the burghs by giving funds to the selected ambassador, Beaton, directly.103 Edinburgh then became liable to pay the entire £2000 debt to the King.104 Something similar may have occurred with the 1536 tax raised whilst James was in France, in 1542, Edinburgh was being pursued for the remainder of 1000 merks which the regents who governed Scotland in James’s absence had lent the burgh, and one of the individuals involved in the legal action had been a collector of that tax.105 Taxes could not be raised instantly and securing loans to pay for expenditure whilst the tax granted to cover this expenditure was still being collected was established procedure: James I’s February 1425 ransom payment, for instance, was paid from a loan raised in Flanders since the tax granted for that purpose was not yet gathered in.106 By contrast, these examples suggest that James V had sufficient ready cash available that he did not have to wait for tax collection, or secure a loan, to move forward with his plans.  RCRBS, pp. 517-18, 554.  NRS CS5/41 f.155r; ADCP, p. 346. 103  For Beaton’s finances and this embassy: Sanderson, Cardinal of Scotland, pp. 58-59. 104  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p. 338; RCRBS, p. 554. 105  NRS CS6/19 f.71; ADCP, p. 519. 106  Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, p. 14. 101 102

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Beyond the direct taxation levied from the burghs to support the crown’s extraordinary ventures, the burghs (or, at least, the traders passing through their ports) also provided the crown’s major source of indirect taxation: namely, the customs payments due on goods. These were collected by the custumars, local officials who, after having paid for their expenses and made other payments at a local level, would hand over the remainder to the crown. In the overall scheme of sixteenth-century crown finance this was classed, along with income from the royal lands, as ‘ordinary’ crown income payable to the comptroller and was intended, by and large, to fund the royal household.107 As such, the indirect taxation raised from customs duties was accounted for and has subsequently been treated by scholars separately to the occasional direct taxation levied which was accounted for by the treasurer or another official and which we have discussed thus far. Nevertheless, it is worth briefly thinking about the customs because in other contexts this source of income was highly important in expanding royal power—James’s English grandfather Henry VII used parliament to increase customs revenues considerably during his reign, indeed, Henry’s efforts in this area and in protecting the royal demesne are now identified as more significant than his direct taxation in his efforts to improve the English crown’s financial position.108 Returning to Scotland, Athol Murray calculated that, in 1542, £5306 was raised from the customs and pointed to the fact that relatively few deductions were made from this by local officials so the crown received 90%, that is, £4620.109 Murray noted this represented a considerable increase from the £2402 gross total which he calculated was raised for 1471.110 Closer examination of the customs during the personal rule shows that most of this increase took place in a very short period. In the first five years of the personal rule, the total customs rarely nudged above £3000 and since a higher percentage of that income was being paid out at a local level, for instance, in fees, the crown

107  A. L. Murray, ‘The Comptroller, 1425-1610’ (unpublished winner of the David Berry Prize, 1970), NRS G.A.355.93. See also: A. L. Murray, ‘Financing the Royal Household: James V and his comptrollers, 1513-1543’, in I.  B. Cowan, and D.  Shaw (eds), The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland: essays in honour of Gordon Donaldson (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 41-59. 108  Steven Gunn, ‘Politic history, New Monarchy and state formation: Henry VII in European perspective’ Historical Research 82 (2009), pp. 380-392 at pp. 388-90. 109  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p. 140. 110  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p. 140.

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only received c.£2000–£2500.111 This is broadly comparable to the 1471 total. In 1534 and 1535, the overall total collected from the customs rose, and the percentage of that income paid to the crown also increased, leaving the comptroller with just shy of £3500.112 The fact that this and subsequent rises in customs income were driven in large part by an increase in the Edinburgh customs foregrounds the need for further study surrounding the capital’s economic development, the growth of royal judicial and administrative business in Edinburgh (even if James himself remained peripatetic), and Edinburgh’s potential position as interlocutor between crown and burghs. Given the apparently slow increase in the sums secured from the customs between 1471 and 1533, the jump thereafter is really remarkable. In 1537, the total raised was £4400 of which the crown received £3855, and from 1538 until the end of the personal rule the customs gave the crown between £4000 and £4500.113 Isabel Guy has pointed to the particular significance of ‘an apparent upsurge’ in wool exports between 1534 and 1542, with approximately 75% of the trade being directed via Edinburgh.114 Closer evaluation of James’s customs rolls would doubtless pay considerable dividends. For the present purposes, however, it is sufficient to notice that in essence crown income from the customs roughly doubled between 1528 and 1542 due to both an increase in overall sums gained from the customs and a higher percentage of this reaching the crown coffers, and that most of this increase took place from 1534–5 onwards. This, then, broadly coincides with the end of a period of active military campaigning and the beginning of a period focused more towards domestic administration resulting in, for instance, the thoroughgoing legislative programme of the 1535 parliament. Parliament had long played a role in increasing customs revenue. In the reign of James I and again under James II, parliament had annexed the customs duties to the crown.115 Accordingly, any future alienation of customs duties would require parliamentary consent. As a result grants out of the customs would have been encompassed by royal revocations.116 Revocations of particular grants also took place, for example, in 1538,  NRS E28/381-395.  NRS E28/400-1. 113  NRS E38/407-8, 411, 416, 418. 114  Isabel Guy, ‘The Scottish Export Trade, 1460-1599’ in T. C. Smout (ed.), Scotland and Europe 1200-1850 (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 62-81, p. 63. 115  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p. 162. 116  RPS, 1528/9/36, 1540/12/10. Accessed 17 August 2021. 111 112

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Aberdeen’s customs exemption for salmon was withdrawn on the grounds the customs were annexed to the crown; this was one of several controversial cases surrounding the customs during the reign.117 Attempts to reverse customs exemptions were accompanied by an attempt to ensure sums due from the custumars were actually received—it was proposed in 1535 and finally enacted in 1540 that custumars, along with other officers, ought to attend exchequer to render accounts (and, of course, money due) on pain of warding.118 In 1541, provisions were made to ensure standard barrel sizes to reduce the chances of custumars being defrauded by being deceived as to the total quantity of goods.119 Instead, attempts to increase income from the customs were based on the fifteenth-century statutes which allowed for the overturning of previous grants out of the customs. Ensuring that previous parliamentary provisions to annex the customs to the crown were obeyed was obviously an important part of maximising this income stream: we shall return to the theme of parliament increasing penalties or closing loopholes in chapter 6. Having seen that parliament was important in bringing consistency and efficacy to the collection of indirect taxation on the profits of burgh trade, we shall now turn to compare parliament’s role in granting direct taxation to that played by conventions.

Taxation from Conventions We have firm evidence that three taxes were granted by conventions: one in November 1530 to fund a domestic military campaign; another, granted in 1533, funded war with England and one totalling £20,000 was paid ‘for sustening his [James’s] honorabill expensis in the pairtis of France In anno dm M vc xxxv [i.e. 1535]’.120 Since James was not in France in 1535, this must be a scribal error for 1536 and refer to the same  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, pp. 154-6.  RPS, 1535/36—this appears in the draft legislation in NRS PA2/8/II ff.104v-105r but not in the final copy of this as prepared for publication in NRS PA2/8/III (it would appear, if copied in order, at ff.132v-133r). In this context it seems the marks on the 1535 article must relate to discussions in that session which did not result in legislation or revisions in 1540. For the act as eventually passed: RPS, 1540/12/67. Accessed 17 August 2021. 119  RPS, 1540/12/82. Accessed 17 August 2021. 120  NLS Adv MS 31.4.9 f.149r-v; RCRBS, pp. 513-14. The MS and Marwick’s transcription state the French expenses were sustained ‘In anno dm 1535’. The MS is a set of seventeenth-­century notes and following the breakdown of burgh contributions for James’s expenses in France in 1535 the scribe noted the 1535 tax with the correct total of £6000 across all three estates. Combined with the precepts of the tax being dated November 1536 117 118

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tax for which precepts were issued in November 1536—suggesting, in turn, that this was granted in the enigmatic convention summoned that month.121 This tax is worth pausing over since, as we have seen, James usually approached parliament for funds for his matrimonial endeavours. The choice of a convention in November 1536 was necessitated by James’s absence, during which parliament could not be summoned. It is likely the regents summoned the convention and passed on the King’s request. Even so, the tax seems to have been secured easily. In April 1537, the generally well-informed English pursuivant Henry Ray was requested to investigate the ‘newe money’ in Scotland. Ray found that ‘the same is alredy paied, after ijs iijd of the crowne, landed men and merchawntes only, and none of the commons, and that withowte any rebellion’.122 However, the amount Ray claimed was being raised—2s 3d per pound of income from land—does not match that specified in the tax precepts. These gave a rate of 9s per pound of land, but were discussing land valued according to the ‘old extent’, a term which referred to the notional value of lands in times of peace before the Wars of Independence. By the sixteenth century, the process of translating this into a realistic contemporary value was complex and varying rates were used.123 It is therefore possible that if Ray was reporting the money actually collected that 2s 3d per crown represented the current going rate of 9s per pound of old extent. Regardless, there is no evidence of another grant between November 1536 and April the following year, so Ray was almost certainly recalling the November tax. The 1536 convention was unusual in that representatives of all three estates were present to agree to a tax. However, conventions attended by only the ‘lordis’—spiritual, temporal and of council—also granted taxes and the earliest amongst these was discussed in November 1530. Having agreed that the King ought to launch a campaign against the Isles, the assembled eighteen spiritual and temporal lords further agreed that ‘the temporale lordis & honest barounis with him furnist apoun thair awin expense And that the prelatis and burrowis that remanyis at hame pay ane

suggests this is a scribal error conflating a tax in 1536 with that granted in parliament in 1535. For the precepts: Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenues’, ‘Appendix’, pp. 89-90. 121  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenues’, Appendix, pp. 89-90. 122  Ray’s Report, April 1537, Hamilton Papers I, p. 45. 123  Goodare, ‘Parliamentary Taxation’, pp. 24-5.

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certane contributioun to the furnissing of the kingis grace thairto’.124 At the January 1531 convention, some of the details of the campaign, such as who exactly owed service, were hammered out, and this included the finalisation of the amount which the clergy would grant, namely £5000, towards the venture.125 On 18 January, clerics below the episcopacy entered a protest to ensure that their contributions were accounted for separately and not conflated with the sums to be gathered from the bishops.126 This points to the same suspicion of their superiors evident amongst the lower clergy which we have already encountered in taxes exclusively on the spirituality. The council register did not record any promise from the burghs to pay, and the only burgh representatives present when the spiritual lords agreed their tax in January were the three lawyers from Edinburgh. It is unclear whether and if so when and where the burghs were consulted on the tax they were eventually required to pay, but it seems to have provoked some discontent since in July 1531 the burgh of Glasgow claimed it had no obligation to pay a tax which was then being collected. As there is no record of other taxes being granted between January and July 1531, this was probably a levy granted in January at the same time as the spiritual lords agreed to contribute a tax to the war effort. Although the basis of the claim is unclear, Glasgow enlisted the help of one of the royal messengers, John Perdovan, to ‘mak inquisitioun’ into whether it ought to pay tax. Unfortunately, there is no record of why Glasgow felt it ought to be exempted, or Perdovan’s conclusions. Since there is no record of Glaswegian commissioners at any parliament or convention during the personal rule, it is possible they made their case on the basis that their non-­ attendance meant they had not consented to the tax.127 Whilst Glasgow’s arguments do not survive, we do know that Adam Otterburn, as king’s advocate, objected to the Glaswegian proceedings on the grounds that ‘nother the kingis advocate nor uther burrowis [were] warnit’ to Perdovan’s ‘inquisitioun’, this procedural fault meant that Glasgow’s 124  NRS CS5/41 f.118v; ADCP, p.  342. Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, appendix, p. 106, dated this to 1531 but the council record shows the tax was in fact first granted in November 1530. 125  NRS CS5/41 ff.154v-155r; ADCP, p. 346-7. For the collection of the tax see: NRS E21/24 ff.41r-44r. 126  NRS CS5/41 ff.157r-v; ADCP, p. 347. 127  Tanner also suggests non-attendance was a taxation avoidance strategy in the reign of James I: Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, p. 30.

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claim was rejected.128 Had Glasgow succeeded, this action would have increased the tax burden on the other burghs as their contribution would have been divided amongst them. Otterburn was also provost of Edinburgh at this juncture: this action as king’s advocate therefore combined neatly with his duty as provost to protect the interests of the capital and the other burghs. By September 1531, the burghs’ contributions were being accounted for in the exchequer.129 Payments from twenty-seven burghs totalling £311 were received at this time, most of whom were at this point paying a final instalment.130 Glasgow, like several big contributors including Edinburgh and Aberdeen, was absent from the list, although £100 in part payment of Edinburgh’s contribution was received the following year.131 If the burghs’ contribution were a third of that due from the clergy, it would have totalled £1667, and the treasurers’ accounts therefore reveal about a quarter of payments due, although since some of these were noted as final instalments the actual total received must have been higher, and at least one account in which payments might have appeared has been lost.132 These payments, along with those of the clergy, were used to cover just over £2023 outlaid on preparing for the voyage, including acquiring munitions and furnishing ships for a two month period.133 As we saw in chapter 3, the campaign was averted by a last-minute deal between Mac Dhòmhnaill and the crown: at this stage, not all of the money had been spent. The remaining £1500 was spent on silver tableware. The second tax granted by a convention was agreed in January 1533 to make plans for the now increasing likelihood of full-scale hostilities with England. As we saw in chapter 3, in January 1532, a large convention had committed to war with England to defend Scottish rights to Canonbie, and as the host gathered in January 1533 a series of meetings took place to  NRS CS5/43 f. 8v.  NRS E21/24 ff.43r-44r. 130  The note they had paid ‘in completam solutionem’ indicates complete satisfaction of the tax though it does not indicate if the sum paid a complete one-off payment or the final instalment: the calculations described in n. 132 suggest it was the latter. 131  NRS E21/25 f.11r. 132  This has been calculated by using the proportion of the tax owed by each community in 1533 (NRS CS6/2/ ff.34v-35r) as a guide to the proportion of the £1667 they would have owed in 1533. This has been used to work out what burghs marked as paying their final instalment (‘in completam solutionem’) would have paid in total (NRS E21/24 ff. 43r-44r) and adding this to the part payment recorded in 1532 (NRS E21/25 f.11r). 133  NRS E21/24 f.46r. This is the total sum spent minus the outlay on silverware. 128 129

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plan how the campaign would proceed. On 5 January, it was determined that ‘Ilk burgh [should] particularly prepar and mak redy with all diligence for the furnessing of money wages and extent for the furnissing underwritten for the convoing of the kingis artilyerie to the bordors’.134 The total sum due from the forty-four burghs was £906 per month—considerably less than Moray acting in his capacity as the King’s lieutenant had initially requested.135 The meeting which granted the tax frustratingly lacks a sederunt, but there is no evidence that burgh communities had been summoned at this stage and it seems likely that the only burgesses present were those who also sat on James’s council. News, nevertheless, was spreading, since by 13 January the burgh council of Aberdeen was aware of the potential threat and ‘considering the truble and veris that is able now to cum now be our auld Inemies of Ingland’ had commissioned a thorough check of its artillery.136 On 19 January, collectors were appointed for the £84 due ‘for the furnesing of certane wageors’ which had been assigned to the burgh by the convention on 5 January, but two days earlier, on 17 January, Aberdeen’s council had recorded receipt of £55 towards a tax of which £49 10s 8d remained owing.137 Totalling just over £100, this was evidently a different tax and it seems likely it was imposed by the town on itself to prepare for defence. These preparations included constructing a defensive ‘blockhouse’.138 Cumulatively, this suggests similarities with the AngloScottish war of 1558: although both conflicts appear insignificant with hindsight and are not afforded much historiographical attention, contemporaries who did not know that the violence would remain low-level had to make provisions for potential extended warfare and the ramifications of this extended throughout Scotland.139 134  NRS CS6/2 f.34v; ADCP, p. 391. For this tax see also: NRS CS6/2 f.156, 196; NRS CS6/5 f.126; ADCP, pp. 402, 406, 428. 135  The total given in NRS CS6/2 f.34v is £606 but it is a mistake: adding up the sums given makes £906, an error also noted by the editors of the ADCP who marked £606 with ‘sic’, ADCP, p. 391. 136  ACA, CA1.1.14 f. 74. Aberd. Recs., pp.  143-5 transcribes this and the details in the subsequent two footnotes correctly but erroneously dates them to 1532—in the manuscript they are clearly placed in January 1532/3 so this seems to be based on a misunderstanding of old and new style dating. The transcriptions given are reasonably accurate. See also p. 143 n. 15 for problems with old/new style dating in this edition. 137  ACA, CA1.1.14 ff. 89, 86-7; NRS CS6/2 f.34v; ADCP, p. 391. 138  ACA, CA1.1.14 ff. 98, 105, 117-8, 161, 165. 139  Amy Blakeway, ‘The Anglo-Scottish War of 1558 and the Scottish Reformation’, History 102 (2017), pp. 201-224.

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Returning to the tax on the third estate overall, in the first instance, Moray requested that the burghs should fund 800 footmen. He accepted 300—skilful negotiators were obviously at work.140 It seems likely these were led by Otterburn and the burgess lords of council influencing from within the council, since we have just seen evidence which suggests no representative from Aberdeen was present and because, as we saw in the previous chapter, Aberdeen did generally send commissioners when money was going to be discussed, it seems unlikely they would ignore a summons to discuss such a big financial contribution. If the negotiations were handled by Otterburn and burgess councillors, then it is very strong evidence for their ability to influence central governmental decisions in favour of the burghs; equally, this implies that the decision to delegate negotiations to Edinburgh in 1541 was simply one example of a well-­ established practice.141 It also suggests we need to broaden our understanding of what consent to a particular tax might look like. Given that there was a widespread consensus that war was a reasonable grounds for taxation, and that the purpose of this specific war, namely to defend Scottish territory, was just, inviting communities to attend a meeting to request their consent to a grant of taxation may have been considered unnecessary on this occasion. However, this did not equate to handing the crown a blank cheque. In other words, this example suggests that when a tax was needed for a pressing purpose which was already accepted as legitimate, consent and discussion coalesced not around whether taxation ought to be granted, but, rather, how much specific circumstances warranted. The burghs’ successful negotiations raise questions about what happened to the portion due from one Estate if another negotiated their contribution down, although since we have no evidence surrounding what the prelates actually agreed to provide this avenue is impossible to pursue. However, it is clear that the scale of the reduction in Moray’s demands on the burghs even compares favourably with the negotiations he undertook with the King: whilst the burghs paid less than half the amount Moray had proposed they ought to pay, James’s suggested contribution of 100 horse was reduced by only 40%. The fact that Moray negotiated for support from James as well as directly with the burghs highlights the degree of autonomy which he experienced as lieutenant—and suggests that it was Moray, not James or the council, who took the lead on this series of n ­ egotiations 140 141

 NRS CS6/2 f.38r; ADCP, p. 392.  See p. 162.

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with the burghs: this may have facilitated burgess councillors acting to reduce financial burdens on the towns. Happily, quite a lot of information survives regarding the practical arrangements for gathering this tax in. Once the tax had been agreed, provosts and bailies were supposed to raise the sums owed within five days or risk having their own goods forfeited to make up the sums due.142 Facing such pressures, burgh councils may have been tempted to secure money from whoever they could and in March the lords of council wrote to them asking to see a copy of all the tax rolls to ensure that ‘pur cardstars, spynaris & sic uther miserable personis’ were not being unfairly taxed.143 Here, we can draw a parallel with the 1535 parliamentary prohibition on landlords from passing on their tax burden to ‘laubouraris of the ground’.144 Evidently, someone within the regime was anxious to protect poorer members of the commonweal from exploitation and alive to the types of complaints made by the poor man at the Interlude of January 1540.145 The fact that explorations of James’s posthumous reputation as a ‘poor man’s king’ have not pointed to such legislation but, rather, emphasised the King’s numerous sexual relations with women from the lower orders, or, alternatively, reiterated the notion that James’s relations with his nobles were tense, reminds us once again of the extent to which scholarship on this period has failed to consider institutions as a serious part of national political life.146 Despite all these careful provisions, by April 1533, more cash was needed and another tax was raised. Since letters regarding the tax were also issued by 27 April, it is possible that arrangements for the tax were discussed at the convention summoned for 17 April in response to lord Hume’s request for greater support.147 In May, the council further clarified that women who held land were also liable—the burden on male landholders whose patrimony was split with their predecessor’s widow was too great for them to bear alone.148 Finally, there was at least one instance  NRS CS6/2 f.36v; ADCP, pp. 392-3.  NRS CS6/2 f.135v; ADCP, p. 399. 144  RPS, 1535/24. Accessed 18 August 2021. 145  The copie of the notes of the enterluyde, [Jan 1540], BL Royal MS 7 C XVI f.138. 146  David Stevenson, ‘“The Gudeman of Ballangeich”: Rambles in the Afterlife of James V’, Folklore 115 (2004), pp. 187-200. 147  The tax does not appear at NRS CS6/2 f. 153v. For expenditure on the implementation of orders arising from the convention: NRS E21/26 ff.59v-60r. 148  NRS CS6/2 f. 156r-v; ADCP, pp. 402-3. 142 143

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of attempted embezzlement—Edinburgh initiated legal action against a crown messenger who had claimed £5 from their taxes, alleging this would be used to reimburse his expenses in collecting the tax.149 The session, attended by James Foulis, Adam Otterburn, James Lawson and Francis Bothwell amongst others, found for Edinburgh. By June, ongoing peace negotiations meant that no new monthly payments were required. However, not all of the tax due had been collected by the time that peace was brokered with England, and James wanted to ensure he received the tax owing from previous months on the grounds that the footmen returning from the borders still needed to be paid their wages. Having ordered the council to procure outstanding sums, James expressed his hope that clerical payments would be forthcoming swiftly, ‘swa that his hienes be not constrent to seik charpar remeid quhilk he is laith to do’.150 The letters to sheriffs regarding the collection of their portion of the tax are incomplete but took a similarly firm tone.151 As if to underline the point that he remained a loyal son of the Church, James chose this juncture to depart to St Ninian’s shrine on pilgrimage.152 Delegating to the council responsibility for the final mopping up of sums still owing as he pursued activities elsewhere marked a return to James’s normal practice of governance. Even though his personal involvement in the negotiations with Moray was a rare occurrence—or at least a rare occurrence in the records—the fact that the decision making surrounding this tax spread across a series of meetings centred on but extending outwards from the council was entirely normal. The negotiations in the early days of 1533 may have followed an earlier refusal to pay at all. In October 1532, Henry Percy, sixth earl of Northumberland reported gleefully that parliament refused James a grant of £3000 which provoked the monarch to retire to Stirling in a fit of pique.153 These claims are problematic, since parliament was not in session at that juncture and James was in Edinburgh neither on 6 September nor on 14 October, the two dates mentioned by Northumberland as when the  NRS CS6/2 f. 156r; ADCP, pp. 402-3.  NRS CS6/2 f.192v; ADCP, pp. 405-6. For collecting this tax see also: ADCP, pp. 395, 399; NRS CS6/2 ff. 39v, 135v. 151  NRS CS6/2 f.193r; ADCP, pp. 405-6. 152  Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, p. 404. 153  Northumberland to Henry, 22 October 1532, TNA SP 1/71 f.135v. The letter was separated into two parts and is continued at BL Cotton Caligula MS B VII f.179 (see L&P V p. 616). 149 150

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grant might have been requested.154 However, a convention, for which no sederunt survives, met between 18 and 20 September and made a number of decisions relating to the border.155 Northumberland did have some accurate information, namely that Moray was appointed as lieutenant: on 12 October 1532, the lords of council recorded the details of Moray’s appointment in broadly similar terms to those described in the English spy report.156 Moreover on this date, the King, as Northumberland had described, spent the earlier part of the day in Edinburgh before departing to Linlithgow and thence to Stirling. Given that three months later the burghs would argue Moray down from what he originally requested, it is plausible that the rumours the English heard were based in a real altercation—but this is at least as likely to have been with Moray, who conducted the January negotiations, as with James. Indeed, in 1536, James was abroad when he requested a tax and he must certainly have appointed representatives to bargain for him: together, this suggests that the King left playing hardball on taxes to his most trusted advisors—just as he managed other areas of political life. Ten years after Moray’s appointment as lieutenant and the rumoured row about taxation, England and Scotland once again eyeballed each other in anticipation of war. James would die before the 1542 conflict escalated to the level of 1532–3—but he still managed to secure a tax to fund the venture. Murray identified an isolated receipt for the burgh of St Andrews’ paying £12 towards a tax to bring artillery to the borders in November. To this, we can add royal letters dated 22 August which survive in the Aberdeen council register explaining that ‘certane borrowis of our realme ar taxt for furnissing of futmen’—Aberdeen had forty-eight hours to raise £113.157 This prompted several months of military preparations for the burgh, and in November, Aberdeen was constrained to raise a further £37 13s 4d for ‘vageouris on the bordour’.158 Scaling these sums up to ­calculate  Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture’, pp. 402-3.  This was not related to the selection process for the ADCP: items selected for inclusion in that edition were marked in pencil, usually by a cross, with one at the date or sederunt of the meeting and one at the item selected for inclusion. Athol Murray, ‘Introduction’ to Alma B. Calderwood (ed.), Acts of the Lords of Council 1501-1503 (Edinburgh, 1993), p. xiv. For example: NRS CS6/1 f. 23v, 24v; ADCP, p. 379. 156  NRS CS6/1 ff. 118r, 124v; ADCP, pp. 385-7. 157  Aberd. Recs. I, p. 183. 158  Aberd. Recs. I, p. 186. 154 155

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what the whole tax was worth is problematic as it is unclear if the extant details reflected the full sums due. Assuming they were, and that each burgh paid the same proportion of the tax as they had in 1533, and that the burghs cumulatively footed one-sixth of a total tax bill paid by all three estates, the £12 from St Andrews suggests a total tax of £2717.159 Based on the same assumptions, the evidence from Aberdeen suggests a whole tax was worth £9716–or, if the nobles served in person, £6477.160 This significant disparity between these figures means they cannot be used to suggest accurately sums either granted or raised. However, they do underscore that the war of 1542 was being taken very seriously by James’s regime and required considerable financial support. This may explain why jumbled recollections of this tax occurred in Pitscottie’s late sixteenthcentury chronicle. Pitscottie believed that James summoned a convention in 1542: given what we know about 1530–3, this seems entirely plausible, although his report that discussion of potential war in the 1542 convention provoked an altercation between James’s representatives and the assembled nobility is suspect.161 He also claimed that a parliament held in June 1541 offered James ‘ane general taxatioun’ at the rate of five shillings per pound of land, totalling £30,000 ‘to sustain his men of weir’.162 There is no evidence whatsoever of a parliament held at this time and, indeed, there was no significant need for ‘men of weir’ in 1541, so it is possible the tale of the tax in 1541 and convention in 1542 were actually a jumbled memory of a real convention, or, more likely still, a series of conventions, which discussed the need for warfare, granted a real tax and negotiated how much this should be, in the last summer of James’s life.

Taxation in Parliament The foregoing sections have shown that taxes during the 1530s could be raised in a number of ways, of which parliament was only one. With that in mind, we are now equipped to consider parliament’s role in the granting of taxes. The first parliamentary tax of the personal rule was the £6000 granted in 1535 for the ‘gret matteris’ which required James to send 159  St Andrews contributed 2.65% of the 1533 tax. If this was the same in 1542 the burghs owed £452.8. 160  Aberdeen paid 9.3% of the 1533 tax. This equates to a total of £1215 +£404 for the two tax payments. 161  Lindsay of Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, I, p. 401. 162  Lindsay of Pitscottie Historie and Cronicles, I, pp. 394-5.

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embassies abroad, and ‘specialie for his mariage’.163 Notably, this was granted not by the whole sederunt but instead by the lords of the articles endowed with full parliamentary powers to act on behalf of the whole Estates.164 However, a tax for matrimonial diplomacy is unlikely to have proven controversial, building as it did on well-established precedents.165 Unfortunately, the other taxes potentially granted by parliament do not have such straightforward records. Indeed, that granted in 1538 to bring Marie de Guise ‘hame’ appears in neither parliamentary nor conciliar records, so we must first establish this was indeed a parliamentary tax. Receipts issued for payment of the tax explained it had been granted by the ‘thre estatis of the realme’.166 Since parliament had met on 8 March and there is no evidence for another body (except the court of session) having met in the intervening nineteen days, it seems likely that ‘the three estates’ referred to ‘parliament’—even though the only individuals recorded as being in attendance at the session were parliamentary commissioners drawn from the three estates.167 The barons owed £1600, suggesting that the total grant was £4800. Unlike the 1535 tax granted to set the wheels in motion for an embassy, the March 1538 tax was approved as the diplomatic mission to which it related drew to a close—we can draw a parallel with the events of 1536 when James secured a tax from a convention part way through his visit to France. The fact that these two parliamentary taxes were to support marital diplomacy marks a point of continuity with his father’s reign when ‘five of the ten parliaments between 1488 and 1496 can be shown to have granted taxes…the primary objective in each case being to look for a bride elsewhere’.168 Like his son, James IV sought taxes outwith parliament too—but it is striking that both Kings turned to parliament when taxes to support their wife-hunting ventures were required. Had James V not espoused Madeline de Valois in 1536 or been unsuccessful in subsequent negotiations for Marie de Guise’s hand, it is possible that parliament would have played a greater role in the granting of taxation; indeed, given  RPS, 1535/14. Date accessed: 28 April 2017.  RPS, 1535/4. Date accessed: 19 July 2017. 165  Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, pp. 142, 187, 194-5. 166  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue: appendix’, pp. 90-1. 167  RPS, 1538/1. Date accessed: 3 September 2021. The tax also does also not appear in the council register: NRS CS6/9 ff.180r-192v; NRS CS6/10 ff.1-5. 168  Macdougall, James IV, p. 172. 163 164

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James’s extensive marital negotiations before he secured Madeline, it is equally striking that more taxes were not raised for such embassies. This could suggest a shift in practice from his father’s time, or that the alternative negotiations in fact never reached a sufficiently serious level to warrant a full-scale embassy paid for by all three estates. John Campbell of Lundy’s mission to the Regent of the Low Countries in 1529 did include testing the waters regarding a matrimonial alliance, but it was primarily directed towards trade and so the bill was footed by the burghs, and on other occasions, such as during the 1532 mission to France, when there is no evidence of raising a specific tax for an embassy, the treasurer bore the relatively modest expenses associated with sending a small-scale mission.169 Alongside the 1535 and 1538 taxes, Murray argued that in March 1541, parliament issued a ‘tax on the burghs for providing artillery’.170 In the first instance, burgh councils were ordered to convene and ‘avise and conclude quhat artelyerie and in quhat manere ilk burgh may perfurness’ within fifteen days, and ‘geiff thai failye tharintill’ they would ‘be taxt efter the avale and quantite of thare commoune gudis and substance for furnesing of the said artelyerie’.171 However, this was only one provision amongst several made in the same act and the ‘taxt’ must be contextualised alongside these. The act further detailed the types of weapons which temporal landowners were required to procure on a sliding scale according to the value of their properties. Temporal landowners were to acquire these materials within eighteen months, ‘next efter the publicacioune of this acte, under the pane of dowbling of the price that will by ilk pece of the said artelyerie, to be applyit to the kingis grace use for bying of the samin to himself’. Although these provisions were different to those imposed on the burghs, the same principle was at work—namely, a financial penalty was being threatened to encourage timely compliance. Spiritual landowners were required to purchase artillery as well. Clearly, then, this was not only a tax on the burghs since the comply or pay up principle was also applied to landowners. Indeed, given this is so different from how other taxes were organised in this period it is worth asking whether we can indeed group this scheme with them as a tax?

169  NRS E21/25 f.43r; Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (Amherst, 1994), pp. 32-3. 170  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue: appendix’, p. 106. 171  RPS, 1540/12/65. Date accessed: 23 May 2017.

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Whilst the word ‘tax’ in this period was commonly used in the sense of the specific meaning with which we are familiar today, namely a general contribution due from the entire populace or a section of society to central or local government, it could also, less commonly, be applied to a range of other situations when one individual was obliged to give money to another. For instance, during his governorship in the 1540s, James Hamilton earl of Arran was obliged to pay a ‘tax’ to his wife, from whom he was temporarily separated, similar usage prevailed during the 1530s.172 It is also helpful to consider the words ‘gratitude’ and ‘contribution’, these could mean either a voluntary payment or gift, or payment for a service.173 Both could also be synonymous with ‘tax’: in 1531, a non-voluntary grant was described as a ‘gratitude’ and as a ‘taxt’.174 The similarly non-voluntary levy to fund Marie de Guise’s voyage to Scotland was described as a ‘contributioun’ and a ‘taxt’.175 In this context, therefore, the fact the word ‘tax’ was used simply indicates that payments were obligatory. The appearance of the word ‘tax’ to describe the penalties which were imposed on the burghs but not those to be collected from landowners on the same basis should not mean we treat the two as different. Indeed, we might draw a parallel with the December 1540 parliament’s provisions that temporal men should purchase and then sport the appropriate attire at wappenschawings under the ‘pane’ of a sliding scale of sums of money to be ‘tane’ from them.176 If we are, as Murray did, to count the March 1541 provisions in relation to the burghs as a ‘tax’, then logically the provisions related to the landowners at the same time and those made in 1541 must be considered a tax also—as must others like them. Do we then count any financial punishment for non-compliance, such as the ‘pane and unlaw’ to be imposed on those who caught salmon out of season as a ‘tax’?177 On balance, the 1541 ‘tax’ seems more comparable to the ‘panes’ and ‘unlaws’ which were a common form of punishment than the general contributions levied on one or more estates which comprised direct taxation in this period. Even so, in imposing such ‘panes’ or ‘unlaws’—or, as we shall see 172  Amy Blakeway, ‘The attempted divorce of James Hamilton, earl of Arran, Governor of Scotland’, Innes Review 61 (2010), pp. 1-23 at p. 11. For another contemporary example of this usage: NRS CS5/43 f.10v. 173  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, pp. 322-3. 174  NRS CS5/41 ff.155r, 157r; ADCP, p. 346-7; NRS E21/24 ff.41r-44r. 175  Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue: appendix’, pp. 90-1. 176  RPS, 1540/12/30. Date accessed: 23 May 2017. 177  RPS, 1535/25. Date accessed: 19 July 2021.

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in chapter 6, raising these to reflect general inflation—was a way in which parliament helped realise the potential of the judicial system as an income stream. At the same time, the compulsory purchasing outlined by parliamentary acts also played an important role in bolstering the crown’s potential military capacity. It is tempting to suggest that the March 1541 act requiring the burghs to make advance preparations for future military expeditions was prompted by the regime’s experience of preparing for James’s voyage to the Isles the previous year. In April 1540, the burgh council of Aberdeen were requested to provide James with ‘ane schip of weyr’. This resulted in the appointment of a committee to consider what was already available to furnish the ship appropriately ‘and gif they haif nocht sa meikle as will extend to the repairing of the said schip, to calcule the excess necessary to be spendit, and to se and consider and find the easiest way quhair it will be gottine’.178 Meanwhile, trade of the ‘necessaris requirit to the said schipe’ was restricted. Ten days later, the council approached William Stewart, bishop of Aberdeen (who was also the treasurer) and explained to him that the burgh’s ‘common guid…micht nocht furneise the schip’, accordingly, the burgh would to tax itself for 500 merks to acquire the requisite financial resources to purchase the items necessary for the King’s request.179 Dundee had also been requested to provide a ship and their provisions provided the benchmark for the Aberdonians; it seems highly likely that other burgh communities also contributed in kind to the Isles expedition.180 Regardless of whether the delays and struggles of the summer of 1540 indeed prompted parliamentary provision to prevent delays in organising a future military venture, this whole episode, like the December 1541 parliamentary provisions, serves to remind us that requests for cash or even precious metal were only one way in which the Scottish crown could extract resources from its subjects—indeed, payments in kind were an important part of the crown’s landed income and had the considerable advantage (in theory, at least) of being inflation proof. Receiving a request for an in-kind contribution, such as a ship, resulted in exactly the same type of activity which would have been generated by a royal demand for a tax paid in money, and had exactly the same effect for the crown. Whilst the burghs as an estate did not grant a ‘tax’ in 1540, it seems reasonable to include  Aberd. Recs., p. 169.  Aberd. Recs., pp. 170-1. 180  Aberd. Recs., p. 173. 178 179

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their preparations for the Isles voyage of that year alongside other compulsory purchasing amongst the significant contributions which James’s subjects made to crown resources. The act of Twizelhaugh was reissued for ‘baronis and nobill men that passes in our service with us’ in March 1540 as part of the preparations for the voyage, which suggests the second estate were offering military service, it is therefore tempting to suggest that the clergy too contributed to the voyage.181 Indeed, the March 1541 parliamentary provisions for preparations for warfare amongst the first and second estates as well as the third may have been deemed necessary after witnessing their performance the previous year. There is no obvious paper trail surrounding the decision to launch the voyage in the council register, so if any discussion or negotiation surrounding levels of support took place unfortunately this process is obscure. Assuming the planned voyage would have entailed similar discussion to that devoted to the abortive Isles voyage of 1530–1, we might once again have cause to regret the loss of the secret council’s register. Before moving on we shall compare the sums granted by various sources, even though some of these figures are approximate, this is still sufficient to reveal an overall pattern. Considering taxes from the burghs alone, with the caveat that the value of £1570 for the 1600 ounces of silver gathered in 1529 is only approximate, we can arrive at a rough figure for the tax James was granted by the third estate in its own conventions of £5257. The clerical taxes included the great tax of £72,000, ten years of the annual grant for the college of justice from 1532–42, which totalled £14,250, and the tax of the three teinds. Though no record of the total grant survives for this, it is likely to have been at least £7671—three times the sum collected in the first year. To this, we must add the ‘contribution’ of £5000 offered in or around December 1540.182 The total of £98,921 far outstrips taxation from any other source. Ascertaining the total was granted by conventions is harder and we need to assume, first, that the clerical:noble:burgh 3:2:1 ratio for payment was maintained throughout the personal rule; second, that in 1533 the monthly tax was given for the five months of active conflict (from January until May); and, third, that in 1530 and 1533 the nobility served in lieu of tax but that in 1536 they offered tax as no military service was needed. This means that the King was granted £44,787 of taxes by the conventions  NRS CS6/12 f.222r-v; ADCP, p. 488.  Hannay (ed.), Rentale Sancti Andree, p. 126.

181 182

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of 1530, 1533 and 1536, plus the service offered by the nobility during the campaigns of the early 1530s and the contributions of service and ships from nobles and burghs given in 1540—this effectively functioned as taxation in kind. Finally, assuming that c.£6477 plus service was granted in the summer of 1542 by a convention we have an approximate total of £51,264 in cash taxes granted by conventions. Clearly, conventions were far more actively involved in the process of granting taxes than parliament, which granted £10,800  in two taxes over the personal rule as well as threatening to issue fines if other preparations to acquire artillery were not met. How significant were taxes in the context of overall royal finances? Gaps in the accounts make analysing income from the royal lands in this period a task best undertaken with caution, but between 1529 and 1540, the crown received amounts varying between £3500 and £8418 from its landed income.183 In 1542, following Margaret Tudor’s death and the return of her jointure to the crown, which coincided with the annexation of various lands to the royal estates, landed income reached a peak of £15,515.184 Total parliamentary taxation was thus approximately equivalent to a good year’s ordinary revenue from the royal estates prior to the boost provided by a combination of death and annexation. Taxes granted by conventions would have given a little over three years’ worth of landed revenue whilst clerical taxes were worth eight years landed revenue. To take another point of comparison, the extraordinary income received by the treasurer was more variable: although the approximate annual average during the personal rule was £16,700 this ranged from just over £6000 in 1532–3 and 1536–7 (during James’s absence in France income from sources such as the ayres declined), to a peak of just over £37,000 when the profits from the charters issuing re-grants of land from the revocation entered the books.185 Grants of taxation from all sources at £166,242 183  Calculated from payments in: NRS E38/381-419. See also: Blakeway, Regency, pp. 112-116. 184  NRS E38/420. The bailie ad extra account for 1541 is unfortunately damaged: E38/417. 185  Calculated from the totals in: NRS E21/23 f.11v; NRS E21/24 f.40v; NRS E21/25 f.8v; NRS E21/26 f. 10r; NRS E21/28 f.6v; NRS E21/29 f.7r and NRS E21/30 f.9r added together; NRS E21/31 f.9r added to NRS E31/32 f.5v; NRS E21/34 f.14v; NRS E21/36 f.18v; NRS E21/37 f.12r; NRS E21/38 f.22r; NRS E21/39 f.21r. For the low of 1532-3: NRS E21/26 f.10r; and that of 1536-7: NRS E21/31 f.9r added to NRS E21/32 f.7r; for the high figure: NRS E21/38 f.22r. There was some inflation in

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approximated to about four and a half years’ worth of income for the treasurer. Clearly taxation was highly significant—especially since the majority of major grants, notably the great tax and the taxes to fund the 1531 and 1533 campaigns, occurred in the less financially secure earlier portion of the personal rule when crown landed income was severely limited and before James received the two dowries of Madeline and Marie de Guise. As the allusion to the annexation and revocation in the previous paragraph hints, parliament filled the royal purse in other ways than through taxes. On occasion, it might pass acts to help facilitate revenue collection, such as the 1540 repassing of an earlier act ordering protocols of sasines to be registered annually at the exchequer ‘sua that the kingis grace may knaw his tenentis’.186 Similar attempts to ensure that the crown received income it was due can be seen in legislation prohibiting attempts to avoid paying the feudal casualties due to the crown or repaying debts through disrupting the process of entry to lands.187 Parliament also might confirm charters or advise on royal land transactions. The only recorded business of the February 1541 meeting of commissioners, for instance, was that the lords of the articles, accompanied by some other councillors, confirmed that a specific land transaction was indeed legal ‘and counsalis the kingis grace, for the maire securitie herof’ which lands he ought to give in return for those he received.188 Although framed as advice, it is also possible to read this as a nudge that James ought to keep his part of the bargain, and on 19 July James did indeed heed this counsel by transferring £4 of land in Buckhaven to Dunfermline Abbey.189 Parliament also had a role in securing the royal patrimony by confirming James’s act of revocation. The Scottish practice of revocation which allowed monarchs to rescind grants made either by themselves or in their name before their twenty-fifth birthday has long been cited as evidence for the strength of the Stewart crown, although it cannot be marshalled so easily as evidence of the weakness of the Stewarts’ regents as was once thought.190 James issued his revocation first in 1537, and it was confirmed this period, to see these figures deflated to their worth in 1500 to facilitate direct comparisons: Blakeway, Regency, pp. 98-102. 186  RPS, 1540/12/21. Date accessed: 26 August 2020. 187  RPS, 1540/12/77. Date accessed: 15 April 2016; RPS, 1540/12/78. Date accessed: 15 April 2016. 188  RPS, 1540/12/42. Date accessed: 14 April 2016. 189  RMS III, 2731. 190  Blakeway, Regency, pp. 84-5.

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in the 1540 parliament as part of a series of measures designed to bolster royal authority and distinguish the present regime from that of the minority: we shall explore this more in the following chapter.191 This is not the place for a full discussion of the practice of revocation; however, it is worth emphasising that in approving James’s act of revocation, the parliament of 1540 was endorsing a well-established practice. Whilst very few individuals lost lands due to the revocation (indeed some had lands confirmed in parliament), it allowed royal control to be maintained at a micro-level in ensuring that individuals continued to hold lands directly of the crown, for instance, Richard Maitland of Lethington was ordered to reverse a transaction which left Alexander Forrester of Corstorphine, from whom Lethington had purchased land, holding no land directly from the crown.192 Even though revocations did not, therefore, entail the return of large amounts of land to the crown parliament nevertheless worked to protect the royal patrimony. The act of annexation of 1540 bound properties to the crown in perpetuity, including ‘the landis and lordschip of Orknay and Yetland and the ilis pertening thareto and thare pertinentis’.193 Crown lands in Orkney and Shetland had been acquired as a pledge for the future payment of Margaret of Denmark’s dowry in 1469, and so technically could have been reclaimed by the crown of Denmark-Norway—their inclusion here suggests that James saw them as an inalienable part of his realm.194 Other annexed lands included those forfeited by traitors including lord Glamis, the Douglases and Hamilton of Finnart. By contrast, lands forfeited by heretics were not annexed. The small sums raised from the forfeited lands of heretics, such as the £49 received from the lands of James Hamilton of Kincavill, was a far cry from the ‘ane hundereth thowsand pundis of yeirlie rent’ which Pitscottie claimed that the clergy had promised to secure James from convictions for heresy, an assertion reflected in Knox’s account of Archbishop Beaton’s list of heretics whose lands were ripe for the picking.195 Perhaps the small sums involved made the annexation of heretics’ lands unattractive or more suitable for distribution as patronage, James Foulis, for instance,  RPS, 1540/12/10. Date accessed: 26 August 2020.  RPS, 1540/12/103-5. Date accessed: 16 April 2016. Jenny Wormald, Court Kirk and Community: Scotland 1470-1625 (London,1981), pp. 10-11. 193  RPS, 1540/12/26. Date accessed: 26 August 2020. 194  Norman Macdougall, James III (Edinburgh, 1982), p. 78. 195  NRS E38/420; Lindsay of Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles I, 387; W. C. Dickinson (ed.), Knox History of the Reformation in Scotland I (Edinburgh, 2 vols, 1949), p. 34. 191 192

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benefitted from the lands of a convicted heretic in March 1540, or perhaps the decision not to annex their lands reveals a more lenient attitude towards the families of heretics than towards the kin of traitors.196 Again, assessing the significance of these new or newly secured lands in the context of royal finances is complicated. However, as a rough starting point, the accounts of the bailies ad extra (the officials responsible for the rentals on royal lands) rendered in 1542 suggest that the crown might anticipate an annual income from the Isles, including Orkney and Shetland, of a little over £3200. Although these lands had been first acquired by the crown before James’s reign, the annexation was still significant in ensuring they would remain in crown hands. Annual revenue from the newly acquired lands forfeited by traitors came to about £3650.197 In three years, James would have made more from these annexed lands than the parliamentary taxation of the entire personal rule and, unlike every tax except the £1425 for the college of justice, this income stream was permanent. Nevertheless, like the vast majority of his taxation schemes, James’s annexation was not an innovation in policy: John Mair had argued that parliament had a duty—which might even include legislation—to prevent royal alienation of crown lands.198 Mair might have been recalling events of 1455 when the Estates had approved a similar act in the hope it would

196  NRS CS6/12 f.93r; ADCP, p. 486. For attitudes to heresy and forfeiture in an English context which suggest an unwillingness to completely shun heretic’s relatives see: P. R. Cavill, ‘Heresy, Law and the State: Forfeiture in Late Medieval and Early Modern England’, English Historical Review 129 (2014), pp. 270-295. 197  NRS E38/419-420. The lands included in these figures are both those known to be the former property of the named individuals and lands for whom no former owner was easily identifiable but which did not appear during James’s minority and first feature in the bailies ad extra accounts between 1538 and 1542. This suggests they were acquired or re-acquired by the crown during the period when forfeitures were augmenting crown rentals. The lands of James Hamilton of Kincavil, forfeited for heresy and not included in the annexation, have been excluded: the crown might expect £49 6s from these. The figures are therefore rough and a fuller study of each individual area of land would produce a more refined figure. Likewise, whilst the 1542 bailies ad extra rolls were very full, not every accountant attended exchequer in every year and it is possible that the 1541 rolls, for instance, would contain additional material. The totals are based on the sums paid by individual accountants to the comptroller rather than the total sum raised from the lands; money which was raised and spent locally and which did not pass through the hands of central officials is therefore excluded. 198  Burns, True Law of Kingship, p. 69.

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reduce the need for taxation.199 An echo of this optimism can be found in the 1540 claim ‘that the patrimonie of his croune and revenois therof being augmentit is the grett weill and proffitt baith to the kingis grace and all his liegis’.200 In Poland, increased restrictions on alienating the royal demesne prompted the crown to retaliate by making new laws more difficult to pass by henceforth requiring the approval of both chambers.201 James’s way round the new restriction was far less radical: the March 1541 session passed an act permitting the feuing of annexed lands for his lifetime only.202 Placing the 1455 annexation alongside the refusal to grant a tax in 1473, Tanner has suggested that these events illustrate the capacity of the Estates to ‘resist and overrule the king’, but that this ability declined after 1500.203 The back and forth between the December 1540 and March 1541 pronouncements on feuing suggests a gradual process of compromise on the subject of royal lands between King and Estates—the Estates did retain an ability to modify royal demands, but this was limited. More broadly, James V’s commitment to feuing marks a strong point of continuity with his fathers’ efforts in this area, and would repay further study in its own right.204

Conclusions An examination of 1530s Scotland forces us to reappraise the relationship between conventions, parliament, taxation and royal finances. Claims that like their cousins elsewhere in Europe, Scottish ‘parliaments held out the promise, albeit often not realised, of raising large sums of extraordinary taxation that the crown found it difficult to raise in other ways’ suggest

199  P. G. B. McNeill and Ranald Nicholson (eds), Historical Atlas of Scotland c.400-1600 (St Andrews, 1975), pp. 72-3; Roland Tanner, ‘Outside the Acts: perceptions of the Scottish Parliament in literary sources before 1500’, Scottish Archives 6 (2000), pp. 57-70 at p. 69; Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, pp. 149-51. 200  RPS, 1540/12/26. Date accessed: 3 September 2021. 201  James Miller, ‘The Polish Nobility and Renaissance Monarchy: the ‘Execution of the Laws’ movement Part II, Parliaments, Estates & Representation 3:2 (1983), pp. 65-87 at p. 73. 202  RPS, 1540/12/89. Date accessed: 15 April 2016. 203  Tanner, ‘Outside the Acts: perceptions of the Scottish Parliament before 1500’, p. 69. 204  Steve Boardman, ‘Royal Finance and Regional Rebellion in the Reign of James IV’ in J.  Goodare and A.  A. Macdonald (eds), Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch (Leiden, 2008), pp. 15-42.

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that parliament was the go-to institution when taxes were needed.205 This formulation acknowledges the difficulties in raising tax in parliament but, at least for the reign of James V, underestimates the crown’s capacity to raise ‘large sums of extraordinary taxation’ in ‘other ways’. The fact parliament was approached only twice in the personal rule for direct taxation speaks for itself when placed in the context of grants not only from the spiritual estate, but also grants from conventions who offered approximately four times as much direct taxation as parliament—in addition to facilitating further resource extraction through service and contributions in kind. Although the importance of conventions to taxation income might suggest continuity with the period 1566–1601, the conventions in question here were, as we saw in chapters 2 and 3, very different in character to those of the later sixteenth century.206 Conventions played such a key role in taxation as part of their broader function of preparing for international warfare and military campaigns against wayward subjects—this focus on military advice, in turn, explains the exclusion of the third estate from these discussions. Whilst it is no surprise that war entailed greater central governmental activity and efforts to extract resources, in 1530s Scotland, this expansion of activity and concomitant flourishing in consultation centred on a highly flexible council rather than parliament. The historiography of parliamentary taxation has long foregrounded the questions of representation and resistance. Resistance, including negotiating, outright refusal and grumbling after the fact, was a prominent feature of requests for taxation issued to fifteenth-century Scottish parliaments.207 James I and James III faced their greatest conflicts with their Estates on the subject of taxation—largely in parliament but occasionally in conventions—and parliament’s ability to resist taxation has proven a crucial aspect of the broader reassessment of its fifteenth-century significance.208 For James V’s reign, the evidence points in a different direction. Parliament was far more compliant in its acquiescence to grants of taxation than its fifteenth-century predecessors, perhaps because it was approached rarely and the purpose of the grants was acceptable. Avoiding parliament, however, was not a trouble-­free road to a cash windfall—both the clergy and the burghs bargained hard when it came to taxes, even though our  Brown and MacDonald (eds), Parliament in Context, p. 11.  For the later conventions: Goodare, ‘Parliamentary Taxation’, passim. 207  Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, pp. 20-4, 29-33, 50-4, 64-5, 198-9, 221-2. 208  Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, pp. 264-5. 205 206

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only evidence for outright refusal of a grant is drawn from much later chronicles and English spy reports. Even so, the question of tax seems to have provoked significantly less conflict and proved less poisonous to relations between monarch and estates under James V than it had for his grandfather or great-great-grandfather. Beyond questions of resistance and crown-estates conflict, however, the evidence in this chapter has suggested a different avenue for research— namely, the process by which approval for a given course of action developed into a clearly agreed plan for a tax. Taxes in this period were usually granted over the course of several meetings, typically including a council meeting or smaller convention, a larger convention attended by the council and representatives from one or more estate, or occasionally a parliament, and, in the case of the burghs, perhaps a convention of a single estate. This provided opportunities for negotiation, which was a far more common response to a request for tax than outright refusal. Moreover, the select nature of the individuals involved in granting a tax should not be read as a simple consequence of the fact taxes were granted outwith parliament: in 1535, the lords of the articles granted the tax after they had been received plenary power. Although the whole sederunt might have discussed a tax, or informal soundings-out on the subject been taken whilst everyone was in town, the final sum and the identity of the collectors was dealt with by the lords of the articles.209 We have long acknowledged the clerical grant of £72,000 as a sign of James’s hold over the clergy, placed between the rock of heresy and the hard place of royal encroachment. However, the fact the lords of the articles granted a tax without referring to the whole parliament in 1535, combined with the example that James’s regents could raise £20,000 without a murmur whilst the King was out the country in 1536, the apparent lack of a whisper of refusal when the crown demanded in kind contributions of ships for its seaborne endeavours, and the regime’s ability to secure grants which originated in conventions attended by only a small number of men, speak equally strongly if less dramatically to the extent of royal power over the other estates. The 1504 statute which provided ‘that the commissaris and hedismen of burrowis be warnyt quhene taxtis or contributiouns ar gevin, to haif thair avise thairintill as ane of the thre estatis of the realme’ was not allowed to infringe on James’s plans for campaigns.210 The fact  RPS, 1535/4, 14. Date accessed: 19 May 2020.  RPS, A1504/3/130. Date accessed: 6 September 2020.

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that members of each Estate sat on the council may have offered some channels for consultation, but this was neither the spirit nor the letter of the law. On the other hand, the fact negotiations did take place on the ammount of tax which ought to be paid shows that the regime could not simply do what it liked—and that the use of conventions did not mean that plans were simply nodded through. By contrast, James’s matrimonial taxes were all approved, two by parliaments and the third by a convention attended by representatives of all three estates summoned in James’s absence abroad. Perhaps a sense of immediacy regarding royal campaigns combined with the processes of multiple meetings in planning for them helped reduce the need for a specific consultation on tax. However, when it came to making permanent changes to the royal patrimony only parliament would do: although James’s death in 1542 precludes us from knowing what the long-term significance of the 1540 act of annexation and 1541 provisions on feuing might have been, it is tempting to suggest that these would have proved parliament’s major contribution to crown finances had the King lived. Whilst questions about its potential impact on crown finances must remain unanswered, nevertheless, it is clear that the act of annexation was an important part of a far broader legislative programme designed to enhance the crown’s power: we shall explore this in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 6

Legislation, Treason and Parliament

The foregoing chapters have emphasised the extent to which parliament and convention operated as part of the same counsel  securing, decision making, planning and information disseminating processes to which James’s councillors were central. As such, the two bodies shared many functions, including, crucially, the ability to impose taxes. Yet, this emphasis on the place of these two meetings (alongside other groups) as part of a shared political process should not be allowed to obscure their differences, in particular, the fact that throughout this period parliament was able to do two things which conventions could not. The first was its ability to try treason cases, and the second was its ability to make permanent laws. Throughout the late medieval and early modern periods, the relative significance of the two activities shifted: as time progressed, parliament employed its jurisdiction as a civil court less and less, and by our period, it only exercised its ability to try cases of treason with any regularity. Although the process of remeid of law meant that private cases continued on occasion to appear before parliament until the 1707 union, scholarly consensus has it that by the early sixteenth century, parliament was only very rarely a court.1 This development enabled it to devote more time to passing a 1  George Neilson and Henry Paton (eds), Acts of Lords of Council in civil causes 1496-1501 II (Edinburgh, 1918), pp. v-xcvii; Irene O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Glasgow, 1980), p. 142; Mark Godfrey,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4_6

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greater quantity of laws. Speaking of the post-1560 parliament, Goodare has noted that it was the power to pass permanently binding legislation which marked parliament as truly distinctive amongst other governmental bodies.2 Reviewing parliament’s transition from a body with extensive civil judicial powers to one whose main judicial business by 1500 constituted treason cases, Mark Godfrey concurred, observing that ‘through the development of the role of the privy council and other governmental institutions, parliament was enabled to concentrate on legislation’.3 Both scholars especially emphasise the increase in legislation in the final quarter of the sixteenth century.4 When it comes to James V’s personal rule specifically, however, interest in parliament’s role as a court has been collapsed into broader narratives of the King’s vengeful nature, with the emphasis on his desire to try and convict traitors—the forum in which this occurred has been treated as almost incidental to the overpowering narrative of royal greed and vindictiveness.5 Turning to legislation, drawing on the English historiography which emphasised the significance of parliament in the Henrician reformation, Jenny Wormald suggested that parliament’s ability to pass anti-heresy laws was its main purpose during James’s reign. For Wormald, it was this, combined with royal minorities, which ensured parliament’s continued role in Scotland despite the decline of estates elsewhere in Europe, and this analysis remains influential.6 Wormald’s case was also firmly situated within the ‘new monarchy’ consensus that parliament was at risk in the early sixteenth century and that its survival in Scotland thus required explanation. As we have seen in the  introduction, the assumption that James V was a bloodthirsty tyrant hell-bent on persecuting his magnates has been overturned, and, looking beyond Scotland, it is now clear that ‘Parliament and the Law’ in K. M. Brown and A. R. MacDonald (eds), Parliament in Context, 1235-1707 (Edinburgh, 2010), pp.  156-185. For the exceptions linked to remeid of law: J. D. Ford, ‘Protestations to Parliament for Remeid of Law’, SHR 225 (2009), pp. 57-107. 2  Julian Goodare, The Government of Scotland 1560-1625 (Edinburgh, 2004), pp. 71-3. 3  Godfrey, ‘Parliament and the Law’, p. 176. 4  Godfrey, ‘Parliament and the Law’, p. 178. 5  M.  G. Kelley, ‘The Douglas earls of Angus a study in the social and political bases of power of a Scottish family from 1389 until 1557’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh, 1973), pp.  751-2; John Finlay, Men of Law in pre-Reformation Scotland (East Linton, 2000), pp. 129-30. 6  Jenny Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community (London, 1981), pp.  21-2, 98-100; Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 72.

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the antagonism of ‘new monarchs’ towards parliament more broadly was overstated.7 As a result, we no longer need to ask how the Scottish parliament tenaciously clung on to ‘survive’. This opens up the space to investigate new facets of parliament’s relationship to the law, both as a court and creator of statutes, during the personal rule. The arguments advanced in this chapter help to refine rather than seek to challenge the broad framework of declining judicial work and increasing legislative activities advanced by Goodare and Godfrey. Parliament had indeed largely ceased to exercise its once numerous judicial powers well before 1528, but it retained its capacity to try treason cases. Moreover, it remained the only court in the land which could secure a conviction for treason even when the accused failed to appear.8 Although the quantity of parliament’s judicial activities had declined, we must not underestimate how important the remaining trials it heard were. As we shall see in the first portion of this chapter, on more than one occasion, James’s regime found it necessary to try, convict and forfeit the goods and lands of traitors who failed to compear for their trial. Such cases were politically crucial, and coupled with its unique ability to annex traitors’ lands to the crown in perpetuity, this meant that parliament held a monopoly on an important judicial service, one which was of great political importance. Indeed, there is some tantalising evidence that parliament did more judicial work in this period than we have evidence for and it is likely we do not have the full picture of its work as a court. Since the extant record covering 1540–1 was created as a draft for the printed statutes of 1542, it is possible that it did not contain a complete record of judicial business. The original treason accusation which initiated the Ross v. Geddes leasing-making counter-case which we encountered the ‘lords of the articles and council’ pronouncing on in chapter 2 is a potential example.9 Indeed, even the records covering 7  A. J. Slavin, ‘Introduction’ to A. J. Slavin (ed.) The New Monarchies and Representative Assemblies: Medieval Constitutionalism or Modern Absolutism? (Lexington, MA, 1964); A. Marongiu, Medieval Parliaments (London, 1968), pp. 235-7; S. Gunn, ‘Politic history, New Monarchy and state formation: Henry VII in European perspective’, Historical Research 82 (2009), pp. 380-92; for a reassessment of parliament under a ‘new monarch’ south of the border: P. R. Cavill, English Parliaments of Henry VII 1485-1504 (Oxford, 2009). 8  P.  G. B.  McNeill (ed.), ‘Discours Particulier d’Escosse, 1559/60’ in W.  D. H.  Sellar (ed.), Miscellany II (Stair Society, 1984), pp. 117-19. 9  Above pp.  43-4. See also: Amy Blakeway, ‘Reassessing the Scottish Parliamentary Records, 1528-1548: manuscript, print, bureaucracy and royal authority’, Parliamentary History 40 (2021), pp. 417-442 at p. 427.

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1528–38 may not contain all of parliament’s work as a court—a stray marginal note of a ‘secta pacis’ on a day when no other business was heard in the 1535 parliament gestures towards further, now lost, judicial activity.10 There is no note of who was present on this date. It is also possible that the meetings of parliament for which no business was recorded heard or continued other cases: the enigmatic sessions of 1533 and 1538 are candidates here.11 It is unlikely, however, that any such ‘lost’ cases resulted in convictions for treason—since many treason convictions were reversed in the early months of Mary’s reign, we might have caught sight of them there.12 What, then, of legislation? Facetiously, one could argue that the concentration of legislative activity in the later parliaments of 1535 and 1540–1 offers a microcosmic reflection of the century-long shift towards increasing legislative activity. More helpfully, the confining of significant, novel, anti-heresy activity to only the parliament of 1540–1 shows that we cannot turn to the threat of protestantism to explain why James summoned parliament. Beyond this, however, close examination of what legislation actually comprised in the personal rule suggests we need to expand the terms of the debate on this topic. Previous scholarship on the subject of late medieval and early modern Scottish legislation has focused on two distinct areas, namely, the passing of new laws (an activity especially associated with James I and James VI), and the codification of existing laws (similarly located either before 1500 or after 1560), with the two being treated as separate activities.13 Examining the legislation of James V’s parliaments, however, shows that a significant portion of the time and effort devoted to legislation was in fact deployed on the selection of old laws to be repassed—sometimes these might be revised, but on other occasions they were not. J. H. Burns noted in passing that ensuring law was ‘updated’ was an important duty of late medieval government, but our examination of James’s parliaments takes this a step further.14 Review and repassing of older laws was an integral component of parliamentary activity, not something specially confined to sporadic attempts to codify. If we accept this,  RPS, 1535/47. Date accessed: 22 June 2020.  For commissioners undertaking judicial work in parliament under James IV: Norman Macdougall, James IV (East Linton, 1997), p. 186. 12  RPS, 1543/3/29-39, 41-42, 44-48. Date accessed: 22 June 2020. 13  Godfrey, ‘Parliament and the Law’; Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 70-86. 14  J. H. Burns, The True Law of Kingship: concepts of monarchy in Early Modern Scotland (Oxford, 1996), p. 4. 10 11

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then the early sixteenth century should figure more prominently in narratives about engagement with and organisation of the law than we have appreciated.

Parliament as a Court Before turning to parliament’s judicial activities, it is first necessary to briefly situate parliament amongst the other courts at the King’s disposal. In 1560 James McGill, then clerk register, and John Bellenden, who like McGill was a prominent lawyer and later a judge, offered a helpful overview of provisions for treason trials in their ‘Discours Particulier d’Escosse’.15 This briefing document on the Scottish administration was produced for the absentee Mary, Queen of Scots in the immediate context of the Reformation Rebellion, and as such devoted considerable attention to explaining how convictions might be secured for treason. They first explained procedure for pursuing a traitor who was already in ward: in this instance, the king’s advocate could gather an assise and a judge to hear the case. We see this in action in the personal rule with, for instance, the trial of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart who was placed in ward, tried and convicted by an assise for treason and accordingly executed.16 Similarly, in 1537, the Master of Forbes was tried by assise and executed; Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, was burned alive the same year again following trial by assise.17 Her son, John Lyon seventh Lord Glamis, was tried in the same way—although his youth meant that he escaped the death penalty he remained in ward and his estates were forfeited. These assises might be held either in a justice ayre or in the justiciary court—although a relatively new arrival on the Scottish criminal justice scene, this static version of the peripatetic ayres was rapidly growing a significant client base.18 When elite traitors fell into the regime’s hands, the venue of choice for such a trial was invariably an assise. Since the regime could have put any of these individuals to trial in parliament (they were, after all, already warded), this suggests  McNeill (ed.), ‘La Discours Particulier d’Escosse’, pp. 116-121.  The reduction of his forfeiture explained this had originally been undertaken by act of adjournal—that is, in the justiciary court: RPS, A1540/12/1, 1543/12/47. Date accessed: 20 August 2021. 17  Robert Pitcairn (ed.), Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland 1:1 (Edinburgh, 3 vols, 1833), pp. 184-5, 190-1. 18  Amy Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 183-191. 15 16

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that an assise was the preferred forum for a treason trial. Even so, the collapse of Lady Glamis’s trial in 1532 shows that assises were capable of resisting a royal agenda.19 Unfortunately for the lord advocate, tasked with pursuing these miscreants, accused traitors did not always meekly trot along to Edinburgh castle to await a trail. If an individual had been summoned to an assise and failed to compear, they could be horned and denounced as a rebel. This was the usual procedure for any accused person who failed to attend their trial and resulted in the escheat of their lands and goods to the crown for the duration of their lifetime, however, on their death their heirs could inherit. Whilst horning offered a measure of punishment, the repercussions were simply not as significant as the loss of life, lands and heritage which faced a convicted traitor. This, then, was where parliament could step in: since those accused of treason did not always fall into the regime’s hands, parliament could secure their conviction and apply the full rigour of the law even in their absence. Moreover, parliament proved useful in the aftermath of a conviction—it was where the traitors’ lands might be bound permanently to the crown through an act of annexation. On the other hand, parliament was also a place where forfeiture could be reversed: Cameron suggests that the reversal of Alexander Drummond of Carnock’s forfeiture was the ‘main item on the agenda’ of the 1532 parliament, not the business surrounding the college of justice.20 Despite the fact that parliament possessed the power to convict in absentia, this was only very selectively exercised. On three occasions, alleged traitors were summoned to parliament, failed to compear, and the trial was continued to a future date on which parliament failed to meet, which in turn provided a procedural reason for the case to be dropped. When the crown as pursuer failed to compear it did not have to admit it made an error in summoning an individual or provide an explanation for its change of heart, whilst avoiding a full trial. This took place in the trial of Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis and three other Douglas supporters in 1528–9, and for Alasdair Mac Dhòmhnaill and his associates in 1531. Similarly, in 1536, Sir Patrick Hepburn of Waughton’s treason trial was 19  McGladdery, C.  A. ‘Douglas, Janet, Lady Glamis (c. 1504–1537), noblewoman.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 21 Jul. 2021. https:// w w w - o x f o r d d n b - c o m . e z p r o x y. s t - a n d r e w s . a c . u k / v i e w / 1 0 . 1 0 9 3 / r e f : o d n b / 9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-7906. 20  Jamie Cameron, James V: the personal rule 1528-1542 (East Linton, 1997), p. 339; RPS, 1532/8. Date accessed: 20 August 2021.

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continued to a date on which there is no record parliament met. Although the evidence varies for each case, it is clear that the disputes between James and these subjects were eventually settled outwith parliament. Parliament, therefore, was not being employed to offer the nuclear option of an in absentia conviction: rather, it was one facet of a broader process of dispute resolution. Turning to those cases of individuals convicted in absentia in parliament suggests that beyond James’s obvious distaste for the Douglas brothers and concerns surrounding plots against the King, the regime moved with particular purpose against individuals who had committed treason from within. When a councillor was accused of treason, the regime pressed for the highest punishment. The first case which was begun in parliament but did not result in a conviction was that which first appears on 1 December 1528 against Lady Glamis, Patrick Charteris, Hugh Kennedy and John Hume of Blackadder. This was immediately continued to 18 January, on which date it was continued to 22 January.21 By 22 January, however, the cases against Lady Glamis and Charteris had evidently been dropped: only Kennedy and Hume of Blackadder had their cases continued to 29 January. Even so, the regime was losing interest, since it was also decided that after the meeting on 29 January, parliament would be ‘desertum’.22 There is no record of parliament meeting that day. Despite having been summoned together, each of these individuals came to terms separately. First, on 25 February, a new case was begun against Charteris in the justiciary court, where his crimes had been downgraded from treasonably helping Angus and assisting him in securing armed resistance against the King, to the lesser offences of fire-raising and burning the village of Cousland and plundering livestock.23 These were still serious crimes—the fire-raising was one of four crimes known as a plea of the crown over which the crown retained exclusive jurisdiction– but nevertheless it fell short of treason.24 Cameron has observed that the King’s warrant to remit the case from the justiciary court to the ayre of Forfare suggests that by this stage, the regime no longer was interested in pursuing the case.25 This is doubtless correct, but it can be pushed further: the downgrading of the charges, the initial removal  RPS, 1528/9/48, 51. Date accessed: 7 August 2018.  RPS, 1528/9/53. Date accessed: 7 August 2018. 23  Pitcairn (ed.), Ancient Criminal Trials I:I, p. 141. 24  P. G. B. McNeil (ed.), The Practicks of Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich II (Edinburgh, 2 vols, 1962), p. 508. 25  Cameron, James V, p. 170. 21 22

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of the case from parliament to the lower justiciary court, and the fact that Charteris was willing to appear in person suggests that some sort of deal was at least tentatively on the table by this stage. Assuming Charteris appeared at the justiciary court on 25 February following a forty-day summons, this suggests that a rapprochement was underway by 15 January. In September, Charteris and Lady Glamis received licences to go on pilgrimage and secured remissions which were to endure for the time they were away.26 This later coincidence of dates may suggest that Lady Glamis’s case was connected to that of Charteris and that she began to bargain with the regime at the same time. Kennedy and Blackadder, however, do not seem to have begun negotiations in January so it is unclear why their cases disappear from the record. They eventually secured respites in June 1529 and October 1529, respectively—Blackadder had been obliged to enter exile in England from where he petitioned James before securing his. Unlike in Charteris’s case, therefore, there is no evidence that Kennedy or Hume began negotiations before 29 January. Whilst we can see part of Charteris’s January bargaining process, it is not clear why these four individuals were not simply convicted. It is possible that the four years of Angus and Sir George Douglas of Pittendreich at the helm and their systematic exclusion of other interests had left an appetite for their punishment, but that in absentia conviction for treason for these lesser individuals did not command widespread support. Certainly, Cameron suggests that the real motive for summoning Kennedy may have been fuelled by personal rivalry arising from his involvement in local disturbances, and Blackadder had been linked to trouble on the border region.27 Neither of these suggests a compelling reason for conviction. Equally, none of these alleged traitors—including Lady Glamis— possessed moveable property or a landed estate to compare to the earldom of Angus or even Pittendreich’s lands, centred on Dalkeith castle. Setting aside any potential monetary motives, these people were not major political or landed players. In the context of the negotiations with England surrounding the visit of Henry’s ambassador Dr Magnus, which to a significant degree surrounded Angus’s restoration, the political will may have been lacking to pursue relatively uninfluential individuals.28 Finally, it is  Cameron, James V, p. 170.  Cameron, James V, p. 115-116. 28  NRS CS5/39 ff. 55r, 59r-70r, 126v. Patrick C. Hotle, Thorns and Thistles: diplomacy between Henry VIII and James V 1528-1542 (London, 1996), p. 41. 26 27

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possible that having made its point by issuing summons for treason and receiving an adequate show of contrition, that the regime was interested in reintegration rather than punishment. Whilst the details of the extra-parliamentary bargaining which helped the 1529 cases vanish from the record remains obscure, the negotiations behind the disappearance of Alasdair Mac Dhòmhnaill’s 1531 treason case, outwith but nonetheless framed by parliament, are much clearer. We saw in chapter 3 how the 1531 parliament was the culmination of a series of large scale conventions held in order to plan the voyage to the Isles against Mac Dhòmhnaill: it was originally planned for May but rearranged for April with the explicit brief of ensuring ‘the forfaltoure of the rebellis and traitouris of the Ilis’.29 Summons for these trials were duly issued in Inverness.30 This, then, was a departure from the statutory requirement to issue summons to a defendant to stand trial at her or his dwelling place, even when these were issued by ‘open proclamation’.31 The procedure bears comparison to a fifteenth-century example, when James III forfeited Eoin Mac Dhòmhnaill (John MacDonald), lord of the Isles—royal instructions explained MacDonald’s summons could be issued at either his castle of Dingwall or in Inverness. Claire Hawes has identified that regardless of the distance between the two places ‘symbolically…it was almost identical’ to have the summons issued in either and this reflects the fact that ‘the proclamation…was not likely to be the method by which a lord had first knowledge of the instigation of forfeiture proceedings against him’.32 Especially following the build up to the 1531 summons, statutory provision designed to ensure that the accused knew when and where to compear could, from a practical point of view, be dispensed with. The important point was making the summons legally binding and widely known. As we saw in chapter 3, plans for when the campaign and parliament would be held changed several times. This series of changing dates reversed the order in which events would occur—in November 1530, it was planned that the campaign would take place, after which parliament would meet; by January, it was decided that parliament would meet, followed by the campaign. Here, remembering that parliament could provide an in  NRS CS5/42 f. 35r.  NRS E21/24 f. 36r. 31  Balfour, Practicks, I, p. 305. 32  Claire Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority in later fifteenth-century Scotland’ (unpublished PhD, St Andrews, 2015), pp. 29-31. 29 30

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absentia conviction is crucial to understanding events. Had the regime wished to simply legitimise the campaign by saying it was directed against a convicted traitor, it could have summoned Mac Dhòmhnaill to a trial on as little as forty days’ notice, waited for him to fail to obey the summons, secured a demonstration of his disobedience, followed this with an in absentia conviction and proceeded with the military endeavour. The fact they did not strongly suggests that despite the efforts to raise the tax and the eventual purchase of two months’ worth of provisions for the voyage, the regime was anxious to avoid actually having to begin the campaign— the threat of a treason trial in parliament might have been intended to force compliance and avoid a campaign.33 Negotiations with the crown thus took place in a threatening dual framework of legal and military repercussions. Despite requiring a degree of brinksmanship, the strategy worked. By 25 March, Mac Dhòmhnaill had approached the King and he was offered a safe conduct: this expired four days before parliament was due to commence.34 When parliament met on 27 April, the negotiations must have advanced, although they were not yet concluded, since instead of attending to ‘the forfaltoure of the rebelis and traitouris of the Ilis’, the lords of the articles recommended that Mac Dhòmhnaill should be given another month to negotiate with the King.35 The new date of his trial, 26 May, fell five days before the ships were due to set sail.36 If negotiations broke down, this would be sufficient evidence of rebellion to secure an in absentia conviction. This timing meant that if the campaign went ahead it would do so against convicted traitors. Since negotiations revived, on 26 May, the trial was continued to 9 June. Important though this was for the politics of the reign, for our present purposes this series of events explains why Mac Dhòmhnaill’s still unresolved treason trial disappeared from parliament after 9 June and shows how the threat of a conviction for treason could form part of negotiations between James and disobedient subjects. His remission was agreed on 5 June and issued on 8 June.37 When parliamentary commissioners met as planned on 9 June and continued the trial until 21 June, they were presumably waiting for the paperwork to arrive which would allow them to  NRS E21/24 f. 44v-45v.  NRS CS5/42 f. 144v. 35  RPS, 1531/7. Accessed 19 June 2020. 36  RPS, 1531/7, /10. Accessed 19 June 2020. The continuation noted 24 May but parliament sat on 26 so this was probably a scribal error. 37  See chapter 3 pp. 99–105 for the reconciliation process. For the remission: RSS II, 938. 33 34

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drop the case—since four of the parliamentary commissioners had attended the convention of 5 June and council of 6 June they would have known from this that terms for submission had been agreed.38 The fact that parliament was being used to maintain the threat of a trial rather than actually to hold one may also explain James’s absence from parliament when it opened in April.39 If James knew that negotiations outwith parliament meant that no action would be taken in parliament and that, for the present, it simply served to keep the threat of forfeiture active, the need for him to attend was minimal. In this case, a summons for treason did not mean the regime sought to secure a conviction or even hold a trial, but, rather, the summons to trial was one part of a process designed to allow Mac Dhòmhnaill to make his peace with the King. Placed alongside Charteris’s case in 1528–9, we are beginning to see how parliament might be used alongside other lines of communication to resolve disputes between the regime and individuals. This emerges more clearly still in Sir Patrick Hepburn of Waughton’s case in 1536, even though there are significant gaps in the record: we have no treasurer’s accounts for the period, and Waughton’s misdemeanours were not discussed by the council. We are left with the parliamentary record of continuation of Waughton’s trial—unfortunately, this did not specify what exactly his treasonable actions entailed. Waughton had been convicted by an assise on 24 January 1536 ‘of certane crymes committit apon James Sinclare, bruder to the lard of Rosling’.40 This attack on the kin of Oliver Sinclair, one of James’s close courtiers, was not treasonable but did presumably arouse anger against Waughton. By 20 March, forty days before his trial, Waughton must have received a summons. Between the summons being issued and the trial, however, on 25 April 1536, Waughton was granted back the goods and lands which he had forfeited to the crown as a result of his January conviction. It is not clear what exactly Waughton’s treason comprised and it is also obscure how, if at all, it related to the criminal conviction in January. 41 38  NRS CS5/42 f.185r-v. RPS, 1531/13. Date accessed: 4 August 2021. The four were Adam Otterburn, Nichol Crawford, James Lawson and Francis Bothwell. 39  RPS, 1531/1-3. Date accessed: 27 August 2020. 40  RSS II, 2019. 41  It is worth dispelling any notions that the alleged treason was related to the activities of his kinsman Patrick Hepburn, third earl of Bothwell, who was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle in 1532 following his offers of assistance to the English the previous year. The exact nature of Waughton and Bothwell’s kinship is unclear (Edward Hepburn, Genealogical Notes

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Waughton’s procurators appeared before parliament on 29 April and agreed that he would compear on 22 May, to which date the trial was continued. However, there is no record that the 22 May meeting took place. By 1 May, some sort of agreement had been finalised which involved Waughton making a significant payment in return for the grant of his escheat goods which he received on 25 April.42 The payment amounted to £2666 and was paid on Waughton’s behalf by a group of four Edinburgh burgesses—presumably this constituted a loan to Waughton. The first instalment was received by 8 May and by 10 July £666 was paid to the Master of the King’s ships. The final £1000 was due to be paid to Hamilton of Finnart by Whitsunday 1537 to spend on repairing Blackness Castle.43 From Waughton’s perspective, it is easy enough to see why paying for the grant of his escheated goods was a more appealing option than facing treason proceedings in parliament. It seems likely that the payment for grant of Waughton’s escheated estate also purchased him immunity from treason charges. Probably, Waughton agreed in principle to make the payment for the gift of his escheat when this was granted to him on 25 April with the continued threat of his trial before parliament hanging over him. The delays to that trial must have been to allow Waughton time to secure the credit to make the payment, once he had succeeded and made a significant initial instalment the trial in parliament was dropped. Evidently, parliament was being used not to secure a conviction but, rather, to provide a threat which framed the broader negotiations between Waughton and the regime which, in turn, incorporated the lesser ‘crymis’ committed against a subject (albeit the brother of one of James’s most favoured courtiers) as well as the alleged treason. To these cases, it is likely we can add the action raised against John Ross of Craig. As we saw in chapter 2, on 25 February 1541, the lords of the of the Hepburn Family (privately printed, 1925), pp. 33-5; Balfour, Peerage II, p. 136), but regardless of the strength of their own blood ties, the two men were certainly bound more closely by Waughton’s marriage to Helen Hepburn, the daughter of Adam Hepburn of the Craggis—brother of the first earl of Bothwell, and thus the third earl of Bothwell’s first cousin once removed. In addition, Waughton and Bothwell had been associates for a number of years (ADCP, p. 301). However, in May 1535, Bothwell’s ward had been relaxed and he was allowed to travel to Inverness and enjoy the freedom of the town and a two-mile radius about it (NRS CS6/6 ff. 121v-122v). 1536 seems on this basis an implausible time to begin pursuing his associates. 42  NRS CS6/7 f. 187v-188v; ADCP, pp. 452-3. 43  NRS CS6/7 f. 188r; ADCP, p. 453.

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articles and council received a supplication from Ross, who had been accused by William Geddes of making treasonable contact with James Geddes, servant of Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus.44 Ross raised a counter action of leasing-making, using a law which had been updated in December 1540 when an article had been proposed on the subject of ‘lesing makerris to the kingis grace of his baronis, grett men and liegis, and for punisment to be put to thame tharefor’.45 This resulted in the repassing of previous legislation targeted against those who spread rumours about the King with an addition to encompass the punishment of those who spread rumours to the King about other subjects.46 We do not know who proposed this article, but its existence reveals that making false accusations to the King, including of treason, was a cause for concern at this juncture. Regardless, in practical terms, this led to Geddes’s conviction for leasing-making—he had falsely claimed to James that Ross was a traitor— and receiving the death sentence. This meant, by implication, that it would be unnecessary to Ross being tried for treason since the accusation had been proven false. Prudently, however, Ross wanted every ‘i’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed. Appearing in council personally, Ross ‘desirit my lord secretar to schwa his gracis mynd In that behalf’.47 Having heard the secretary ventriloquise James’s support for Ross, the ‘lordis of artiklis & of counisale’ duly requested that a declaration of Ross’s innocence should be issued under the great seal. As we have seen, the nature of the parliamentary register means that the exclusion of such a case would be compatible with the record’s purpose as a draft for the printed statutes and the note that some of the lords who heard this were of the ‘articles’ as well as of ‘council’ is highly suggestive.48 The whole case is also firm evidence for  Above pp. 43-4.  RPS, 1540/12/25. Date accessed: 5 September 2019. 46  For previous relevant legislation see: RPS, 1318/23, 1425/3/23, 1458/3/38. Date accessed: 5 September 2019. For leasing-making and censorship after our period see: A. J. Mann, The Scottish Book Trade 1500-1720 (East Linton, 2000), pp. 162-191; A. J. Mann, ‘A “Mongrel of Early Modern Copyright”: Scotland in European Perspective’, in Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently (eds), Privilege and property essays on the history of copyright (Cambridge 2010); A. J. Mann, ‘“Some property is theft”: Copyright law and illegal activity in early modern Scotland’ in Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote (eds), Against the law: crime, sharp practice and the control of print (London, 2004); A.  J. Mann, ‘Scottish copyright before the Statute of 1710’, Juridical Review 1  (2000), pp. 11-25. 47  NRS CS6/14 f. 201v. 48  Blakeway, ‘Reassessing’, passim. 44 45

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extra-institutional negotiation with the King facilitated by his professional administrators, and once again, we see how parliamentary activities can only be understood when contextualised as part of a broader spectrum of discussions. Cumulatively, these cases where a trial was begun in parliament but the regime did not opt to secure an in absentia conviction suggest similarities between treason cases and the settling of private disputes, where courts worked alongside and overlapped with arbiters to reach a satisfactory solution.49 A summons to attend trial in parliament was, rather than being a short-circuit route to a conviction and forfeiture, in these cases being used to provide a threatening framework in which negotiations for individuals to come to terms with the regime might take place. Examining the cases of Mac Dhòmhnaill and Waughton provides further evidence in support of Cameron’s contention that James’s regime was not simply launching an indiscriminately bloody campaign against anyone who offered resistance. Whilst individuals were required to show contrition, in these cases, the nuclear option of an in absentia conviction for treason was eschewed in favour of a lesser punishment. This might have caused resentment, but equally, once royal muscles had been flexed, the door was left open for reconciliation—albeit for a hefty price. It is likely that the parliaments of 1533 and 1538 were also summoned for judicial business, even though no records of their activities remain beyond notes of continuations and sederunts. In 1533, parliament was summoned on 13 June to meet on 28 July, giving a bare forty-five days’ notice, following ‘our soverane lordis writingis send to the clerk of registri’ being shown to the council.50 This was the shortest period of parliamentary summons for which we have evidence during the personal rule, suggesting that the ‘diuerse gret materis not anerly concerning our souerane lordis propir effaris bot also the universal wele of this realme’ were time urgent as well as important.51 Yet, on 28 July, there is no record of any activity in parliament other than a meeting of eighteen parliamentary commissioners who immediately continued the session until 11 August.52 This was the first of a series of continuations none of which mention

 Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland, pp. 432-6 especially.  NRS CS6/2 f. 184r. 51  NRS CS6/2 f. 184r. For payments for the precepts: NRS E21/26 f. 63v. 52  RPS, 1533/2. Date accessed: 13 June 2018. 49 50

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specific cases being heard, although from May 1534 onwards the continuations do mention ‘actions’ before parliament in general.53 Of the thirteen continued sessions of this parliament, held between July 1533 and December 1534, the one hint of further activity is given in the continuation on 28 August 1534, when the standard Latin note was accompanied by a vernacular statement that, acting with his council’s advice, James wanted parliament continued until 23 September, for which date he was ‘requiring and chargeing all prelatis, barounes, frehaldaris, commissioneris of burrowis and utheris that aucht presens in the said parliament to compere the said day to geif thar avise in the said parliament in the materis concerning the kingis grace and the commoune wele of the realm under the pane of law’.54 Whilst a forty days summons was not required to secure attendance at a continued session of parliament, the fact that such a vernacular note is unique in the records of the personal rule suggests that James and the council were anxious to secure good attendance and struggling to achieve this.55 However, when 23 September came, the extant record shows only the parliamentary officers (the deputies of the earl Marischal and the Constable alongside the sergeant and the dempster) joined by five commissioners, all of whom were regular attenders at council, who yet again simply continued business until December.56 Neither council sederunts nor the witnesses to the seals suggest that more men were present in Edinburgh than the parliamentary register reveals on each of these sessions—so it appears as though attendance was indeed very low.57 Given Tanner’s suggestion that non-attendance at parliament was a way of signalling opposition for fifteenth-century Scots, it is possible there was little appetite for any such trials.58 Equally, it is also possible that witnessing a trial was simply not an attractive enough option for busy people to set aside the time and money to journey to Edinburgh. Perhaps it is  RPS, 1533/1-28. Date accessed: 13 June 2018.  RPS, 1533/23. Date accessed: 13 June 2018. 55  No payments were made to messengers issuing new summons or precepts. 56  RPS, 1533/24-29. Accessed 18 August 2021. Continuations were made to 2 and 9 December, then to 26 January, when there is no record the meeting took place. 57  For the council and session sederunts on dates surrounding these continued sessions see: NRS CS6/5  ff. 111v-113v, 118r-120v, 158r,168r, 183r. Given the restrictions on attendance at legal sessions passed in the May 1532 parliament it is unlikely these judicial sessions would have been affected by parliamentary attendance, but combined with the lack of change to the seals witness lists (RMS/RSS) it is suggestive. 58  Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, p. 267. 53 54

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most likely that by the time parliament came it was already anticipated the case would simply be continued and so attendance was unnecessary. If so, we might further speculate that developments outwith parliament drove the change in plan. This last explanation is perhaps the most persuasive since one notable absentee was the monarch himself. Despite the fact that James selected the initial date for parliament to meet, and did so on short notice, when it came, James was nowhere near the capital—from 19 to 31 July 1533, he was in Perth, and on 11 August, he was in Falkland.59 Although in Edinburgh on 28 August 1534, James was hunting in Meggetland on 23 September, the date for which attendance at parliament had been mandated under special legal pains. Of the thirteen continued sessions of the 1533 parliament, in addition to the 28 August meeting, James was in the capital for 15 June 1534, 30 June and 3 July 1534. This cluster of dates coincides with the visit of two English ambassadors, who reported the gathering of a large crowd to witness James signing a copy of the Treaty of London.60 This meant that for most of these meetings, including the date which, at his suggestion, parliament opened, and the September 1534 meeting at which he demanded attendance, James was at some distance from Edinburgh undertaking activities which would have required significant preparation. This suggests James had chosen to be absent rather than becoming unwell or dealing with an unexpected crisis—this is in turn implies that he was already aware his presence would not be needed and so that he already anticipated parliament would simply be continued. Although no records of what parliament did survive, there are a number of activities which circumstantial evidence suggests we can rule out. We can be reasonably sure that parliament was not called to discuss the royal marriage—arrangements had been finalised for John lord Erskine, the earl of Moray and bishop of Aberdeen to travel abroad and negotiate on this by 27 July—the day before parliament was due to meet.61 Likewise, commissions to negotiate with the English were issued on 19 June, so the decision to come to terms with the English was already taken before

59  Andrea Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture at the court of James V’ (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1997), p. 404. 60  Hugh prior of Durham and Franklin to Henry VIII, 9 July 1534, BL Cotton Caligula MS B VIII f. 162r. 61  RSS II, 1732, 1733, 1739, 1740, 1745.

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parliament met—although this did not stop James gleefully accepting the captured English vessel the Mary Willoughby later that month.62 It is unlikely any laws were passed, since if any were it is probable they would have survived in the manuscript copy of James’s parliamentary records produced in 1541 in preparation for the printed edition of the statutes.63 No new taxes were granted at this time. Nevertheless, the pattern of multiple continuations, with some clustered close together and others spread out, is similar to that evident on occasions when parliament was used as a court and continuations were granted in order to secure attendance at a trial—James was also invariably absent on these occasions. We have seen this happen in 1529 and 1531 with Mac Dhòmhnaill, and later in this chapter, we will see the same pattern in the 1540–1 parliament. Certainly, when parliament was summoned in June 1533, the regime had treason on its mind—namely that of archbishop James Beaton, who had been imprisoned in April. Frustratingly little is known about the circumstances of his imprisonment. Whilst James always claimed the root of the problem with his archbishop was that Beaton had acted for his own self-interest to the detriment of the crown and engaged in treasonable correspondence with England, Beaton’s refusal to pay tax towards the college of justice has also traditionally been noted as a factor in the breakdown of relations with his monarch.64 As we have seen, in June 1532, the Church had successfully reduced the amount of tax they were due to pay and the crown’s difficulties in collecting the tax were not confined to the archbishop—indeed later chroniclers, such as Buchanan, named Gavin Dunbar, bishop of Aberdeen, as the main source of resistance, not Beaton.65 In this context, although the ongoing concerns about tax were very real, it seems something else must have been at play. Regardless of why it happened, imprisoning the primate was controversial. On 2 May, the University of St Andrews sent a lengthy missive to the council designed  LJV, p. 244-5; Cameron, James V, p. 235.  NRS PA2/8/III; Actis (1542). See also Blakeway, ‘Reassessing’, passim. Actis (1566) draws entirely on Actis (1542) for this session so cannot help us here. 64  LJV, pp. 239, 241-4; L&P IX, 538-9; John Herkless and R. K. Hannay, The Archbishops of St Andrews III (Edinburgh,  5 vols, 1907–1915), pp.  224-231; James K.  Cameron, ‘Beaton, James (c.1473–1539)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1824, accessed 19 Sept 2017]; Cameron, James V, pp. 134-6. 65  George Buchanan, History of Scotland, ed. Dana Sutton, http://www.philological. bham.ac.uk/scothist/14eng.html section 35. Since Dunbar died in March 1532 if this is accurate this must have referred to the period before this date. 62 63

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to support Beaton, to secure his release and explaining their conviction that in matters appertaining to the Kirk advice ought to be taken from ‘the clergy and universities of this realm’. In Beaton’s case, in particular, they averred that ‘this mater mon be ventilat befor the papis halynes’— they were rewarded with sight of the papal brief and a warning that should they act contrary to its contents the University could not allege ignorance of its existence.66 Just before parliament was summoned, James issued instructions to John Lauder to visit Rome in order to get the brief against Beaton executed. These also contained an excuse for James having arrested Beaton before the brief had arrived—namely, that Beaton had been corresponding with the captain of Berwick, and, given the proximity of St Andrews to Berwick by sea, he considered the archbishop to be a flight risk.67 It is worth pausing here to note that in the extant English correspondence from this period, there is no letter from or reference to communication with the archbishop, although the captain of Berwick had heard rumours both that Beaton was imprisoned because he refused to ‘len’ the King money and, furthermore, that Beaton ‘haith written letters out of the realme contrary to the kings mynde’.68 It seems plausible that had these letters been addressed to him or one of his colleagues, he would have said so. Regardless, when James wrote to the Pope setting out his actions he had also explained that the risk Beaton posed was so great that unless he was tried quickly James might have ‘to adopt measures prejudicial to the liberty of the church’. Clement’s response in October suspended any orders previously issued by himself or Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio (who was in England charged with overseeing the divorce proceedings between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, to whom Clement had also planned to assign Beaton’s trial) for Beaton’s release. Instead, Clement committed to appointing a nuncio to visit Scotland to hear the case.69 By February 1534, however, Beaton had shown sufficient contrition that, in view of the peace with England, James was willing to draw back from trying his archbishop.70 Does this help us explain the 1533 parliament? Possibly, although had James only wanted advice on Beaton’s imprisonment in 1533, it seems  NRS CS6/2 ff. 154r, 155r.  LJV, p. 244. 68  Lawson to Cromwell, 7 May 1533, TNA SP1/76 f. 21v. 69  LJV, p. 251. 70  LJV, p. 254. 66 67

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likely a convention would have been preferred to a parliament. Although no accomplices were mentioned in any of the comments on Beaton’s imprisonment, since James’s own remarks on the subject were addressed to the Pope and our other source is rumours circulating in Berwick-upon-­ Tweed or in the English court, it is possible that any secular or lower status accomplices would have escaped mention. On the other hand, the vernacular proclamation of continuation in August 1534 mentioned a desire for the counsel of the three estates, not that they were required to witness a forfeiture (and so by implication a trial), as had been specified in the 1531 summons in relation to Mac Dhòmhnaill.71 Whilst there is therefore no positive evidence to confirm judicial activity in the 1533 parliament, its pattern of meetings is closest to those summoned to deal with judicial business. On balance, it is most likely to have been summoned with the intention of hearing treason trials. The reasons for summoning the March 1538 parliament are similarly unclear since its records are very patchy. As we saw in chapter 5, it probably granted the tax to cover the cost of Marie de Guise’s voyage to Scotland; but beyond this, the fact the extant materials entirely comprise meetings of commissioners suggests a judicial rather than legislative agenda.72 Moreover, the statutes passed by the lords of the articles in possession of full parliamentary power in 1535 were proclaimed before parliament in 1540—this suggests that the intervening session of 1538 was not engaged in legislative business. Finally, this parliament first met as a group of commissioners who immediately continued their business for four months, reflecting the pattern in other parliaments associated with trials. Even so, presumably attending (or being seen to attend) brought some benefit, since Ayr spent £5 1s on the expenses of its commissioner for this session.73 A hint of further activity emerges in a session held by commissioners in July 1538, when Huntly protested that parliament clashed with an unnamed sheriff court which had been planned for the same time and

71  NRS CS6/2 f.184r; RPS, 1533/23. Date accessed: 13 June 2018; NRS CS5/42 f. 35r. In 1531, the remissions to Mac Dhòmhnaill and his accomplices were granted at the same time as their treason cases disappeared from parliament, potentially, therefore, a remission for assisting Hector McIntosh issued on 5 December might relate to a case initiated in but dropped from parliament, but this is far from certain: RSS II, 1593. 72  Chalmers, ‘The King’s Council’, p. 159, for earlier parliamentary commissioners hearing civil pleas. 73  G. S. Pryde (ed.), Ayr Burgh Accounts 1534-1624 (Edinburgh, 1937), p. 78.

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in the same location as parliament.74 Huntly was not listed amongst the commissioners who met on that occasion, so he may have been present in relation to the sheriff court—either way the administrative mix up suggests little business was planned for parliament. After a number of further continuations in February 1539 parliament was declared running ‘without ony contiuatioune’.75 A few months later, the running parliament became the setting for the trial of James Colville. As the only occasion when the accused appeared in person for a parliamentary trial during the personal rule, this requires particular attention, although like the trials we have already examined, parliament was used not to secure a conviction but instead was a moment in a longer process which stretched out beyond institutions and resulted in reconciliation with the regime. Even though parliament was running, Colville was being tried and so he still needed to be summoned with forty days’ notice and summons were duly issued on 30 May 1539.76 At the same time, payment was made for the distribution of ‘clois writings to cum to the parliament’.77 Since parliament had first been summoned in March 1538, no precepts needed to be issued for this continued session. One set was issued to those south of the forth, one to the inhabitants of Angus, the Mearns, Aberdeen and the North, and a third set to an unspecified area.78 Although the sederunt for the day of Colville’s trial recorded only parliamentary commissioners, including Moray, who James had appointed orally to act as Justiciar on his behalf (the monarch himself being absent), these orders to attend parliament suggest that a larger assembly was gathered.79 Evidently, an audience was required for this trial and parliament was considered to be the best way of providing this. Colville had been emboldened to appear following negotiations with the King: he arrived at parliament with letters which had been signed by James and copied into the council register providing him with a procurator, and after two of the charges against him were dropped, having declared his innocence, Colville entered into the King’s will for those which

 RPS, 1538/6. Date accessed: 27 August 2020.  RPS, 1538/11. Date accessed: 7 August 2018. 76  RPS, 1538/17. Date accessed: 7 August 2018; payment for these was only made shortly before the trial: NRS E21/36 f. 88v. 77  NRS E21/36 f. 88v. 78  NRS E21/36 f. 88v. 79  RPS, 1538/12. Date accessed: 13 April 2016. 74 75

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remained.80 Given that Colville or a close associate must have had contact with James to secure these letters, it seems likely the whole process had been prearranged. This, ‘trial’ then, was not so much an attempt to reach an adjudicative decision on guilt or innocence, as the following of due process once summons had been raised: following legal procedures to their conclusion in parliament allowed Colville to publicly demonstrate his contrition and obedience, upon which his re-integration into the polity was contingent, whilst publicising the fact he had received royal forgiveness. This level of pre-parliamentary discussion and preparation also meant James did not need to attend in person: he had got what he wanted and could trust parliament, overseen by his half-brother, to finalise the agreement he had already approved. However, securing an audience was still desirable: in hearing the accusations against Colville read aloud the assembled members of the three estates were also reminded of the limits of acceptable behaviour—Colville was eventually determined not have crossed these lines, but those who attended were reminded of where the boundaries lay. Parliament’s importance here was not exclusively as a place in which a particular legal procedure could be enacted—rather, it offered a space in which a performance could be made and witnessed in order to create a shared understanding of behaviour and who was included in or outwith the King’s peace.81 By August 1540, however, any temporary confidence Colville had gathered in his relations with James must have dissipated, since, faced with another accusation of treason, Colville fled across the border to England.82 He was dead by the December 1540 parliament. The 1540 parliament represented an important moment for the prosecution of treason during the personal rule. This extended beyond simply serving as a court where treason cases were tried, although it is with the three treason cases which were heard that we will start our discussion of this session. Two of these, against James Douglas of Parkheid and Robert Colville, the illegitimate son of the recently deceased former comptroller, provoked no controversy.83 Once it had been proved these men had been properly summoned, both, who had failed to compear, were forfeited in  RPS, 1538/14-17. Date accessed: 7 August 2018.  For parallel process in a fifteenth-century urban context see: Hawes, ‘Urban Community’, pp. 31-35 82  For the summons: NRS E21/38 f. 27r. 83  For Robert Colville: James Balfour Paul, The Scots Peerage II (Edinburgh, 8 vols, 1905), pp. 569-70. 80 81

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absentia.84 The third case, however, was more controversial: Robert Leslie of Inverpeffer, former keeper of the privy seal, was not merely absent, but dead. As parliament met, discontented voices ‘murmurit that it is ane noveltie to raise summondis and move sic ane actioune aganis ane persoune that is deid’, and in response to these malcontents, the King’s Advocate asked parliament to determine whether such action could be taken. ‘All in ane voce’, the three estates provided an obligingly clear answer that ‘the commoune law directly providis’ that the crown could pursue heirs for treason committed by their predecessors, ‘nochtwithstanding thare is na speciale law, acte nor provisioune of the realme maid tharupoune of before’.85 From this it seems unlikely the estates knew of a precedent of the trial of a dead man dating from 1320.86 Even so, disquiet must have remained since one of the first acts passed by the Governor Arran’s first parliament was to restrict the purview of the act to ‘the airis of thame that nochtourlie committis or sall committ crimes of leise maistie aganis the kingis persoune, aganis the realme for evertioune of the samin and aganis thaim that sall happin to betraise the kingis army alanerlie, it beand nochtourlie knawin in thare tyme’ and limit the crown’s right to raise summons to within five years of the decease of the alleged traitor.87 It is more probable that on this occasion the ‘commune law’ meant the learned ius commune (the system of Roman law) rather than the common (or local) law of Scotland. In particular, James’s officials probably had in mind provisions from Justinian’s codex, a collection of precedents from ancient law codes. One of Justinian’s source texts explained that ‘if any offence is alleged to have been committed against the Emperor as head of state (maiestas) customarily this charge is set in motion even after the death of the defendant’, another affirmed that ‘after the conviction of the deceased defendant his memory is condemned and his property seized from his successors’.88 Whilst now is not the time to enter into the ongoing scholarly debates surrounding the influence of the ius commune on  RPS, 1540/12/36-7.  RPS, 1540/12/8. Date accessed: 29 August 2018. 86  G.  Neilson and H.  Paton (eds), Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes vol II, 1496-1501 (Edinburgh, 1918), pp. lxi-lxii; Rab Houston, Punishing the dead? Suicide, lordship and community in Britain, 1500-1830 (Oxford, 2010), p. 238. 87  RPS, 1543/3/27. Date accessed: 19 August 2021. 88  Thomas A. J. McGinn (ed.), ‘The Ninth Book’ in Bruce W. Frier et al. (eds), The Codex of Justinian: a New Annotated Translation with Parallel Greek and Latin Texts III (Cambridge, 3 vols, 2016), p. 2293. I should like to thank Prof. Andrew Simpson for kindly correspond84 85

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Scottish legal thought in this period and its relative status as compared to local law, this implies that parliament accepted the ius commune could be used to fill in any blanks left between its own statutes.89 Further indirect evidence of the controversial nature of these claims can be found in the fact that an account of the forfeiture was inserted into one of the manuscript copies of Pitscottie’s ‘History’—since parliament was rarely commented upon in accounts of the personal rule by late-sixteenth-century writers, this speaks strongly of the case’s importance.90 Sadly, there is no contemporary evidence to support dramatic mid-twentieth-century claims that Leslie’s corpse was exhumed to attend the trial—whilst exhumation took place in 1320, the discussion of Leslie’s case in parliament made no mention of this practice, and the fact Colville fled to England shortly before his death means that securing his decaying corpse would have posed significant logistical challenges.91 Indeed, given that parliament could, as we have seen, try and convict in absentia, there seems no logical reason why this principle could not be extended to encompass a corpseless posthumous trial. ing with me on this subject and providing me with this reference. See also: Neilsen and Paton (eds), Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes, p. lxii. 89  Gero Dolezalek, Scotland under Jus Commune (Stair Society, 3 vols, 2010); Andrew R. C. Simpson, ‘The Scottish Common Law: Origins and Development, ca.1124-ca.1500’, in Heikki Pihlajamäki, Markus Dirk Dubber and Mark Godfrey (eds), The Oxford handbook of European legal history (Oxford, 2018), pp.  450-474; J.  D.  Ford, Law and Opinion in Scotland during the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 2007), particularly at pp. 29–59, 215–46; Gero Dolezalek, ‘The Court of Session as a Ius Commune Court—Witnessed by “Sinclair’s Practicks”, 1540–1549’ in Hector L. MacQueen (ed.), Stair Society Miscellany Four (Stair Society 2002),  pp. 51–84; Andrew Simpson, ‘Legislation and Authority in Early-Modern Scotland’ in Mark Godfrey (ed.), Law and Authority in British Legal History, 1200–1900 (Cambridge University Press 2016), pp. 85–119. 90  Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First to the ane thousande fyve hundreith thrie scoir fyftein zeir ... I Edited by Æ J. G. Mackay (Edinburgh, 3 vols, 1849), p. 382. 91  Kelley, ‘Douglas earls of Angus’, pp. 748, 751. No evidence is provided by this author in his footnotes and I have found none elsewhere. The root of this slip in understanding seems to have been Neilsen and Paton (eds), Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes, II, pp. lxi–lxii which suggests Leslie’s trial, like that of 1320, involved exhumation. This cites the parliamentary material and Robert Pitcairn (ed.), Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland vol. II (Edinburgh, 1833), p. 278 which contains only discussion of Leslie’s posthumous trial, not exhumation, and again cites only the parliamentary material. Indeed, on the previous page Pitcairn cites several later legal commentators who explain that exhumation was not necessary to proceed in a posthumous treason trial. On Colville’s case Neilsen and Paton cite only the parliamentary evidence.

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Despite this ringing endorsement of the crown’s right to forfeit traitors’ heirs and Pitscottie’s belief this had been done in Leslie’s case; no declaration of forfeiture was ever made against Leslie.92 This was apparently delayed by the failure of his wife and heirs to compear—the case was continued repeatedly in order to that his family might attend ‘for seeing and hearing the said late Robert [Leslie] discerned to have incurred the crime of lese-majesty while he lived by the three estates for certain treasonous actions committed by him’. The attendance of one of his sons, Andrew, was evidently insufficient.93 It is unclear whether this simply reflected ongoing caution following the original controversy, or whether procedure actually existed which prohibited issuing such a posthumous forfeiture without the presence of the heirs. The only other case of posthumous forfeiture during the personal rule was that of James Colville of Easter Wemyss, which appeared before parliament in March 1541. On this occasion, the earlier accusations that James Colville had provided financial aid to Angus were not revived—this claim apparently disappeared from the agenda by December 1540 when James’s son, Robert, was convicted of giving counsel and assistance to Angus and his supporters after they had entered England. For Colville senior, the charge was more specific still, of having failed to enter ward when ordered to in 1540 and thereafter having entered into new communication with the Douglases. It seems likely that on this occasion, Colville’s widow and two eldest surviving heirs were present to hear the doom read—certainly, after the heirs appeared on their own the case was continued for seven days after which they were joined by their father’s widow. The case was continued for a further five days, and although their attendance was not recorded when the forfeiture was issued, given their previous compearence, it seems highly likely they were present.94 Beyond parliamentary confirmation of the crown’s right to convict and forfeit dead traitors, the December 1540 session also provided the forum for James to issue a general remission for all treason which might have been committed during the times of his predecessors, his minority and his own rule up to that point. The one exception was contact with the Douglases after their forfeiture—in other words, contact with the 92  In Mary’s reign, it was only the summons of forfeiture which was reduced: RPS, 1543/3/46. Date accessed 20 August 2021. 93  RPS, 1540/12/117. Date accessed: 29 August 2018. 94  RPS, 1540/12/46-7, 50, 53. Date accessed: 29 August 2018.

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Douglases made, as Robert Leslie’s had been, after the December 1528 parliament.95 The general remission thus drew a distinction between those who had collaborated with the Douglas regime, and post-1528 contact, when they were convicted traitors resident in England and working for Henry VIII. Taking the remission and the declaration on the right to pursue traitors’ heirs together, we see that restrictions on the crown’s ability to raise an action in relation to the Douglases were offset by parliamentary confirmation of a controversial and rarely exercised crown power. Although the terms of the remission in fact offered a sweeping protection to those guilty of almost any offence committed prior to December 1540, the rhetoric of the act laid heavy emphasis on a contrast between magnatial behaviour during ‘the tyme of his [James’s] lese aige’ when ‘sic offencis and crimes of tresoune and utherwayis quhilk deservis grett and hie punisment’ were committed and ‘the gude and trew service done be thame to him sen his cuming to perfite age’.96 In rhetorical terms, the remission can therefore be situated alongside parliament’s ratification of James’s act of revocation, first issued during his visit to France. Although acts of revocation have been primarily associated with activities which took place during royal minorities, in fact, drawing on Roman law precedents, they provided for the reversal of harmful financial transactions undertaken by monarchs themselves or in their names prior to their twenty-fifth birthdays.97 We lack a record of the 1538 parliament’s activities, but since the 1540 confirmation of the revocation did not mention any previous confirmations, it seems unlikely anything had been attempted prior to this. This suggests 1538 was a tightly focused session and supports the case its business was largely judicial. Moreover, the fact that James could have ratified the revocation in the 1538 parliament, but chose not to, suggests something significant about December 1540. Potentially this was linked to Marie de Guise’s pregnancy and a need to secure lands as the royal family, and concomitantly expenditure, grew. In studies focused on cultural activities, the years surrounding 1540, including the reissue of the revocation, have been seen as part of a broader resurgence of royal power.98 Given the timing of Guise’s  RPS, 1540/12/35. Date accessed: 29 August 2018.  RPS, 1540/12/35. Date accessed: 29 August 2018. 97  Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland, pp. 84-8. 98  Roger Mason, ‘Renaissance Kingship?’ in Michael Brown and Roland Tanner (eds), Scottish Kingship, 1306-1542: essays in honour of Norman Macdougall (Edinburgh, 2008), pp. 255-278 at p. 273. 95 96

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coronation to coincide with her first pregnancy, it is possible that the December 1540 parliament was when Guise’s second pregnancy was announced.99 She gave birth on 12 April 1541 and the baby was therefore probably conceived in the first half of July, payments to messengers to summon parliament were made in late September and early October.100 It is therefore probable Guise knew she was pregnant when parliament was summoned. Certainly, the fact that an act mandating prayers to the Virgin Mary ordered James’s subjects to pray for the royal couple and ‘my lord prince James the sext’, the couple’s first child, was hardly a subtle statement of royal fecundity.101 What needs to be added to these dynastic and financial motivations, however, is an understanding that, placed alongside the remission, the revocation was also part of an attempt to draw a line not only under the minority but on the early years of the personal rule. The two acts achieved this through different means—the remission closed off the possibility of future legal action whilst the revocation opened the possibility of reversing or confirming transactions—but both signalled a shift. Alongside this sense of distancing current and future royal activities from the early years of the personal rule, this parliament was itself part of the broader assertion of royal authority. The ways in which it contributed to this in practical legal terms, including the declaration that the King had action against traitors’ heirs, were not only proclaimed but printed for posterity.102 Even though James did not need parliament to make novel religious statements along the lines of its English counterpart, it nevertheless served to enhance his authority as monarch through both its judicial and legislative work—and, crucially, how these were publicised after the assembly had risen. However, parliament was not simply the crown’s tool to assert royal authority: both the annexation of royal lands (even with the lessening of restrictions in March) and restrictions on the right to pursue for treason  Mason, ‘Renaissance Kingship’, p. 262.  NRS E21/38 f. 27r. The decision appeared in the council register on 9 October: NRS CS6/13 f. 212v; ADCP, p. 495. 101  RPS, 1540/12/56. Date accessed: 29 August 2018; NRS PA2/8/III f.168v. The deletion suggests that the copy was prepared very shortly after parliament finished since Prince James died in April 1541. It is possible this was inspired by similar provisions under James I (RPS, 1425/3/19). Certainly this earlier act was copied out in a manuscript linked to Robert Reid, although when the copy was made is unclear: BL Harley MS 2363 f. 27; John Stuart (ed.), Records of the Monastery of Kinloss (Edinburgh, 1872), p. lxviii. 102  Blakeway, ‘Reassessing the Scottish Parliamentary Record’, pp. 433-9. 99

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(leaving, of course, the most heinous crime of associating with the Douglases open to prosecution) reveal a process of tempering and compromise. Even beyond these parliamentary compromises, hints of anxiety suggest that this show of power did not mean that the crown had risen above criticism. We have seen how concerns for unspecified ‘murmurit’ rumours prompted the King’s Advocate to seek confirmation of the legality of pursuing traitors’ heirs in parliament. These same rumours may well have lurked behind the repassing of previous acts on leasing-makers with the additional clause ‘that gif ony maner of persoune makis ony ewill informatioune of his hienes to his baronis and liegis, that thai salbe punist in sic maner and be the samin panis as thai that makis lesingis to his grace of his lordis, baronis and liegis’.103 We might add to this James Foulis’s hugely performative gesture, acting as clerk register, requesting on James’s behalf (even though the monarch was present) that records of traitors tried by assise might be inserted into the parliamentary register, in order that they could thereafter be extracted alongside dooms given within parliament, and the seals of the three estates added to them. This was avowedly motivated by concerns that ‘memour of tratouris suld remane to the schame and sclander of thame that ar cumin of thame and to be terrour to all utheris to commit siclik in tymes cuming’, and concerns that records might be ‘tint’ or ‘worne away’.104 The first people to be reminded of these traitors, however, were those present in parliament, who, in turn, by applying their seals to the extracts were endorsing and ratifying not only the status of these documents as authentic copies but the contents of the acts themselves. Cameron’s reassessment of James forced us to abandon earlier claims that the last years of his life ‘were marked by indications of a growing dread, fear and animosity towards anyone whom he suspected of plotting against his life and who had contacts with his hated adversary, the earl of Angus’.105 Examining the 1540–1 parliament suggests that nonetheless serious critiques were circulating at this juncture and that these provoked sufficient anxiety amongst James and his officials for them to take action. It is a measure of parliament’s importance that it was through parliamentary declarations, the repassing and updating of legislation, and the appending of the seals of the estates to extracts, that the regime chose to address and counter such criticisms.  RPS, 1540/12/25. Date accessed: 29 August 2018.  RPS, 1540/12/27. Date accessed: 29 August 2018. 105  Kelley, ‘Douglas earls of Angus’, p. 748. 103 104

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Leslie’s case was not simply unusual because he was dead. The reference made to the common law was one of only three occasions when this was cited as a source of authority in parliament in the personal rule, the other two occurred in March 1541 when it was decreed that those who lost lawsuits ought to pay the winner’s expenses, ‘conforme to the commoune law and daly practik of the lordis of counsale’, and that forgers were to be punished ‘conforme to the commoune law and statutis of the realme’.106 Parliament declaring that the King had action against traitors’ heirs was also one of two occasions during the personal rule when it interpreted the laws—the other took place in 1535 when the lords of session asked the lords of the articles, sitting with full parliamentary power, to interpret laws relevant to an ongoing case.107 Circumstances in 1540 were substantially different, since it was the King’s Advocate who asked the question in response to rumours that the attempted trial of heirs for their father’s treason was ‘ane noveltie’ and the whole three estates, not just the lords of the articles, were consulted. Although unusual, these examples nonetheless point towards the importance of parliament as the source of statute laws, as arbiter of the meaning of statutes and, indeed, what constituted law outwith statutes. In the next part of this chapter, we will deal with parliament’s legislative functions.

Legislation Parliament’s ability to pass laws has assumed particular significance for historians in the context of debates surrounding its position amongst its alleged ‘rivals’. The idea that conventions of estates and even the council ‘rivalled’ parliament originated with Rait, emerging as part of his broader understanding that the Scottish parliament was weak.108 Both Irene O’Brien, working on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Goodare, focused on the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have strongly refuted the idea that either conventions of estates or council were ‘rivals’ to parliament, instead emphasising that each of these bodies was part of a shared political system. In so doing, both laid considerable emphasis upon parliament’s ability to pass binding legislation. By the end of the sixteenth  RPS, 1540/12/83, 71. Date accessed: 29 August 2018.  RPS, 1535/50. Date accessed: 29 August 2018. For comment on this: Godfrey, ‘Parliament and the Law’, pp. 168, 177. 108  Rait, Parliaments of Scotland, pp. 9-19. 106 107

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century, O’Brien and Goodare argued, whilst other bodies might pass temporary laws, for these to be permanent they needed to be approved by parliament.109 Although Athol Murray identified the lords of session passing acts of sederunt in 1595, these too were, eventually, the subject of parliamentary statute.110 Each of these scholars shared the same understanding of what the process of parliamentary legislation ought to have looked like: the lords of the articles first received articles which, once discussed in that committee, passed to the whole parliament for further discussion. On at least one occasion in the personal rule, the December 1540 session, it seems this process would have been expediated by the crown soliciting those due to attend parliament to send their articles in advance of parliament.111 After discussion in parliament, each article would be voted upon individually and, if approved, they became statute and were proclaimed as such—an essential final step since making the statutes known was a prerequisite to obtaining conformity. Whilst this clear exposition of the late sixteenth-century practice is compelling, the situation in the 1530s was not entirely settled—both in terms of the procedures followed to create a law in parliament and in the fact that emendations and additions to statutes were made by the council acting on its own authority. Parliament legislated on five occasions during the personal rule: in January 1529; in 1532, when it created the college of justice; in 1535; and in December 1540 and March 1541 as two sessions of the same parliament. Of these, only the 1535 and 1540–1 sessions saw any significant legislative activity, and only in 1532 and 1540–1 is there evidence that articles were presented by the lords of that committee to the whole assembly of parliament for voting and discussion. Moreover, when we compare the legislative activities in the parliamentary registers with copies of parliament’s activities produced for circulation, considerable disparities emerge. In 1532, for instance, parliament confirmed Church privileges and repassed acts designed to retain money in the realm alongside instituting the college of justice. The parliamentary register contains only a brief act authorising the college’s foundation, appointing the first group of judges 109  O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament’, pp. 149, 161-2, 167-9, 235-51; Julian Goodare, ‘The Scottish Parliament and its early modern “rivals”’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 24 (2004), pp. 147-172. 110  Athol Murray, ‘Sir John Skene and the Exchequer, 94-1612’, Stair Society Miscellany 1 (1971), pp. 125-155, at pp. 127-8. 111  Pryde (ed.), Ayr Burgh Accounts, p. 82.

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and noting that further provisions would be made in the future.112 In due course, these were recorded in the council register. This is worth noting because although modern scholarly editions of parliamentary records, including the RPS, eschew the council material, contemporary records of the college’s foundation blend material from parliament and council without clearly distinguishing between the two. Notably, we see this in the 1566 printed statutes which purported, self-evidently, to contain the acts of parliament. Here, the brief parliamentary provisions for the college were accompanied by material gleaned from the council register, with no mark of distinction between the two.113 This was not an innovation since a manuscript likely to date from the 1530s and purporting to comprise materials relating to the college’s foundation in parliament likewise blends parliamentary and conciliar matter.114 Since many of the extra-parliamentary statutes relating to the court of session were based on long-established practices, it is unlikely they would have proven controversial—this was not legislative innovation but rather existing practices being codified and then amalgamated into collections of statutes.115 Whilst Goodare has drawn attention to the ‘declaratory’ potential of statute to clarify existing provisions, in this instance, the fact the rules confirmed and codified rather than innovated may have facilitated their silent adoption as statute without actually going through parliamentary processes.116 Alternatively, the parliamentary provision for the future creation of ‘sic utherir rewlis and statutis as sall pleise the kingis grace to mak and geif to thaim for ordouring of the samin’ may have been deemed to have given the chancellor and other councillors who James then appointed to hammer out the details of the college’s organisation the status of fifteenth-century style parliamentary commissioners tasked with producing legislation on a particular topic.117 Having selected this group to make the statutes, James did not himself participate in discussions 112  For parliament and the college see: Mark Godfrey, ‘Control and the Constitutional Accountability of the College of Justice in Scotland, 1532-1626’, in I. Czeguhn, J. A. López Nevot and A. S. Aranda (eds), Control of Supreme Courts in Early Modern Europe (Berlin, 2018), pp. 123-9. 113  Actis (1566), pp. 113-117. 114  BL Harley MS 2363 ff. 18-22. 115  Godfrey, ‘Control and the Constitutional Accountability’, p. 138. 116  Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 75. 117  RPS, 1532/6. Dated accessed: 18 August 2018; Mann, ‘House Rules: Parliamentary Procedure’, pp. 140-1.

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although he did ratify them with a royal letter and his signature—this was hardly equivalent to parliamentary proclamation, although it is part of a broader pattern whereby he was absent from other meetings with detailed discussions. Indeed, the parallels with the movement from a large meeting to endorse a policy to a smaller group to refine the details, which we saw for both the management of warfare and discussion of taxation in this period in the foregoing chapters, are clear. Firmer evidence for what contemporaries thought had happened emerges from a petition raised by the senators of the college of justice to Governor Arran in 1546. In the context of the siege of St Andrews castle, Arran required taxation and the senators had been ordered to pay up.118 They, however, alleged that ‘thai are and hes bene free of all payments of all taxtis and contributionis…as in the actis maid thairupon is at mair lenth contenit, quhilkis ar and hes bene oft and divers tymes sensyne ratiffyt in parliament’ both by James V and Arran.119 This freedom from taxation had not appeared in the original brief parliamentary statutes for the college but, rather, was part of James’s royal letters confirming the statutes made outwith parliament which ‘exemit….every ane of thame baith spiritual and temporall fra all paying of tax’.120 Evidently, the ratification in parliament in 1540 and 1543 of ‘the institutioune of the said college of justice and actis maid for administratioune of justice therin’ incorporated all the ‘actis’ relating to the college, whatever status they had enjoyed before, into the parliamentary pantheon.121 Whilst provisions which originated in council could thus be amalgamated amongst parliamentary statutes, on the other hand, legislation passed in parliament could be omitted from circulated books of statutes. This happened to a set of laws passed in January 1529. During this continued session of the 1528 parliament, a group of parliamentary commissioners discussed procedures in justice ayres. Given the ayres held over the summer of 1528 and the plans to hold one at Perth in February 1529, this was

118  Elizabeth Ann Bonner, ‘The recovery of St Andrews Castle in 1547: French naval policy and diplomacy in the British Isles’, English Historical Review 111 (1996), pp.  578-98; Marcus Merriman, The Rough Wooings: Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542-1551 (East Linton, 2000), pp. 215-218. 119  RPC I, p. 56. 120  ADCP, p. 378. 121  RPS, 1540/12/64. Date accessed: 26 November 2019; RPS, 1543/3/37. Date accessed: 26 November 2019.

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a timely concern.122 The parliamentary register declared these suggestions regarding the ayres had been ‘statute and ordanit’.123 However, there is no evidence they underwent the normal procedure of being discussed by the lords of the articles, then presented to the whole parliament, and each voted upon. It is possible the men who drafted these were a specially appointed group cut from the same cloth as the fifteenth-century commissioners charged with a specific task: they sat ‘per specialem commissionem supremi domini nostri regis’, although the commission itself does not remain extant.124 It is clear this group was not a sitting of the lords of the articles—only two of the commissioners, the advocate and justice clerk, had been made lords of the articles when parliament met in September.125 The group was substantially different in make up to the twelve members of council who also sat on 22 January 1529, only Bothwell appeared on both sederunts, so it was not simply a multi-tasking council meeting.126 At this point, the council was heavily occupied in making provisions for the borders, prompted by the presence of an English ambassador—this was a busy time for central government. All this suggests the parliamentary commissioners were selected because they could be trusted to create appropriate provisions on the basis of specialist knowledge, that these rules were needed quickly, and that it was envisaged they would be promulgated by parliamentary not conciliar authority. However, there is no evidence that these pronouncements on the justice ayres circulated as legislation during the sixteenth century. Whilst the absence of these items from the 1542 edition of recent statutes can be explained by the fact only materials from 1535 and 1540–1 were included, they were also absent from the more extensive 1566 edition created by a group of commissioners tasked with reviewing all the laws. If this material did circulate independently, it was not sufficiently widespread to reach, for

 Blakeway, Regency, appendix 4.  RPS, 1528/9/55-7. Date accessed: 26 November 2019. 124  RPS, 1528/9/52. Date accessed: 26 November 2019; Mann, ‘House Rules: Par­ liamentary Procedure’, pp. 140-1; Roland Tanner, ‘The Lords of the Articles before 1540: a reassessment’, SHR 79 (2008), pp. 189-212 at pp. 190-5, 211. 125  RPS, 1528/9/3, 52. Date accessed: 26 November 2019. 126  NRS CS5/39 f.57r-v. The council sederunt was: archbishops of St Andrews  and Glasgow, bishop of Aberdeen; earls of Arran, Argyll, Bothwell, Eglinton; prior of St Andrews, abbots of Arbroath, Dunfermline, Melrose, Dryburgh. 122 123

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example, Balfour’s Practicks.127 We might draw a contrast with events in 1540 when the statutes passed in 1535 by the lords of the articles endowed with full parliamentary power but which had not been voted on by the whole sederunt were proclaimed amongst parliament’s opening business: the fact this did not happen to the 1529 statutes further suggests they were quickly disregarded.128 A potential hint that this re-­reading of the acts of a previous parliament was general practice might be found in the imaginary parliament of Lindsay’s Satire whose second act ordained the keeping of the acts of the last parliament.129 Despite the stout claim that the articles of 1529 had been ‘statute and ordanit’, their exclusion from sixteenth-century collections of the statutes points to a lack of circulation—although there is no evidence they were ever withdrawn. This raises the question of what authority these statutes were perceived to have, and whether a decision was actively taken to drop them or if they were simply forgotten. It also allows us to speculate—albeit inconclusively—whether they were intended to be temporary provisions for the forthcoming justice ayres, or if they did not work in a satisfactory manner during the ayres and this is why they were dropped without further mention. The process of revising statutes likewise suggests that on occasion the boundary defining ‘parliamentary’ statutes was a porous one. In 1525, parliament passed its first anti-Lutheran statute, this was revised twice over the next ten years. The earlier revision was made by the order of the chancellor and council in September 1527. This attribution was recorded in a marginal note, the handwriting of which matches that of the new sentence added to the end of the act extending its provisions for punishment to encompass any who assisted the holders of heretical opinions. Beyond the evidence of handwriting, we can securely identify exactly what was added since the new text connects only very awkwardly to the previous sentence. Cumulatively the two read ‘that this acte be publist and proclamit out throw this realme at all portis and burrowis of the samin sa that thai may allege na ignorance therof; and all uther the kingis liegis, assistaris to sic opunyeounes, be punist in semeible wise and the effecte of the said acte to strik apoune thai etc.’. The connection at ‘and’ is clunky and the clause 127  P. G. B. McNeill (ed.), The Practicks of Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich (Stair Society, 1962), pp. 565-574 contains materials on the ayres, these articles are not included. 128  RPS, 1535/4, 1540/12/9. Date accessed: 27 August 2020. 129  David Lindsay, ‘Ane Satire of the Three Estates’, in The Poetical Works ed. David Laing (Edinburgh, 1879), Ll. 3801-3808.

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surrounding publication offers a natural concluding point after which further text was added. The second addition is in the handwriting of James Foulis, this restricted the readership of heretical books, previously permitted to anyone seeking to refute their contents, to ‘clerkis in the sculis’.130 No date was given for the revision or a sense of where it originated, but since Foulis joined the council in 1530, and the act was revised again in 1535, it is likely the revision occurred between those dates, and probably after 1532, when Foulis was appointed clerk register. In May 1534, a special council session was held with representatives from the Blackfriars and the Dominicans to address the problem of heresy, which included a suggestion from James that ‘opinable materis’ should be discussed only ‘in the sculis’.131 Although no alterations to the act of parliament were noted in the minutes of this meeting, the idea that discussion surrounding controversial religious matters should be restricted to the universities was percolating through the regime at this juncture, potentially, this suggests the council was reviewing and may have altered the act at about this time. Whilst it is likely the council oversaw this revision, it is also just possible it was made in the 1532 parliament—as we saw in chapter 5 the financial situation surrounding the college of justice gave James’s regime a considerable incentive to be seen to denounce heresy, and one later commentator, John Leslie, did recall ‘sindrie actis’ in favour of the Kirk being passed in that parliament, even though none are extant in its records.132 The copy of the act made in 1535 silently amalgamated all these additions. They were joined by a further addition specifically restricting the circulation of heretical books and giving a forty-day amnesty period for these to be handed over to the authorities before incurring penalties.133 The 1527 addition was not the only occasion during the final four years of the minority when the council’s voice appears in the parliamentary register—in 1525, the council ordered that the existing parliamentary provisions for the King’s care would be maintained until the next parliament, and this, alongside a summons to that next gathering of the estates, was recorded in parliament’s register.134 Both are signs of a self-confident  NRS PA2/8/II f. 16r.  NRS CS6/4 f.131r; ADCP, pp. 422-3. 132  John Leslie, History of Scotland (Bannatyne Club 1830), p. 146. 133  NRS PA2/8/III f. 98r. 134  NRS PA2/8/I f. 23r. 130 131

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council with well accepted authority, and it is striking that the two confirmed conciliar interventions in the parliamentary register were both made during the highly unusual regime headed by Angus—sadly a proper discussion of this period is beyond the scope of this book. What matters in the context of the personal rule is that the 1527 conciliar emendations were accepted as legitimate and silently collapsed into the main text of the statute. Placed alongside the conflation of conciliar ordinances with parliamentary materials in accounts of the foundation of the college of justice, this suggests that whilst in theory parliamentary statute was becoming supreme and easily defined, in practice during the 1530s the council retained and very occasionally exercised an ability to add to and refine statutes without reference to the whole parliament. Equally, the fate of the 1529 statutes dropped from the parliamentary canon shows that not only was the process of creating statutes flexible but so too were the circumstances of their adoption. Even later in the century, the commissioners tasked with selecting statutes for publication in 1566 were explicitly authorised to ‘correct’ statutes—and on this basis, they excluded some laws, including those of 1529.135 Such statutes excluded from the printed edition were apparently repealed, since ‘na vthers’ laws but those approved by the commissioners were to circulate in the realm. This high responsibility was given on the basis of the Queen’s commission, only later  to be subject to parliamentary approval: delegated royal authority could unmake a law which parliament had created. We might draw a parallel here with the creation of groups of ‘lords of the council and of the articles’ outlined in Chapter 2. Whilst parliamentary statute may have been in the process of becoming supreme, parliament, like every governmental institution in this period, existed by royal authority, and that same authority was evidently sufficient to fill in gaps left by or to remove extraneous material from previous parliamentary provisions. We now turn to the sessions of 1535 and 1540–1 as the sole occasions during the personal rule when legislation occupied a considerable part of the parliamentary agenda. Thirty-nine general statutes were proclaimed in 1535, twenty-five in December 1540 (in addition to those passed in 1535 and reproclaimed) and a massive forty-two in March 1541.136 These 135  Actis (1566), p. ii. For discussion of this edition more broadly: Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 76-7, 82. 136  This figure excludes private acts, acts appertaining to the royal lands (effectively these were private acts for the crown) judicial business and statutes which provided for a one-off

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numbers of statutes far outstripped the ‘dozen or so’ which a medieval parliament might enact: serious legislative programmes were being undertaken.137 Goodare’s examination of post-1560 legislation shows how ongoing projects to codify the law exposed tensions between the ‘Old Laws’ and post-1424 statutes. He also suggested that one route to resolving this ‘would have been to argue that the role of statute was to declare pre-existing law’, drawing attention to the religious legislation of 1540–1 which conferred statutory authority upon existing religious practices, such as venerating the Virgin Mary.138 Indeed, parliament self-consciously and explicitly did just this on the three occasions when it cited the common law in combination with existing practice in the session, and we might draw a further parallel with the creation of the college of justice in 1532— the rules set out in both a brief parliamentary statute and outwith parliament effectively served to codify existing practices of the session.139 On the other hand, statute offered advantages over the old laws in its ready to use format, since statutes were ‘drafted to solve current problems not fourteenth century ones’.140 An examination of James V’s statutes allows us to extend this argument surrounding the ‘declaratory’ potential of statute law by recentring discussion on the significance of repassed laws to James V’s legislative programmes. Two-thirds, a third and half of the laws produced in 1535, 1540 and 1541, respectively, were in fact repassed or amended acts. Details of these repassed statutes are given in the tables in Appendix B. These figures were calculated including only statutes generally applicable to the whole population (so excluding private acts) and passed with the intention of having a degree of longevity, as opposed to responding to a one-off event. So, for example, a taxation or order for wappenschawings in relation to a particular ongoing war would be excluded, whilst general provisions for annual wappenschawings would be included. Evidently, each of the three legislating sessions of James’s parliaments had a different level of engagement with previous statute law and we shall explore this in more detail in due course. First, however, we will consider the sources of these acts and the range of ways in which parliament engaged with previous legislation. The event (for example a tax, or provincial council). For further discussion of this see the explanation at the start of Appendix B. 137  Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 72-3. 138  Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 75-6. 139  Godfrey, Civil Justice, p. 171. 140  Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 82.

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only other monarchs named in these statutes were the first four James’s, yet occasionally statutes hit on a theme which had also attracted attention in the reign of Robert III or David  II. For example, provisions for the availability of hostelries made in 1535 ordained that ‘the actis maid of before be King James the First and utheris oure soverane lordis predecessouris’ would be kept.141 In fact, parliament’s concern for innkeepers had its roots in the reign of David II.142 Reviewing the sources of statutes given in the tables in Appendix B suggests that earlier statutes found their way to James V’s parliaments via, for example, the parliaments of 1424 and 1425 which had repassed numerous earlier acts. It therefore seems highly likely that the copy of the statutes from which the lords of the articles were working did not encompass earlier materials. This might be explained by the fact that in 1426 James I made provisions for the copying of manuscripts of all acts passed between 1424 and 1426 both for circulation within Scotland and ‘the compilation of a parliamentary register’—materials from this session were accordingly more organised, plentiful and, presumably, familiar than those from earlier parliaments.143 This fifteenth-century order to circulate the recently passed statutes took place in the broader context of an assertion of royal authority similar to that evident in 1540: on both occasions, parliament extended its interest to royal income, as well as leasing-makers.144 It might also have informed the decision in 1541 to prepare a printed edition which encompassed James V’s recent statutes—those of 1535, 1540 and 1541. Indeed, the parliaments of 1424–6 may even have inspired the 1535 provision to delegate plenary power to a large committee and then send the whole sederunt home.145 Regardless, it is clear that many laws, both new and old, engaged with longstanding problems—the statute against the ‘new inventit craft and falsett’ surrounding the alienation of lands passed in 1540 was an outlier.146  RPS, 1535/32. Date accessed: 28 August 2020.   The earlier acts: RPS, 1357/11/18; 1424/23; 1426/14. Date accessed: 28 August 2020. 143  O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, pp. 4-8. 144  Michael Brown, ‘Public Authority and Factional Conflict: Crown, Parliament and Polity, 1424-1455’, in K.  M. Brown and R.  J. Tanner (eds), Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235-1560 (Edinburgh, 2004), pp. 123-145 at p. 128; Michael Brown, James I (Edinburgh, 2015 edn), pp. 45, 61, 66, 88; RPS, 1540/12/10, 67, 25. Date accessed: 23 August 2021. 145  Tanner, ‘Lords of the Articles’, pp. 191-4. 146  RPS, 1540/12/77. Date accessed: 1 December 2019. 141 142

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Hitherto, scholarly interest in the repassing, or, as parliament described it, the ‘ratificatioune’ of new acts has coalesced around whether the reissuing of a statute should be read as evidence of inefficacy or failure to implement it, or, alternatively, whether we should read this as evidence that a law remained ‘worthwhile’.147 The two explanations are not mutually exclusive, and ‘the truth clearly lies between the two extremes’.148 For Goodare, moreover, the idea that disobedience to a statute revealed it was somehow failing fundamentally misses the point—instead, he argues, statute law was generally ‘discretionary’—it was only ever designed to be enforced in certain necessary circumstances, and in this context repassing acts could be seen as part of a ‘crackdown’.149 We might think about this by observing that repassing laws also demonstrated, very clearly, that they had not fallen into desuetude and were de facto no longer in use.150 On some occasions, however, the laws were intended to be kept all the time and we see evidence of this in 1535 when the text of one of the statutes passed (in fact, repassed) by this parliament gives us a hint of the frustration felt by some lawmakers—‘it is unproffittable and inutile to mak lawis and statutis for polecy to be had without the sammyn be kepit’, grumbled the lords of the articles, before repassing a statute of James IV.151 Clearly, questions of efficacy and implementation surrounded the repassing of statutes. Nevertheless, there is another factor to consider. In many cases, the text of a repassed act might vary from that of its predecessors, frequently, as we saw with the December 1540 leasing-making statute, older law could be reinforced by a ‘new addicioune’.152 In these cases, legislators seemed to have considered that a statute was ‘worthwhile’ and that it was in its current form not fit for purpose—the principle behind it might stand, but the tools it gave officials to punish miscreants might need sharpening, or the definition of a misdemeanour might need clarifying or expanding. In other words, closer examination of what parliament was doing when it repassed a statute suggests that reviewing, refining and ratifying were 147   Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, p.  165; Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 119. 148  Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 119. 149  Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 120. 150  For desuetude in a later period: Ford, Law and Opinion, pp. 40-1, 54. 151  RPS, 1535/23. Date accessed: 1 December 2019. 152  A.  R. MacDonald, The Burghs and Parliament in Scotland, c.1550-1651 (Aldershot, 2007), p. 127 whilst discussing parliamentary private acts secured by Edinburgh notes the fact that repassed laws were often amended.

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significant components of legislative activity. Amending acts was an incremental and ongoing process which kept the law current and relevant, and this quotidian parliamentary practice provides an essential context for more sporadic attempts to codify the laws. We have already intimated that parliament intervened with the text of older statutes in a number of different ways, it is now helpful to outline this in detail with some examples. Some laws were heavily amended versions of older statutes—these fell somewhere between newly drafted statutes on the one hand and repassed, or ‘ratefit’, texts of older laws, on the other. Not infrequently, laws adapted not one but a series of older statutes, sometimes without any acknowledgement they were so doing. Indeed, the fact that often a single statute drew on a heritage of several previous acts suggests that an interest in engaging with older legislation was a longstanding parliamentary pursuit. Let us take attempts to keep money within the realm as an example. In May 1532, parliament decreed that ‘the actis maid herapoune of before be put to dew and scherp executioune in all punctis’ and appointed searchers to serve on the front line of these efforts.153 This was on the council’s agenda again in September 1532, when in response to ‘the article proponit tuichin the halding of the money within the realme’, the council ordered proclamations to be issued against the export of money, specifying that those who broke the acts would suffer the penalties specified in previous acts of parliament, in addition to which their moveable goods would be confiscated. Particular courts would be summoned to hear these cases on fifteen days’ notice.154 Further acts designed to stop coinage being removed from Scotland were passed by parliament in 1535 and 1540.155 In 1535, the ban on removing money from the realm was general and accompanied by setting up a commission on the coinage. In 1540, provisions were focused more tightly on the specific issue of prelates removing money from the realm. As the tables in Appendix B show, James’s various acts drew on a heritage of attempting to control money leaving the realm which dated back to the imposition of customs duties on monetary exports in 1370, whilst a specific concern for clerics exporting money had manifested itself in 1427—presumably in both 1427 and 1540, this was motivated by anxiety surrounding attempted

 RPS, 1532/7. Accessed 28 August 2020.  NRS CS6/1 f. 111r. 155  RPS, 1535/15; 1540/12/81. Accessed 28 August 2020. 153 154

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purchases of benefices at the papal court.156 Cumulatively, however, ‘the actis maid tharupoune of befor in oure soverane lordis tyme that now is, and be his maist noble progenitouris’ which the 1535 parliament wanted to see ‘putt to executioune in all punctis’ numbered nineteen in total and provided a range of restrictions, ranging from a specific focus on clerics, to the imposition of customs, to the appointment of searchers, to the imposition of fines and provisions to hold special justice ayres. Whilst tracing the individual genealogies of other acts and contextualising them might yield further discoveries, the point here is that reviewing and repassing acts was an established parliamentary practice, and that in so doing legislators were not simply capitalising upon authority drawn from antiquity, but actually silently shifting emphasis or extending provisions as they did so. Each tighter set of provisions was certainly a crackdown but in such cases, it is harder to conceptualise laws as ‘discretionary’—successive governments reiterated with some consistency that a practice was prohibited and refined the mechanisms to secure its implementation. Repassing an act with an amendment or addition often entailed the updating of the punishments specified. The question facing the lords of the articles in such cases was not whether or not a particular behaviour ought to be made illegal, but whether the current laws were a sufficient deterrent and what an appropriate punishment might be. The 1535 act entitled ‘The panis of the distroyaris of woddis and makis mureburn in forbodin tyme’ is a good example.157 Robert III’s parliament of 1401 had restricted the burning of moors to the month of March; this act was repassed (with no nod towards its predecessor) in 1424 with a more comprehensive set of provisions to deal with those who broke the act, and revisited again in 1458 and 1493.158 In 1425, meanwhile, fines were set for those who destroyed woods, and in 1458, it was prohibited to use new wood to make enclosures, but no penalties were specified.159 In 1504, the prohibitions against destroying woods and burning moors were brought together in a single act which increased fines, whilst explaining that all previous legislation remained in force.160 In 1535, fines were increased 156  James wrote to Rome frequently on the subject: LJV, pp.  332, 334-5, 345, 347, 348-9, 351. 157  RPS, 1535/17. Date accessed 18 August 2018.  158  RPS, 1401/2/15; 1424/22; 1458/3/39; A1493/5/19. Date accessed 18 August 2018. 159  RPS, 1425/3/11; 1458/3/31. Date accessed 18 August 2018. 160  RPS, 1504/3/33. Date accessed 18 August 2018.

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again and set on a sliding scale upwards for each offence, and provisions to punish those who could not pay were laid out. The very title of the act explains clearly to us what the lords of the articles thought they were doing—this was about the ‘panis’—the punishment of behaviours which had been established as criminal and an appropriate subject for legislation for over a century. This was also not the straightforward reading aloud the text of an act to repass or ratify it—the 1535 statute was the latest iteration of a complex process of reassessment and tweaking of old legislation to suit new purposes. In these cases, referring generally to ‘all the acts’ passed before imposed a false sense of coherence and consistency upon a picture which was in reality a mish-mash of slight variations. Indeed, when we look at the repassed acts from 1535 in Table B1 in Appendix B as a case study we see that of the twenty-seven repassed laws only six were left in their most recent form, a further three had small clarifications. Eighteen, however, were altered in such a way as to somehow encourage their implementation—these methods included increasing fine levels, clarifying responsibilities for various stages of its implementation, extending provisions to those who helped or hid individuals who contravened the act, setting particular diets for the crime and, crucially, placing additional responsibilities upon officials responsible for implementing the law. This latter point is particularly interesting and bears a specific example—when tightening up the laws on when merchants could sail, the lords of the articles increased the fine to £20, specified this would be split between the crown and the provost and bailies responsible for controlling the ports, and, finally, that ‘gif the provest or ballies of the saidis burrowis be negligent in the exercyng of thair offices and power gevin to thaim, thai salbe oblist to pay the said pane of xx lib. for every man that passis and salis incontrare the said acte at that port quhair thai have jurisdictioune to the kingis grace’.161 So, the deal offered to officials was to work with the King and get £10, or to fail to do what he asked, and be fined twice that amount. It is quite clear here that the statute both recognised a reality where officials enjoyed considerable agency to ignore statutory provision, and that James’s regime considered such discretion intolerable—as bad, at least in financial terms, as the original misdemeanour. Given the discretionary and negotiated reality of early modern government, we can helpfully see this as an effort to pressurise lower officials to play the part the crown wanted

 RPS, 1535/41. Date accessed 18 August 2018.

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them to perform in implementing the King’s laws.162 In the vast majority of cases repassed statutes were altered and, in turn, the vast majority of such altered statutes were changed in a manner which suggests that they were not currently doing the job for which they had been designed. Both this general pattern and the emphasis in particular statutes on forcing officials to comply suggests we need to move still further away from the question of ‘failure’ versus ‘worthwhile’ as a model for understanding repassing laws. Repassing these laws was about relevancy (for instance, increasing fines to take account of inflation) and at the same time an attempt to encourage greater conformity with central government’s demands and activities on the part of its officials which we might even characterise as state formation. Just as the levels of intervention in older laws varied, so too did the extent to which parliament acknowledged what it was doing. In some cases, it is hard to tell from the text alone whether a statute was an adaption of an earlier law or whether the same obvious solution presented itself to two groups of similarly trained men. Take, for example, the 1541 statute addressing the packing and peeling of wool, hides and skins which were being stored outside free burghs.163 This was framed in quite general terms: any place outside a free burgh was not appropriate as a location for trade, and no rationale for the statute was given. However, it is perfectly possible that this was an adaption of a more specific statute of 1504—this had banned the storing of these products outside free burghs, naming Leith in particular, and explained that the ban arose from a concern to ensure all the royal customs were collected.164 Was the 1540 law a simplification and expansion of that of 1504? Did the lords of the articles have the 1504 law in mind as they turned their minds to the problem in 1540, or did they simply offer the same solution as their predecessors? This difficulty in discerning between particular acts granted to a burgh and general statutes applicable to all burghs emerges on other occasions when James’s parliaments sought to protect existing burgh privilege by means of statute. In 1535 an enigmatic pair of acts first ‘ratifiis and apprevis the actis maid of befor grauntit to merchandis within burgh’ before reiterating that neither nobles nor others should attempt to ‘molest, truble nor inquiet’ 162  For an introduction to this in a Scottish context see: Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 173-220. 163  RPS, 1540/12/80. Date accessed 18 August 2018. 164  RPS, A1504/3/134. Date accessed 18 August 2018.

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burghs in exercise of their aforementioned privileges.165 Yet frustratingly it is unclear which statutes exactly either act had in mind—and whether this extended to grants to individual communities, such as the privileges granted to Stirling in 1327.166 Evidently, knowledge of previous statutes beyond the text of a particular law was required to interpret such provisions. Even when the act was a more straightforward ratification, knowledge of the previous statutes might be required to fully comprehend the provisions of the repassed or amended statute. Here the example of the prohibition against slaying salmon ‘in the forbidden time’ is highly instructive. Of Scotland’s three fisheries, the salmon trade was most profitable to the crown—accordingly, it is unsurprising that the catching of this tasty morsel was highly controlled.167 When parliament turned its attention to this provision in 1535, it followed in the footsteps of no fewer than eight assemblies, the earliest of which was in 1318 (which itself mentioned an ‘ancient penalty’), who had tried to control fishing—yet only the provisions of 1425 specified when the ‘forbidden time’ actually was—namely, between the feasts of the Assumption, 15 August, and St Andrew, 30 November.168 So all the acts prior to 1425 relied upon either local or customary knowledge, and the 1535 act in turn relied either upon this or on a pre-existing awareness of the provisions of the 1425 statute. On other occasions, statute served to enforce rules which existed outside parliament—knowledge of these rules was therefore required to comprehend the statute. Take, for example, the provisions against forestalling of markets made in both 1535 and 1540.169 Forestalling was the crime of selling goods outside the designated market times and places, yet on neither occasion did the statute explain when or where, exactly, markets were held. Presumably in this instance, the statute’s omission was deliberate and was intended to offer helpful local flexibility—it could be used to give teeth to provisions made at a burgh council level and showed support for burgh councils in their efforts. Yet, in both the case of salmon fishing and

 RPS, 1535/40, 45. Date accessed 18 August 2018.  Some possibilities include: RPS, 1357/11/15, 1467/1/1. Date accessed 18 August 2018. For Stirling: RPS, 1327/4/1. 167  Isabel Guy, ‘The Scottish Export Trade, 1460-1599’ in T. C. Smout (ed.), Scotland and Europe 1200-1850 (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 62-81 at p. 65. 168  RPS, 1318/13; 1401/2/11; 1424/10; 1425/3/13; 1430/27; 1450/1/2; 1458/3/34-5; 1490/2/21, 1535/25. Date accessed 18 August 2018. 169  RPS, 1535/35, 1540/12/86. Date accessed 18 August 2018. 165 166

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forestalling, the statutes were not meant to stand alone: they could only be understood and used as part of a broader corpus of laws and regulations. Having outlined the different ways in which a fourteenth- or fifteenth-­ century statute might find itself decked out to meet the needs of the early sixteenth century, we shall now turn to consider each of the three major legislating sessions in greater detail. The parliament of 1535 not only had the highest proportion of repassed acts, but, as a comparison of the tables in Appendix B shows, of all three sessions, it was most likely to acknowledge the reign, although never the parliament, which provided the source legislation from which it drew. Parliament delegated its power to the lords of the articles to act for the whole assembly on the grounds that ‘thair is mony actis, statutis and constitutionis to be maid for gude reule, justice and police to be had within this realme and amang all oure soverane lordis liegis, bayth spirituale and temporall, quhilkis can nocht be haistely done, and it ware bayth tedious and sumptuouse to the haile estatis to byde and remane tharupoune’.170 Whatever they concluded would ‘have the samyn forme, strenthe and effecte as the samin ware maid and statute be all the thre estatis beand personaly present’ although it would be proclaimed before the King at a time and place of his choosing. The lords of the articles were not simply drafting legislation or considering articles which the whole body of parliament would shortly vote upon: they had sufficient power to bring the whole process to completion. In constitutional terms, this was highly unusual, and the most recent parallels of a large committee with power to finally determine acts were those of 1424–6.171 Although there was no clear commission to review the existing statutes issued to the lords of the articles in 1535, the combination of a high proportion of repassed acts and the scrupulous identification of their sources suggests that on this occasion the lords of the articles were quite self-­ consciously working through and revising old statutes rendering them fit for purpose. Indeed, the significant portion of statutes which were either repassed or revised suggests that we need to expand our understanding of the committee of the articles beyond being solely concerned with new laws. In fact a significant portion of its workload was selecting old laws to promulgate afresh, and we also should not forget the foreign policy advice proffered by the ‘lords of articles and council’ on 10 June 1535 which we discussed in chapter 2. In 1535, the evidently time consuming and  RPS, 1535/4. Date accessed: 28 June 2017.  Tanner, ‘The Lords of the Articles before 1540’, pp. 192-4.

170 171

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thorough review of previous statutes may explain why the delegation of plenary power to the lords of the articles was apparently entirely uncontested. It also explains the eclectic mix of topics addressed, ranging from fishing, to adequate provisions for travellers at inns, to controlling beggars. A series of repassed acts relating to wild animals and woodland was echoed by new legislation geared towards clarifying who held offices of forestry and the responsibilities which accompanied this.172 Similarly, a new act restricting overseas trade was passed following the repassing of two earlier statutes on the same topic.173 In both cases, it is tempting to see a review of materials on a particular topic working in conjunction with a new statute drafted to enhance or update previous provisions. Concerns surrounding royal finances were tackled from a number of angles including a statute designed to encourage attendance at exchequer and prompt payment of accounts—which would be permanent—a one-off taxation, and provisions to summon a provincial council which, as we saw in the previous chapter, discussed church contributions to crown finances.174 The lords of the articles likewise focused on Scotland’s military capacity, drafting an article providing for wappenschawings to be held, another focused on obtaining artillery, a third strengthening the borders and a fourth restricting cross-border horse trade. 175 It is worth pausing over these since none of them made the transition to statute. As we have seen, the statutes passed in 1535 were read aloud at the start of the 1540 session. In preparation for this activity items selected to be read aloud were marked ‘pronuncitur’—published or made public—or with the abbreviation ‘p’. The article on wappenschawings was not marked ‘pronuncitur’— although this may have been an error, the fact it was absent from the copy of these statutes prepared in 1541 and the printed Actis of 1542 suggests it was not. This decision not to proceed with a statute is surprising since over the coming years the crown did seek to ensure wappenschawings were held—in February 1539, for instance, James wrote to Aberdeen burgh council ordering them to arrange these.176 Since this fell outside the traditional June and October schedule mooted in the 1535 parliament  RPS, 1535/17, 18, 19, 22. Date accessed: 28 June 2017.  RPS, 1535/41-3. Date accessed: 28 June 2017. 174  RPS, 1535/36, 14, 12. Date accessed: 28 August 2020. 175  NRS PA2/8/II ff. 102r-104r. I have discussed these annotations in the context of the manuscript more broadly in ‘Reassessing the Scottish Parliamentary Record’, p. 423. 176  ACA CA1.1.16 f.164; Aberd. Recs. I,  pp. 154-5 gives 1538  in error for 1539: See p. 143 n. 15 for the recurrent problems with old and new style dating in this edition. 172 173

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perhaps the article had not become statute due to disagreement on appropriate timing and frequency, or perhaps it was simply reckoned that ad hoc royal letters would be a more effective motivation to action. The two acts for the acquisition of hackbutts are both marked ‘refertur Regi’, a phrase which is scored through, and next to this is written ‘pronuncitur’. The act for improving defensive buildings on the borders is marked ‘consuletor Rex refer to King’, this too is scored through and also marked ‘no’. Cumulatively, the annotations suggest that this group of articles were referred to James by the lords of the articles, following which several were not considered suitable to make the transition to statute. Consulting the 1542 edition of the statutes confirms this suggestion. The record it provided of the 1535 session omitted the act on wappenschawings and the order to build strengths on the borders. The two acts on hackbutts were likewise omitted from the 1542 record of the 1535 parliament, although they appeared in the March 1541 session—the marginal note ‘pronuncitur’ must date from this time. Meanwhile, the act restricting the purchase of English horses and encouraging the stocking of Scottish stud farms did make the editorial cut in 1542, so must have been passed. However, only part of the original article became statute: the draft is partially scored through to remove the explicitly anti-English rationale.177 Stepping away from the details of this clutch of acts, the fact that only some articles were noted as having been referred to James—and that those that did all concerned preparations for war—strongly suggests that the others were not, and that he was absent from the room when the articles were being discussed. Whilst the details of the consultation which must have taken place between monarch and committee remain obscure, it seems plausible that a system of communication parallel to that which operated effectively between monarch and council—via written correspondence, often through the clerk register—was adopted in this instance. In December 1540, by contrast, the session with a much lower proportion of repassed laws, legislation fell largely into two areas: the first was clarification of legal procedures, the second concerned military preparations. Although few of these laws were repassed, a number of the new statutes engaged with and in some cases tidied up provisions surrounding topics covered in previous legislation. For example, a number of changes 177  NRS PA2/8/II f. 104r; Actis (1542), 6v. This was noted by William Robertson (ed.), The Parliamentary Records of Scotland in the General Register House 1240-1571 (Edinburgh, 1804), p. 599; also in RPS, 1535/33. Accessed 2 September 2021.

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were made with the apparent intention of raising judicial standards: sheriffs were to ensure their deputies made oaths to fulfil their offices correctly on an annual basis and have signets made to prevent fraud, meanwhile the process to summon individuals in civil actions was clarified.178 In this context, we see a very rare example of previous statutes being not built upon but explicitly rejected—sheriff courts were to be summoned henceforth on fifteen days’ notice, ‘notwithstanding ony said lawis or constitutionis maid tharupoune of befor’.179 It is possible that such changes were made as a result of consultation with the sheriffs—or, alternatively, that the novelty fed into grumbling which needed to be quieted—since an article submitted by the hereditary sheriffs noting concern that they were ‘gritumlie hurt be geving of commissionis to utheris officiaris in caises pertenand to thare offices’ resulted in a statute designed to protect their jurisdiction.180 This sits alongside the acts passed in relation to the built environment of Edinburgh which we discussed in chapter 4 as one of the very few occasions during the personal rule when the origin of an article was clearly specified, as such, this small group of statutes afford us a rare insight into the interactions within one of James’s assemblies. The same concern for clarity in procedure (which would in due course have closed the door to future complaints) emerges in an act which lent royal authority to a revised process for issuing letters of cursing.181 Beyond these two areas, of clarifying legal procedure and military provisions, the remaining legislation, including the repassing of the leasing-making statute, the annexation, remission and revocation were concerned with, as we have seen, asserting royal authority including by securing the royal patrimony which cumulatively marked this out as a moment of change within the personal rule. The quantity of new acts in this session and their coalescence around two clear areas of interest suggests parliament was on this occasion summoned in part to deal with specific concerns surrounding legal procedures which had arisen within the regime. The idea of a legislative programme designed to tighten and clarify activities in a specific area was far from novel—the 1504 parliament, for instance, was ‘a serious attempt to reappraise the whole arena of civil and criminal law’.182 Nevertheless, it marks  RPS, 1540/12/15-17. Date accessed: 6 September 2019.   RPS, 1540/12/14. Date accessed: 6 September 2019. 180  RPS, 1540/12/24. Date accessed: 6 September 2019. 181  RPS, 1540/12/11, Date accessed: 6 September 2019. 182  L. J. Mcfarlane, William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland 1431-1514: the struggle for order (Aberdeen, 1984), p. 423. 178 179

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a stark point of contrast with the general review approach in 1535 when it was only deemed necessary for the new statutes to be ‘pronuncit in presens of the kingis grace quhat day and place sall pleise his grace’, omitting the need for further parliamentary discussion.183 This may have provoked disquiet since in the end James chose to have the new and repassed statutes alike from 1535 pronounced before the December 1540 parliament ‘swa that the samin may be kepit in tyme tocum as law in this realme, with auctorite of the hale body of parliament’.184 This choice to proclaim statutes which had been in force for five years in a full parliament in 1540 also draws attention to the necessity of ensuring that statutes were common knowledge and the importance of something being known to its ability to command obedience and claims to legitimacy—and, indeed, that of the body which created it—alike.185 Whilst the care and attention given to reviewing and amending old laws in 1535 is amply clear, there is no extant instruction enjoining the lords of the articles to review and repass old acts. By contrast, in March 1541, we have firm evidence that the lords of the articles deliberately engaged in a specific review process. On this occasion, the lords of the articles explained that they had ‘sene ovir agane’ the statutes made during James’s minority, selecting a number to be ‘ratefeit and apprevit’. The lords further clarified that the process of ratification did not imply that the acts were somehow previously invalid, confirming that ‘the strenthe and effecte of thame to have bene sene the first constitutioune’.186 It is unclear who decided that the lords of the articles ought to review these particular statutes, especially in view of the fact that some statutes from the minority had been repassed in 1535.187 It also raises questions about whether reviewing the statutes was a standard part of the preparations for parliament or an ad hoc venture undertaken in response to articles submitted to the committee. It was not simply acts made during James’s minority which attracted the attention of the lords of the articles in 1541. As we have seen, two of the articles relating to the provision of hackbuts and artillery originally drafted in 1535 finally found their way into the statute book. Relations  RPS, 1535/4, Date accessed: 6 September 2019.  RPS, 1540/12/9, Date accessed: 6 September 2019. 185  For the creation of ‘common knowledge’ in an earlier period: Hawes, ‘Community and Public Authority’, p. 139. 186  RPS, 1540/12/91. Date accessed: 10 August 2018. 187  See Appendix B Tables Bi–Biii. 183 184

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with England were not notably worse in March 1541 than they had been in June 1535 so it seems unlikely that a straightforward fear of imminent military activity prompted this. Instead, the experience of the difficulties some communities faced in supplying the King during the 1540 voyage to the Isles might have prompted this tightening up of provisions to prepare for warfare.188 The first of two acts surrounding the acquisition of artillery ordered both landed men and burgh communities to purchase artillery, and included the provision, discussed in the previous chapter, that burghs who failed to comply would be taxed (or, fined) from their common goods. Yet, the ability to fulfil the provisions of this act rested upon successful implementation of another piece of legislation, which specifically required merchants travelling overseas to bring home either guns, the powder required to fire them, or the equipment and materials necessary for their manufacture.189 The military concern behind these acts leaves them as outliers in the context of March 1541; they perhaps fit more neatly with the December 1540 agenda. However, the intervention in mercantile activities abroad also allows us to place them amongst the significant clutch of acts both repassed and newly drafted which dealt with trade-related matters ranging from prevention of forestalling to controlling the prices charged by craftsmen. Attractive though it might be to read the order that merchants ought to bring home metal and powder as quid pro quo for the other trade-related acts, we know very little about where the initiative for these came from and the oppositional crown/burgh community model implied in such a suggestion is not necessarily helpful. Nevertheless, we are on safe ground to draw a broad contrast between the trade-related concerns so prominent in the March 1541 parliament and the military and legal concerns dealt with in December 1540. March 1541 was also the sole occasion in the personal rule when parliament seriously engaged with religious anxieties. Wormald accorded this small clutch of acts especial significance in her claim that parliament’s ability to deal with heresy was its major purpose during James’s personal rule.190 The idea that the passing of religious legislation secured or enhanced parliamentary standing drew on a large body of scholarship on the English parliament of the 1530s which emphasised its importance to securing Henry VIII’s reformation settlement and an awareness of the  See p. 216.  RPS, 1540/12/65-66. 28 August 2020. 190  Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community, pp. 21-2, 98-100. 188 189

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importance of the mutual enhancement of legitimacy provided by the concept of ‘king in parliament’. This concept fostered a belief that monarch and parliament could find each other’s authority mutually enhancing grounded in a systematic understanding of law which privileged English common law over all other systems.191 In Scotland, however, the case that the threat of religious reform bolstered parliamentary authority in the 1530s is not so compelling. Significant though parliament’s interventions in favour of orthodoxy were, these were such a small portion of parliamentary business that they cannot be described as a major factor in explaining parliament’s importance in early sixteenth-century Scotland. Every programme of legislation in James’s personal rule opened with a traditional act affirming the privileges of the Church. The fact there is no record of such a pronouncement in 1528, 1531, 1533 and 1538 may indicate this was not a general parliamentary practice but specifically confined to programmes of legislation, although the records of the 1533 and 1538 sessions are admittedly very poor. In 1532, this was extended into a lengthy royal speech, and we have seen it is possible that the 1525 anti-­ Lutheran act was amended at this time.192 Beyond this, as we saw in chapter 2, further discussion of heresy may have taken place in a convention held shortly after parliament. The fact a copy of the 1532 act surrounding Church privileges was extracted for the papal legate the following month confirms that James’s speech, delivered at the same time as his apparent enthusiasm for committing to a crusade, was part of a broader demonstration of loyalty to the Church at the time the college of justice was endowed.193 As we have seen in 1535, the 1525 act against Lutheran books passed ten years earlier was revised and reissued, as was another earlier act reiterating the penalties facing those who were cursed.194 Beyond this, in 1535, the parliament had approved an article which laid out plans to ensure that a provincial council could be held the following March, even if the

191  S.  E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament 1529-1536 (Cambridge, 1970); John Guy, ‘Thomas More and Christopher St Germain’ in John Guy and Alistair Fox, Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500-1550 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 95-120 at pp.  101-3; John Guy ‘Thomas Cromwell and the Intellectual Origins of the Henrician Revolution’ in Fox and Guy, Reassessing the Henrician Age, pp. 151-178 at p. 169. 192  RPS, 1532/5. Date accessed: 28 August 2020. See pp. 63-4 above. 193  NRS CS6/1 f. 24v; Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland, pp. 129-31. 194  RPS, 1535/10-11. Date accessed: 28 August 2020.

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archbishop of St Andrews refused to cooperate.195 This was, on view of the extant parliamentary records, an innovation—it seems highly likely that this novel intervention was prompted by fear of Beaton’s refusal to comply. However, the fact that the archbishop of Glasgow’s protest concerned only the privileges of his own archdiocese against that of St Andrews suggests he did not consider this to be a dangerous encroachment by parliament into the spiritual sphere.196 Although the records of the March 1536 provincial council are far from perfect, the fact that so little religious legislation was produced in the 1535 parliament suggests that in the first instance, the Scots had sought to address religious concerns via a Church council rather than the three estates.197 It is therefore unsurprising that in January 1540 when Thomas Bellenden was asked by English officials about James’s openness to embrace reform, he could only provide evidence drawn from the performance of a play. Walker has argued that Bellenden’s decision to discuss the Interlude when asked about religious reform powerfully demonstrates the centrality of drama to political life.198 In James’s educated and vibrant court, this was certainly the case. However, the fact remains that in the opening months of 1540, there was no hint of any parliamentary activity, either for or against reform: until very late in the personal rule, parliament was simply not being deployed as a major weapon against heresy. Indeed, since it could hardly have come as a surprise to Bellenden that English officials would ask about the religious predilections of James and his court, we can perhaps see his lengthy account of Lindsay’s imaginary gathering of the three estates as a deliberate attempt to hold out to English observers some hope for activity in the real thing. The 1540–1 session of parliament was thus the only one of the personal rule which passed new religious legislation.199 Even so, it is notable that two of these anti-heresy acts happily combined a concern to protect the Church with an assertion of royal power entirely consonant with the December 1540 session. The traditional affirmation of Church rights was  RPS, 1535/12. Date accessed: 28 August 2020.  RPS, 1535/13. Date accessed: 7 April 2021. 197  For summons to the council: David Patrick (ed.), Statutes of the Scottish Church (Edinburgh, 1907), pp. 38-42; Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland, p. 128. 198  Walker, Politics of Performance, p. 127. 199  RPS, 1540/12/55-7; 62, 63. Date accessed: 28 August 2020. Provisions for catching heretics were tightened up: RPS, 1540/12/60-1. Date accessed: 28 August 2020. See Appendix B for the legislation on which these drew. Legislation on cursing was also revised: RPS, 1540/12/11. Date accessed: 28 August 2020. 195 196

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repassed with an addition designed to protect the crown’s right to appoint to vacant benefices.200 The injunction to pray to the Virgin did not simply enshrine this practice in law, it also enjoined subjects to pray for the health of the royal couple, their infant son, and peace within Christendom—perhaps this was inspired by the 1425 act ordering bishops to make processions and pay for James I, Joan Beaufort and their children.201 This session also passed an act proposed by James in which he ‘exhortis and prayis oppinly all archibischopis, ordineris and uthir prelatis, and every kirk man in his awne degre, to reforme thair selfis, thair obedienciaris and kirkmen under thame, in habit and maneris to God and man’.202 Such emphasis on comportment seems accurately to reflect James’s joke about clerical standards in January 1540.203 If the church was to be a credible partner alongside parliament and the crown it needed to maintain its moral authority and standing. In summary: 108 acts were passed or ratified during the personal rule, only fifteen of which touched on spiritual matters. Of these, four were the traditional confirmation of Church privileges and one summoned a provincial council, whilst the ten new statutes were confined to only one session: Kellar noted only this session amongst all James’s parliaments as holding any significance in James’s positioning of himself as a Catholic monarch.204 Notably, parliament’s involvement in the anti-heresy drive only took place after a provincial council had been held—just as the commonwealth of merchants was usually consulted with separately on matters of trade, the regime had first turned to an assembly of the spirituality in a provincial council for matters appertaining to the Kirk. Moreover, as we saw in chapter 2, discussion surrounding involvement in a potential crusade in 1532 and Church reform after Marie de Guise’s coronation in 1540 were held in conventions probably attended by ‘both orders of magnates’—the lords spiritual and temporal. Given the long lead in to these acts, it is worth considering whether this clutch of acts broke the same type of new constitutional ground covered by the English reformation parliament in terms of setting precedents for parliamentary oversight of the church. Certainly, these acts all built on the  RPS, 1540/12/101. Date accessed: 28 August 2020.  RPS, 1540/12/55, 1425/3/19. This act was copied into BL Harley MS 2363 f. 27r, as discussed at n. 101, this manuscript was associated with Robert Reid. 202  RPS, 1540/12/58. Date accessed: 29 July 2020. 203  Eure to Cromwell, 26 January 1540, BL Royal MS 7 CXVI f. 137r. 204  Clare Kellar, Scotland, England and the Reformation 1534-1561 (Oxford, 2003), p. 31. 200 201

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1425 precedent that statutes could be used to protect the church.205 In 1443, parliament approved an article which entailed the keeping of statutes made by provincial councils and previous parliaments alike related to the protection of the Kirk and reiterating the penalties for those who were cursed, whilst also taking the opportunity to affirm that the Scots stood in ‘ferme and fast obedience to the pape’.206 The 1541 statements on doctrine were indeed distinct from these earlier activities in that they did not (as far as we know) simply offer reinforcement to the activities of a provincial council, or offer general protection to the Church. Even so, however significant the 1541 acts may have been in a religious context, they were very far from dominating the parliamentary agenda. The arrival of Lutheran books and meetings of those persuaded by such writings cannot convincingly be cited as a sufficient reason for parliament’s continued importance in 1530s and early 1540s Scotland. Parliament spent considerably more time clarifying legal procedures, preparing for war, dealing with treason cases and ratifying previous statutes than it did drafting anti-heresy legislation. Even if we wanted to ask tired questions about why parliament ‘survived’, it should be towards these activities, not the threat of heresy, that we turn to find our answers. Nevertheless, the anti-heresy legislation is particularly interesting since James’s 1532 speech in defence of the church and 1541 exhortation to the clergy to reform their lives are amongst the very rare occasions in the parliamentary register when we find a hint of James’s own voice. We see another 1528, when the King ‘exponit and declarit’ in favour of Walter Scott of Branxholme to secure reduction of the latter’s forfeiture.207 Beyond these, we perhaps have a hint of royal initiative in the fact that in 1541, he ‘ordanit’ the printing of the acts of parliament: it is unclear whether James spoke himself or if a document in his name was presented.208 Unlike some of his other types of consultative groups, including, as we have seen, the committee of the articles, James was present in parliament when it legislated—but how much did he speak? Certainly, people spoke for James during parliament, as they did in council and conventions—we have seen that in December 1540, for instance, the clerk 205  Kirsty McAlister and Roland Tanner, ‘Parliament and the Church’ in Brown and MacDonald (eds), Parliament in Context, p. 43. 206  RPS, 1443/11/2-3. Date accessed: 7 April 2021. 207  RPS, 1528/9/40. Date accessed: 19 September 2017. 208  RPS, 1540/12/102. Date accessed: 6 March 2018.

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register acted as ‘prelocutour for oure sovirane lord’ in parliament, requesting on James’s behalf that an extract should be produced of dooms of treason—this may be a hint of the nature of the clerk register’s parliamentary role more broadly since, by the seventeenth century at least, the clerk register was one amongst several officials involved in the final declaration of statutes.209 Perhaps we should not be surprised by this royal reticence since in 1540, Lindsay’s play-king did not speak except to approve the acts proposed by the three estates, an intervention which proved ‘decisive in no small part because it was limited’.210 Looking further afield, James Miller has noted that the fact that the opening orations in the Polish Sejm were made ‘on the king’s behalf (for the monarch himself rarely spoke in person)’ helped to foster the ‘strongly ritualized’ nature of that assembly.211 The same was undoubtedly true of the orators speaking on behalf of James both when he was absent from conventions and present in person in parliament. Such ritualization may have served to enhance royal majesty as well as the stature of that assembly. On the other hand, since royal speech was rare, we might also assume that when the King did speak it was especially noteworthy and significant: even though the 1532 parliament passed little legislation on heresy James’s speech alone served as an important forum for articulating the regime’s stance on that subject— even if, ironically, the audience at this parliament was small.

Conclusions James VI famously recognised that ‘few Lawes and well put into execution are best in a well ruled common-weale’.212 Had they heard this dictum, the lords of the articles who served his grandfather, raising their heads from their copies of the statutes of the first four James’s, would have nodded sagely in agreement. The scale of the process of reviewing, revising

209  RPS, 1540/12/27. Date accessed: 28 August 2020; Thomas Innes, ‘The Scottish Parliament; Its Symbolism and Its Ceremonial’, Juridical Review 44 (1932), pp. 87-124 at pp. 116-121. 210  Walker, Politics of Performance, pp. 135-6. 211  James Miller, ‘The polish nobility and the renaissance monarchy: The “execution of the laws” movement: Part one’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 3:2 (1983), pp. 65-87 at p. 69. 212  James VI, Basilicon Doron in J. P. Somerville (ed.), King James VI & I Political Writings (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 21-2.

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and ratifying statutes throughout the three sessions of 1535, 1540 and 1541 has implications beyond law making in the personal rule, offering a new perspective on how we understand the relationship which sixteenth-­ century lawyers and lawmakers had with previous statutes before and after James V’s reign. It shows that the efforts to codify the post-1424 statutes and the old laws alike before 1500 and after 1560 actually had parallels with normal parliamentary practice under James V. This suggests we need to situate codification efforts within a broader culture of rereading and repassing the statutes. Even so, we have seen that in this period at least repassed statutes were not simply re-proclaimed but were more usually updated—repassing was about relevancy as well as conformity. ‘Ratifying’ a law ‘with addition’ often also tackled head on the problem of implementation, and the interest James’s statutes showed in officials as well as miscreants was part of a thoughtful attempt to close the gap between crown aspiration and the disappointing reality that its laws were only as effective as local officials were diligent. The care given to these repassed laws combined with the interest in improving (from the crown’s perspective) the performance of local administrators provides further evidence for the growing reassessment of James V’s personal rule as a time of not only impressive cultural achievements but also a period of administrative and institutional development. The fact that many of these acts had already been repassed multiple times strongly suggests that the process of reviewing and ratification was far from novel in the 1530s, and we might also consider the sixty acts passed under James IV appertaining to ‘civil or criminal jurisdiction…of these thirty-seven were clearly attempts to clarify James III’s own legislation’.213 Such tranches of repassed acts did not include every law— but then again, the commissioners who produced the 1566 edition of the statutes had also been tasked with selecting laws for printing, not simply including every statute they found. We have seen how their decisions regarding the activities of the 1528–9 and 1532 parliaments resulted in the exclusion of some materials recorded in the parliamentary register and the inclusion of others sourced from the council register. Moreover, like the later commissioners, the main thrust of their efforts was towards the statutes passed by James I and his successors. Although some statutes had a precedent in the reign of Robert I, David II or Robert III, there is no evidence that parliament was aware of these precedents or that it reviewed  Macfarlane, William Elphinstone, p. 423.

213

282 

A. BLAKEWAY

pre-1424 laws. Even so, James’s regime was intensely interested in the organisation and promulgation of law—interests which meant that with the printing of the New Actis and Constitutionis in 1542, legislation and indeed parliament itself assumed a significant role in the broader assertion of royal power evident from c.1540 onwards.214 The vast quantity of acts repassed by the 1535 session meant that even though this printing of the statutes of 1535 and 1540–1 was not a full codification it nonetheless served to provide royal officials with a compendium of historic statutes tweaked to ensure their immediate relevance. The process of repassing acts from earlier parliaments, declaring and affirming the provisions of the common law, conciliar interventions in parliament, and making general acts which afforced local provisions also forces us to keep one eye on the world beyond parliament. The permanency of statute rendered it unique, but statute laws also existed in amongst and in relation to a broader patchwork of other types of laws. This emphasis on the place of a given statute amongst both a history of previous statute and other laws or injunctions to be properly interpreted has strong parallels with parliament’s activities as a court, which can only be understood with reference to the extra judicial activity that existed alongside it. Here, we see through the convictions for treason in absentia of Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus, his brother George, their close associates and Robert Colville, as well as the posthumous convictions of James Colville and Robert Leslie, that despite parliament’s shrinking judicial competence, its monopoly on in absentia, and the more controversial posthumous, convictions meant that it retained a significant role in the most intractable of treason cases. Beyond this clutch of cases, however, parliament was used not to secure convictions for treason: rather, the trials it heard served as only one stage in a process which ultimately ended in reconciliation with the regime. The parallels here with the settling of other types of disputes are obvious. Arising from this, however, is the need to shift debate surrounding the treason trials of this reign away from a focus on conviction and punishment towards providing a forum for contrition and thus reconciliation. Even when assessing the legislative and judicial functions over which parliament had an exclusive prerogative, the need to see this body as one part of a broader network of governmental activity is key.

214

 Blakeway, ‘Reassessing’, pp. 433-7.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

In 1528, a teenage James V summoned his first adult parliament. Concerned with the trial and forfeiture of James’s erstwhile stepfather and his family, this successful conviction of Angus and his kin and the breakdown in crown-magnate relations which it exemplified long set the tone for narratives of James’s rule. However, it is equally significant that James had chosen parliament to achieve his ends. Only parliament could accomplish what he needed: an in absentia conviction for treason which cast Angus outwith the political community. By witnessing these actions, the exceptionally large number of attendees also accepted them as legitimate. Fourteen years later, in March 1541, James, now a month shy of his twenty-ninth birthday, a married man and father to a legitimate male heir, returned from a successful campaign to assert his authority in the Isles, closed another parliament. This session had annexed Angus’s lands to the crown—if the 1528 parliament opened the possibility of such financial gains, the 1540–1 session had realised this. It also confirmed James’s act of revocation. The final piece of business was  to proclaim James’s ordinance that the acts of his parliaments would be printed. A lot had changed in the years between 1528 and 1541. What did not alter, however, was the importance of parliament in articulating royal authority. These two examples combined provide a quick check list of the ways in which it did so: through its power to try, convict and forfeit

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4_7

283

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A. BLAKEWAY

traitors, by protecting and enhancing the royal lands, and the setting out of laws to which James’s subjects must henceforth conform their behaviour. Parliament was able to accomplish all this and more for its monarch because by this point, it—and the idea of consultation more broadly—had already assumed an established and important position in Scottish political understanding. Indeed, parliament achieved this success because it was part of a wider system of governance: one amongst several tools available to the Scottish crown from which the right one for the job could be selected. We even see this with the parliaments of 1528 and 1541 when we step slightly back from the assemblies themselves. The parliament of 1528 had been summoned by a convention, that of 1541 (a run on session from 1540) was called by the council.1 In endorsing the decision to print its acts, the parliament of 1541 also nodded to the wider world of officials and administrators whose activities it both facilitated and depended upon, whilst its counterpart in 1528 must have arranged for Angus’s forfeiture to be proclaimed at market crosses up and down the land. This emphasis on royal authority in the reign of James V is far from novel. Through the twists and turns of James’s historiographical reputation, from outmoded depictions of him as a magnate-crusher to more modern (and archivally based) assessments of the King as working in partnership with a core of important nobles, and his active participation in a renaissance court culture which glorified his person and articulated his imperium, it has been amply clear that James V was a monarch concerned with his own authority and who enjoyed considerable success in enhancing it. Even some of his shrillest detractors had to admit that a man who was able to leave his realm for nine months whilst he sampled the delights of Valois France could not be described as weak. We have long rejected the idea that James achieved this feat through sheer force of personality instilling in his nobility a constant ‘fear of his severity’, as Buchanan would claim forty years after James died.2 Beyond, however, an understanding that James’s magnates worked with him, and some pioneering studies of his intelligent legal advisors, it has not been entirely clear how exactly the emphasis on royal power, prerogative and imperium so evident in the literature, architecture and ceremonial of James’s court translated into political practice.

 NRS CS6/13 f. 212v. ADCP, p.495.  George Buchanan, History, ed. Dana Sutton, http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/ scothist/14eng.html. Section 50. Accessed 28 August 2020. 1 2

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This book has shown that parliament was one amongst several types of political meetings that played an important role in this. Claims parliament helped assert crown authority bear comparison with the efforts of Thomas Cromwell to coax English MPs into endorsing Henry’s new religious settlement and declaring that ‘this realm of England is an Empire’.3 The parliaments of James V, as we saw in chapter 6, had far less truck with religious legislation than their English cousins. Equally, James V never felt the need to have his parliament pass a statute stating that he was an Emperor in his own kingdom. After all, this would have been stating the obvious—besides which parliament had already reached just this conclusion in the last years of his minority: in 1526, it rejected an existing contract for the staple in part on the grounds that the ‘said contracte restrenis oure soverane lord, his liegis and thar gudis to the Emperouris jurisdictioune, howbeit oure soverane lord and his maist noble progenitouris has evire bene fre and emperouris within thame self, nocht subject to na erdlie creature undir God in thar temporalite’.4 Even though this restricted claims to imperium to the temporal sphere, the same type of mutual enhancement of authority articulated in the English idea of king-in-parliament is also evident in James’s relations with his estates—we might also note the English act in restraint of appeals came seven years late to this particular parliament-­asserting-­royal-authority party. Perhaps a more pertinent comparison, however, is with the parliaments of James’s greatgreat-grandfather, James I, whose statutes were so often repassed and whose parliaments of 1424–6 may have inspired the delegation of parliamentary authority to the lords of the articles and efforts to print the statutes alike, and who summoned the estates ‘as a means to augment his power materially and ideologically’.5 As a still occasional meeting parliament always gathered for a special purpose: most frequently, this was associated with its judicial business. Every session of the personal rule for which we have records heard judicial business of some description. Thanks to negotiations outwith parliament few of these trials ended in conviction: even so, the threat they held out over the individuals who had been summoned was profound. This is an 3  John Guy, ‘Thomas Cromwell and the Intellectual Origins of the Henrician Revolution’, in J.  Guy and A.  Fox, Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500-1550 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 151–178. 4  RPS, 1526/11/53. Date accessed: 28 August 2020. 5   Michael Brown, ‘Public Authority and Factional Conflict, Parliament and Polity 1424-1455’ in K.  M. Brown and R.  Tanner (eds), Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235-1560 (Edinburgh, 2004), pp. 123–144, p. 130.

286 

A. BLAKEWAY

important point to emphasise: although James’s regime consulted frequently this discussion was often accompanied by very real shows of royal strength. Such judicial business required an audience for it to be effective; however, parliament was also called to offer ‘avise and consent’. In the one piece of evidence we have for a vernacular summons to parliament, those with a duty to attend were invited ‘to geif thar avise in the said parliament in the materis concerning the kingis grace and the commoune wele of the realm under the pane of law’.6 Such ‘avise and consent’ underpinned the church privileges which James promised to uphold in 1532 (copies of this were circulated to papal envoys).7 Similarly, in December 1540 when Henry Lauder, the king’s advocate, appeared and, on James’s behalf, ‘desirit the saidis thre estatis to avise’ on whether the King had the right to raise a legal action on a person who was dead, explaining that James wished to ‘have the sensement [judgement] of parliament’ before taking further action.8 On such occasions, the ‘advice’ offered in the end served to endorse or legitimise royal actions—as it was part of the process of making or interpreting laws, it was essential it should be made widely known. Indeed, when the crown wished to project a particular message parliament was an especially suitable tool: not only did the assembly itself draw in attendance from throughout the realm, but the associated summons (both to attend parliament and to be tried there) and proclamations of acts were already well-established procedures to disseminate information on crown activities and intentions. Although parliament was summoned regularly throughout the personal rule, this happened far less frequently than summons to conventions were issued. Deriving their authority and the core of their membership from the council, these bodies were the chameleons of political life during the personal rule, shrinking to eighteen or twenty to offer advice on James’s marital prospects or to take a top-level political decision, and expanding to the size of a small parliament when decisions needed to be shared and endorsed. This flexibility explains why they were so frequently summoned. As our explorations of decision making in chapters 3, 4 and 5 have shown, the process of moving from idea to action took place in several stages and the flexibility afforded by conventions made them ideal for this type of multi-stage consultation which required both restricted discussions when  RPS, 1533/23. Date accessed: 1 March 2020.  RPS, 1532/5. Date accessed: 1 March 2020. 8  RPS, 1540/12/8. Date accessed: 1 March 2020. 6 7

7 CONCLUSION 

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secrets were shared and counsel sought, and large meetings at which information could be shared or decisions endorsed. This combination helped to ensure that the regime’s decisions were seen as legitimate even though practicalities and plans for particular ventures were usually dealt with by small groups. Yet parliament too could encompass more closed, quasi-­ conciliar gatherings, such as the 11 June 1535 example when, as we saw in chapter 2, the all-important committee of the articles could be reconfigured to offer ‘advice’ behind closed doors, making parliamentary practice reflect that of the council.9 Whilst burgess representatives were, with one exception in November 1536, absent from such conventions, a similar type of multi-meeting decision making incorporated the more occasional meetings of conventions of burghs. The very partial extant evidence for these suggests that the increase in their meetings was driven by arrangements surrounding the Scottish staple and that burgh commissioners believed they had a right to be consulted and, moreover, listened to on this subject, albeit their efforts enjoyed only limited success. Indeed, considering the third estate, parliament emerges as symbolically and rhetorically important but enjoying only a very limited ability to curtail royal action. Taken together, conventions of burghs and the variety of conventions of the lords combined, placed alongside the mixture of activities in parliament, allow us to move beyond an understanding that political spaces in this period built on a public/private dichotomy. Rather, the regime had a variety of needs ranging from counsel—best undertaken in secrecy by individuals who could offer specialised, expert advice—to making its decisions known in order that they could be enforced—this was best undertaken before as big an audience as it could muster. Parliament and the different kinds of convention could all be configured to meet both needs. The spider in the centre of the web of all these meetings was the council. Conventions explicitly derived their authority from it—something which the flexible nomenclature which still prevailed around them underscored, as does the fact their activities were recorded in the council’s register—and the council summoned conventions of the lords and parliaments, as well as burgesses engaged in negotiations amongst themselves. Although the council has not been the direct focus of this book, its influence has been apparent throughout. We have seen it intervening in the contents of statutes, melding with the lords of the articles to create a hybrid body, as 9

 RPS, 1535/6-7. Date accessed: 1 March 2020.

288 

A. BLAKEWAY

well as organising the vast majority of the meetings we have discussed. Indeed, the co-ordination required to manage several meetings at once meant that this pattern of activity was only possible because of the council. As we acknowledged at the outset, the line between convention and council meeting could be a blurry one: this only serves to emphasise the centrality of the role the council occupied. Key to this was its personnel. James’s council was made up of members drawn from the three estates: this was in large part due to the fact that its origins lay in a mixed administrative-judicial body. Even so, after the separation of the court of session in 1532 legally trained administrators drawn from the Edinburgh legal elite still played an important role in governing. Whilst James’s relations with his magnates and, to a lesser degree, his leading clergy have long assumed a central role in scholarly assessments of the reign, one of the things which has emerged throughout this book is the importance of his relations with his administrators, including lesser nobles, clerics and burgesses. The trial of Robert Leslie and two trials of James Colville show both a willingness to reconcile with former crown servants and an implacable desire for exemplary punishment when necessary. This is of course comparable to some of the better-known behaviours exhibited towards the nobility, and, ironically, it shows that James’s relatively low-born servants were important enough to take considerable trouble over. Indeed, some of James’s lesser known administrators are beginning to emerge from the shadows as important figures. Bringing the monarch’s letter to council or speaking on his behalf in parliament would have closely associated men such as the clerk register or lord advocate with the King himself and their service was amply rewarded. We have seen their involvement in serious legislative programmes which, in all probability, included reviewing the laws, as well as printing these for the first time. Taken alongside the changes to the council to create the court of session, cumulatively this points towards a more administratively ambitious regime than we have hitherto appreciated. Even when there is little evidence that suggestions were acted upon (for example, the 1535 commission to control craftsmen and the order of the same parliament that the royal exchequer would henceforth scrutinise burgh accounts to ensure these were spent for the ‘commonweal’) proposals still reveal aspirations and an expanding sense of what the crown and its administrators ought to take into their purview. The attempts to obscure James Foulis’s initials and arms from the manuscript copy of parliament’s acts which he produced neatly reflect the way

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in which he and his colleagues are hidden just  out of historical view.10 Throughout this book, James V’s administrators have greeted us as we explored plans for war, matrimony, taxation or legislation. We need to find out more about them—indeed, James’s administrators should command our interest not least because they were responsible for producing the records upon which we historians rely. Parliament, convention and council thus each played their role in the crown’s administrative structures—they were neither rivals nor struggling for survival. Where does this leave the man who wore the crown himself, towards whom all this advice-giving was directed? James usually attended parliament: on the occasions on which he was absent circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that the meeting was held to manage judicial business but did not proceed to an actual trial. On the other hand, there is no evidence he sat in the committee of the articles and the marginal notations on the 1535 session show he was absent from the committee on that occasion. There is also little evidence he attended conventions or indeed the council—although here it should be noted that there is no way of telling how many times he might have been found on the sederunt of the lost secret council register. The quantity of letters he penned to the council, however, belies any suggestion that James was disinterested in its activities. Rather, this offers us a model of consultative governance which was effective not despite but because of the monarch’s ability to be absent from the council. Beyond alerting us to the continued importance of extra-­ institutional consultation, this absence allows us to build on the picture of trust between James and his subjects suggested by Cameron extending our view beyond the magnates to his administrators drawn from the first and third estates. It is also possible that this royal absence and very conscious, almost performative, use of crown officials to communicate served to elevate James’s status as a monarch even as it facilitated him embracing the active, hands-on, mobile aspects of kingship throughout the realm. James’s absence from the committee of the articles nevertheless forms a sharp point of contrast with the behaviour of his grandson James VI, and this raises the question of how the 1530s fits in to broader narratives of governmental change. This is not helped by the fact that we know considerably more about how government worked after 1560 than we do between 1540 and 1559. Parliament was clearly meeting more frequently between 1528 and 1542 than it did during the reign of James IV or James  NRS PA2/8/III f. 119r.

10

290 

A. BLAKEWAY

V’s own minority, and this alone should give us pause when faced with claims that royal minority was what drove parliamentary prominence or broader institutional developments. Parliament’s interest in reviewing and repassing earlier statutes, however, suggests stronger lines of connection between codification projects at the end of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than we have previously appreciated. Likewise, royal willingness to dispense with statutes, and the lack of parliamentary involvement in warfare, anticipate developments later in the century. Taxes, which assumed such an important part of the business of post-reformation parliaments and conventions of estates alike, especially after 1580, were only exceptionally granted by parliament during the 1530s: instead taxation was granted over multiple stages centred on conventions of the lords. The fact that these were held more frequently than we have hitherto realised also suggests stronger continuities between James V’s personal rule, his own minority and the minority and personal rule of his daughter than has hitherto been allowed for. The conventions of burghs for which we have evidence in this period show some similar behaviours to their later counterparts, notably that of 1531 which met directly before and successfully lobbied parliament. However, for the most part, these meetings were focused primarily upon foreign trade and as such their meetings did not tend to coincide with the parliamentary schedule, besides which, any success they enjoyed was only temporary. Beyond such specific similarities and differences, however, the emphasis on advice giving, consulting through institutions and sharing an important sub-set of the activities of these institutions with the remainder of James’s subjects constitute powerful markers of continuity with both James’s predecessors and his progeny. Whilst it would be going much too far to claim James’s regime fully foreshadowed later developments or offers us a clear path from ‘late medieval’ to ‘early modern’ (and any such claim would be dangerously teleological), nevertheless, on closer examination, the personal rule offers far more evidence of ambitious central governmental activity than we have previously acknowledged. Re-evaluating the nature of the regime’s extant records has been key to forging this new understanding, encompassing unpicking the complexity of the extant conciliar record, appreciating that a significant chunk of the parliamentary register was a draft for the printed statutes which entailed a pattern of selection and omission, or, most enigmatically, being aware of the ghost of the lost ‘registri S. concilli’. Without this last, unfortunately, some questions remain impossible to answer. Even so, the sheer frequency with which meetings were summoned, combined

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with the evidence for ambitious activities such as the reviewing and printing of statutes, suggests that the personal rule of James V should occupy a more prominent place in narratives surrounding governmental activities than it has hitherto been afforded. James V was an ambitious monarch, mindful of his authority and watchful for ways in which it might be extended. He and his administrators were alive to the potential of Scotland’s range of authoritative yet flexible political institutions to work together in order, to borrow the regime’s own language, to promote imperium and commonweal alike.

Appendix A: Attendance at Conventions

Table A1: Parliaments, Conventions Political Meetings Held and Summoned During the Personal Rule of James V and Extraordinary

This table uses the criteria outlined in chapter 2 to list all known conventions in the reign of James V. If no location is given, it seems reasonable to assume Edinburgh was the meeting place. Possible conventions, for which the evidence is significant but inconclusive, appearing, for instance, in an English spy report or later chronicle, are given in italics. Other types of national gathering are also included for context. Parliaments appear in bold, conventions of burghs in bold italics.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4

293

‘Diverse lordis to convene’

18 September 1529j

Convention of Summons burghs, Edinburgh. reached Aberdeen by 5 April 1529 g ‘procerum – conventu’h

8 October 1529

–

–

–

April/May 1529?

20 days

–

c.7 days

53 days

2–18 September 1528f 12–14 April 1529

Linlithgow

12 April: Stirling 14 April: to Edinburgh –

Edinburgh

At least 17 Stirling or days Edinburgh or travel.

10–11 July 1528d

According to Buchanan, this discussed possible treachery with England amongst borderers and arranged for imprisonment of culprits. Buchanan dated this to 15 April 1529 (17 of calends of May). Leslie dated it to 16 May but agreed James played a key role.i The register of the lords of council and session for the period contain no records of this meeting.k

James’s locationa Notes

‘ane generall – By 23 June counsaile universale 1528c of the estates of our realm’ ‘general conuention of our lordis’ ‘conuention of our gret baronis’.b Stirling. Parliament, 11 July 1528e – Edinburgh.

Days between summons and meeting

Dates actually met

Date due to Contemporary name Date of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

294  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

No contemporary description. Stirling

Parliament

‘ane generale conventioun of all the lords’ Edinburgh. ‘commissionaris of the burrowis of Perth Striueling and Linlithgow to convene for devising of the stapill’.r Parliament 8 January 1531

8–9 January 1531q

55 days

c.38 days

Days between summons and meeting

Stirling/ Edinburgh. Not in the sederunt.

Perth

Edinburgh

–

–

5 June 1531x

–

6 February 24 April 24 April 1531v 77 days 1531u 1531 10 November 4 May 1531 Did not meet 175 days 1530w

Stirling

–

Edinburgh

(continued)

This parliament did not meet. It was superseded by the April gathering above which had been summoned in February.

Called specifically to give advice on the staple.

This convention is discussed at length at pp. 92–8, it is unclear whether the summons for 14 May relate to the trials and convention held shortly thereafter or another venture. The fact two sets of summons were issued may suggest two meetings were held, one as soon as the secretary returned and a second on 7 November at Perth. Evidence for discussion only survives for 7 November.

James’s locationa Notes

15 March 1531t At least 15 Travelling— February 1531s Summons reached days. Edinburgh to Aberdeen by Cupar 6 March 1531

10 November 1530p

‘conventioun of the 1 October – 1530 and 31 lordis’. October 1530n Perth. 7 November 1530o

19 May 1530 24 May 1530

14 May 1530?m

No contemporary description.

1 May 1530l

Dates actually met

Contemporary name Date Date due to of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS  

295

Meeting of ‘both orders of the magnates’. ‘assembly of magnates’af St Andrews.

Parliament

‘Magnum Concilium’

‘conventioun’ Edinburgh.

11–20 March 1532ad –

5 December 1531z 3–8 January 1532aa

No description

–

–

Days between summons and meeting

Shortly after May 1532 parliament.

–

Late February/ early March 1532ac 13 May 1532ae 63 days

Mid-­December 1531 26 January 18 days 1532ab

Did not meet

4–6 September 1531y

Parliament –

Dates actually met

Date due to Contemporary name Date of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

(continued)

James was in St Andrews on 27 June, spending the rest of the week in Falkland.

Edinburgh

Stirling

Edinburgh

–

Discussed in chapter 2. Foreign observers referred to this as a ‘second parliament’ but the Scottish descriptors given in the first column suggest this is likely to have been a convention.

Not described as a convention in the council register, but it appears likely this meeting related to the summons to a convention issued earlier that month. Agreed to give Albany a commission to negotiate for James’s marriage.

Theoretically, this body could have met from 14 October onwards, but there is no evidence for parliamentary activity between the running session which met in June 1531 and the May 1532 parliament.

James’s locationa Notes

296  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

c.19 December 5 January 1532am 1533

No contemporary description. Convention of ‘great baronis’.

10 April 1533ap 17 April 1533

–

12 November 1532aj

‘Conventioun’, Edinburgh

Convention of the ‘gretast personages in the realm’.ao

6 September 1532

Not known.

16 December 1532ak 5 January 1533an

–

3 September 1532ag

‘Conventioune’ Edinburgh

No contemporary description Edinburgh?

Dates actually met

Contemporary name Date Date due to of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

7 days

c.20 days

–

–

Days between summons and meeting

Stirling

Edinburgh to Linlithgow Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Linlithgow

Edinburgh

The chancellor, Lord Fleming and Sir James Hamilton were summoned to a ‘convention’ on 28 August, this might have been to prepare for the 3 September meeting or have concerned another matter.ah English spies believed a parliament was held in Edinburgh: this is likely to have been a jumbled account of a convention.ai The meetings overlapped with military summons to a wider group. St Andrews, lord Gray, lord Graham, Argyll, lord Erskine, Sir John Campbell and Mr Henry White were summoned. It seems likely to have been a small meeting rather than a large scale convention. Followed a military gathering on 12 December at Lauder.al Open proclamation issued to all barons and freeholders to gather as part of military preparations against the English, the convention was enveloped within this. If the messenger was paid on his return, then the following were invited to this convention, if not this was another gathering: archbishop of St Andrews; bishops of Moray, Dunkeld and Caithness; prior of St Andrews; abbot of Lindores; earls of Montrose, Huntly and Atholl; Lords Gray and Ruthven; Sir John Campbell. (continued)

James’s locationa Notes

  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS  

297

13 June 1533ar

Parliament, Edinburgh

–

Days between summons and meeting

28 July 1533as 46 days

–

12 May 1533aq –

Convention, Stirling

28 July 1533

Dates actually met

Date due to Contemporary name Date of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

(continued)

Perth

Stirling?

The chancellor and ‘laif of the lords in Edinburgh’, lord Graham and the bishop of Dunkeld, were summoned to a convention in Stirling. This may have been a smaller meeting. Parliamentary records suggest meetings of the commissioners not the full body, although summons were issued throughout the kingdom. English spies believed parliament was sitting until 4 August.at Did a convention take place after parliament’s judicial activity was completed, have non-judicial parliamentary records been lost, or did plans simply change?

James’s locationa Notes

298  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

Dates actually met

10 February – 1534ay

18 November 1533ax

c.17 October 1533

–

4 October 1533aw

1 October 1533

‘Conventioun of the bordaris’ Edinburgh. ‘Convention’.

‘Convention’

19 September 1533av

8–17 September 1533au

‘The conventioun’ Edinburgh.

Contemporary name Date Date due to of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

Near Inverary?

Argyll

–

Cupar

There is no record of this in the extant council register. Since commissioners were negotiating with the English on the borders, it is possible this was summoned to give advice relating to these negotiations; however, the summons to Moray and Huntly were specifically provoked by writings sent from Dumbarton. Letters were sent in two stages. Initial letters issued from the lords were sent to Moray, Huntly, Maxwell and Johnson. The King then wrote to Moray, Huntly, Rothes, Gray, Arran, Eglinton, Fleming, Sir James Hamilton, Montrose, Erskine, the bishop of Galloway and lord Seton. Maxwell, the wardens, Buccleuch and Hume named in the payments to issue summons. Montrose, Moray, Huntly, Eglinton, Erskine and Sir James Hamilton of Finnart were summoned. Letters issued immediately afterwards about keeping of Hermitage and Covington suggests this was discussed in the convention. The bishop of Galloway; earls of Montrose and Argyll; Lord Erskine and Thomas Scott were summoned. (continued)

James’s locationa Notes

c.1 month Cupar

c.3 days.

11 days

Days between summons and meeting

  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS  

299

–

–

[Before 29 – April 1535?]bc Discussed in June 1535 parliamentbe – –

No contemporary description. Edinburgh.

Parliament

Provincial council, Blackfriars, Edinburgh. No contemporary description.

27 June 1534ba

17 June 1534

–

–

Days between summons and meeting

May 1536 bf

March 1536

Edinburgh

In Edinburgh until 4 July.

Cupar

Stirling, or further west

English reports suggest a large council meeting was called; this might have been a convention.

This seems likely to have been a small meeting—the bishop of Moray, earls of Montrose, Rothes, Argyll, Arran and Sir James Hamilton were summoned. English spies reported a gathering of ‘no lesse nombre than two thowsand personnes’.bb This is likely to have been an exaggeration but equally this must have been a substantially sized gathering.

James’s locationa Notes

c.9 months Various—not Edinburgh.

7 June 1535bd –

July 1534

17 March 1534az

–

Convention of burghs ‘Convention’, Edinburgh.

–

Dates actually met

Date due to Contemporary name Date of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

(continued)

300  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

–

–

–

–

25 May 1537bh

–

–

–

–

Parliament

No contemporary description— meeting of burgh commissioners. Coronation of Marie de Guise; ‘convention’. No contemporary description.

18 November 1536

‘Conventioun of the Baronis’.

‘ane conventioune’. 12 November 1536bg

Contemporary name Date Date due to of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

24 September 1540bp

22 February 1540

18 December 1539bn

11 March 1538bk

May/June 1537

Dates actually met

–

–

–

–

Glamis

Edinburgh

Unclear— Stirling?

Falkland

France

6 days

(continued)

English diplomatic reports suggested the coronation would be followed by a convention.bo English spies reported a ‘grete assemble’ in Edinburgh on this day, it is tempting to suggest this was a convention.

Summons issued to a geographically disparate group of nobles and ecclesiastics, and to three burghs. This is likely to have been used as an occasion to update the political community on the good progress of the King’s marriage negotiations (the contract was signed on 26 November). A large list of list of notables were ordered to begin ‘preparing’ for James’s arrival even though this was not for several months.bi An English spy report suggested a meeting was held in April 1537—this may have been a convention to plan for James’s arrival.bj Summons were finally issued for the Queen’s entry and homecoming in May. May have granted a tax.bl A continued session for which summons were issued separately was held on 18 July 1539, this dealt with judicial business.bm

James’s locationa Notes

Days between summons and meeting

  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS  

301

Summons reach Aberdeen by 25 March 1541

Convention of burghs

Summer 1542?

Stirling

Later chronicle accounts suggest a convention took place during the summer, this might have granted the tax collected that summer.bx

The council registered James’s order to summon parliament on 9 October; unusually, this was after precepts were issued.bu This sat in two major sessions, December 1540 and March 1541, in addition to a series of smaller continuations. No new summons have been identified for the March 1541 session. At the final meeting, in September 1542, business was continued until February 1543.bv James’s death in December, however, precluded this.

James’s locationa Notes

60 days— 4 December 55 days 1540: Edinburgh 9 March 1541: Edinburgh

Days between summons and meeting

2 April 1541bw c.8 days.

3 December 3 December 1540 1540;bs 25 February–14 March 1541bt

Dates actually met

a

All taken from: Andrea Thomas, ‘Renaissance Culture at the Court of James V’ (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 386–423. Thomas’s text is published as Princelie Majestie, but the appendix detailing the movement of the royal household is available only in the PhD.

No contemporary description.

Between 24 September 1540bq and 9 October 1540br

Parliament

Date due to Contemporary name Date of Body, location summoned/on meet which payments to messengers were made

(continued)

302  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

James V to Henry VIII, 23 June 1528, TNA SP49/3; James V to Northumberland, 19 June 1528, TNA SP49/3 f.176.

NRS CS5/38 ff.129v–131r.

ADCP, p. 280. NRS CS5/38 f.131r.

NRS CS5/41 f.118r; Hannay Essays on the College of Justice, p. 237.

NRS CS5/42 f.35r [Not noted in ADCP, p. 348].

NRS CS5/41 f.121v; ADCP, p. 343.

RPS, 1531/1. Date accessed: 2 September 2021.

NRS CS5/42 ff.185–190; Hannay Essays on the College of Justice p. 237.

aa

NRS E21/25 ff.50v–51r.

NRS CS5/43 ff.107r-v.

NRS E21/24 f.39r.

z

y

x

w

v

u

ACA CA1/1/13 f.105; RCRBS, pp. 512–13. See p. 143, n. 15 for the erroneous dating of this meeting to 1530 in this edition.

s

t

NRS CS5/41 f.154v–155r.

NRS E21/24 f.36v.

r

NRS E21/24 f.36v.

q

NRS CS5/41 f. 121v; ADCP, p. 343. Hannay, Essays on the College of Justice, p. 237.

o

p

NRS E21/24 f.36r.

n

NRS E21/23 f.26v.

NRS E21/23 f.26v.

m

l

They would be about here if it did: NRS CS5/40 f.119r.

NRS E21/23 f.24v.

j

k

John Leslie, History of Scotland ed. Thomas Thompson (Edinburgh, 1830), p. 141.

i

http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/scothist/14lat.html#32.

RCRBS, pp. 507–8.

h

g

f

RPS, 1528/9/1. Date accessed: 2 September 2021.

e

d

c

(continued)

Hannay claimed this convention was due to meet on 17 July, but the manuscript evidence clearly specifies 10 July. Hannay, The College of Justice p. 237.

b

  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS  

303

NRS CS5/43 f.140v. Hannay Essays on the College of Justice p. 237.

The decision to call parliament was recorded on 11 March: NRS CS5/43 f.184v. Summons were issued by c.20 March: NRS E21/25 f.51r.

NRS E21/26 f.46r.

NRS CS6/1 f. 110v.

NRS CS6/2 f.27r.

NRS CS6/2 f.27r; NRS E21/26 f.53v.

NRS E21/26 f.61r.

NRS E21/26 ff.66r–67r.

NRS E21/28 f.52r.

TA 6 p. 222; NRS E21/28 f.55r.

Edin. Recs. II, pp. 66–7; RCRBS, p. 513. See p. 143 n.15 for the dating of this and problems with the RCRBS edition in terms of old/new style dating.

ba

az

ay

NRS E21/28 f.53v.

ax

NRS E21/28 f.52v.

aw

av

NRS E21/26 ff.66r-v.

au

at

Wharton to Henry VIII, 24 July 1533, L&P VI p. 385.

as

RPS, 1533/1. Date accessed: 2 September 2021.

ar

NRS CS6/2 f.184r; Payment for summons was issued by 22 June: NRS E21/26 f. 63v.

aq

ap

NRS CS6/2 f. 153r. If the messenger was paid having completed his journey or after the convention then a possible list of those summons is recorded in the Treasurer’s accounts: NRS E21/26 f.59r.

ao

NRS CS6/2 f.153r.

an

NRS CS6/2 f.33v.

am

al

NRS E21/26 f.53r.

ak

aj

NRS E21/26 f.51v.

ai

Northumberland to Henry VIII, 3 September 1532, BL Cotton Caligula MS B I f. 124.

ah

ag

af

CSPV, IV, 778; LJV, p. 211.

ae

RPS, 1532/1. Date accessed: 2 September 2021.

ad

ac

LJV, pp. 211–212.

ab

304  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

Hugh prior of Durham and Franklin to Henry VIII, 9 July 1534, BL Cotton Caligula MS B VIII f.162.

RPS, 1535/1. Date accessed: 2 September 2021.

NRS E21/31 f.26r.

NRS E21/31 f.22v; Hannay Essays on the College of Justice p. 237.

RPS, 1538/1. Date accessed: 22 May 2017.

NRS E21/36 f.88v.

NRS E21/38 f.27r.

NRS CS6/13 f.212v. ADCP, p. 495.

bx

RCRBS, p. 517.

Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland from the Slauchter of King James the First to the ane thousande fyve hundreith thrie scoir fyftein zeir ... Edited by Æ J. G. Mackay (Edinburgh, 3 vols, 1899), I p. 401; Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, appendix, p. 91.

bw

bv

RPS, 1540/12/121. Date accessed: 23 May 2017.

bu

bt

RPS, 1540/12/40. Date accessed: 2 September 2021.

bs

RPS, 1540/12/1. Date accessed: 2 September 2021.

br

NRS CS6/13 f.212v. ADCP, p. 495.

bq

bp

Eure to Henry VIII, 4 October 1540, BL Add. MS. 32,646, f. 133; HP I p. 59.

bo

Eure to Cromwell, 26 January 1540, BL Royal MS VII C XVI f.137v.

bn

RCRBS, p. 515.

bm

bl

Murray, ‘Exchequer and Crown Revenue’, appendix pp. 90–1.

bk

bj

Harry Ray’s Answer to the Articles of His Instructions, [April 1537], BL Add MS 32646 f.103; HP I p. 46.

bi

NRS E21/31 f.24r–25r.

bh

bg

bf

Howard and Barlow to Henry VIII, 13 May 1536, TNA SP49/4 f.123v.

be

RPS, 1535/12. Date accessed: 2 March 2018.

bd

bc

The account covering this period, NRS E21/30, is damaged and wants the section for payments to messengers. There is no mention of this in the council register covering the period: NRS CS6/6.

bb

  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS  

305

306 

APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

Table A2: Attendance at Conventions in the Reign of James V In answering the question of who attended conventions, we have two sources at our disposal. Both are problematic. The first is the sederunt lists which recorded attendance at meetings minuted in the council register. A.  L. Murray has already established the complexity which lay behind producing this register: it is sufficient for our present purposes to observe that on occasions, sederunts were not filled in, and on other occasions, corroborative evidence, such as signatures to a document produced on the same date as a given meeting, suggests that they could contain errors.1 In several cases, materials relating to a convention lack a sederunt and it is possible that sederunts were kept more assiduously when judicial sessions were recorded since judges were paid according to their attendance. On occasion, the layout of the council register changed when public business was being discussed—both for conventions and for council meetings—so this can give us a clue but cannot help us firmly identify conventions.2 The council register and its sederunts are a helpful source but need taking with a pinch of salt. The second major source is the payments to messengers to deliver summons to named individuals to attend conventions in the treasurer’s accounts. Obviously, being invited to a meeting does not guarantee an individual will choose to attend it. Moreover, payments to messengers are likely to underrepresent the number of summons actually issued since it would have been unnecessary to pay for a messenger to deliver summons within the burgh of Edinburgh or to men already present at the council board. This is nicely demonstrated by a set of summons issued from Edinburgh in 1536. This was the sole general convention in the personal rule to which we have firm evidence the burghs were summoned— Dundee, Perth and Stirling were selected. It is almost inconceivable that Edinburgh would have been passed over, so it is more likely no money changed hands to summon them.3

 Murray, ‘Exchequer, Council and Session’, p. 100.  For a good example of this special layout see: NRS CS6/2 f.192r. 3  NRS E21/31 f.22v. For this same point about Edinburgh in a later period see: MacDonald, ‘Consultation and Consent’, p. 291 n.21. 1 2

  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS  

307

That both summons and sederunt are limited is nicely demonstrated by comparing the two. Although it is rare for both to be extant we do have them for the convention of January 1532.4 This highlights the difficulties in extrapolating an invitation list from a record of attendance, or vice-­ versa. Forty people were invited amongst whom one name, Alison Douglas, lady Wedderburn, sticks out. Although this experienced borderer might well have had incisive comments to offer on the subject of national defence, sadly, it does not appear that James V’s regime was enlightened enough to summon women to conventions. As the sister of the exiled earl of Angus, Lady Wedderburn’s occupation of her young son’s border stronghold was an obvious potential security risk. Shortly after the convention had disbanded a meeting of the council decided that control of that property should pass to the deceased Lord Wedderburn’s brother, Alexander Hume, although Lady Wedderburn was granted permission to visit the house to collect possessions and put her affairs in order.5 Was Lady Wedderburn at the convention, but this body delegated a decision on her property to be dealt with at a later date by the council, or was her summons delivered alongside those for the convention but was in fact for a separate meeting? Disregarding Lady Wedderburn, of those summoned, twelve attended, but they were joined by a further forty men for whom there is no record of summons. Some of these were regular faces at the council board, but others were not. This discrepancy rams home the point that although lists of summons and sederunts are the best source available for attendance, they are appropriately read as the minimum number of those invited or who attended, not a definitive total. For a breakdown of individual attendance at conventions, please see Table A3.

4 5

 NRS E21/25 ff.50v-51r; NRS CS5/43 f.140v.  NRS CS5/43 f.145r.

General council ‘conventioun of the lordis’

10 July 1528 8 November 1530 9 January 1531

‘ane generale qventioun of all the lords’ / Qventioun’/ 5 June No 1531 contemporary description given 26 January ‘the 1532 conventioun’ 3 September 1532 December 1532 April 1533 ‘ane conventioun of the gretast personageis of the realme’e

Described as

Date

4

6

2

4

7

6

6

8

Sederunt CS5/43 f.140v.d Sederunt CS6/1 f.110v. 5

8

8

Sederunt CS5/42 f.185r.

Sederunt CS6/2 f.27r. Summons E21/26 f.59r.

10

9

7

4

4

3

2

8

5

5

1

4

2

16

7

18

10

6

3

11

4

4

5

1

5

5

6

6

3

2

Bishops Abbots Earls Lordsa Councillors— Councillors— clerics below burgess the rank of administrators abbot

Sederunt CS5/41 f.154v.

Sederunt CS5/38 f.131rb Sederunt CS5/41 ff.118r–119v.

Source (all from the NRS)

1

3

3

3

4

3

Councillors— Others including lairds and secular non-burgess administrators

12

37

28

55

46

35c

20

23

Total

308  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

‘convention’ to which the ‘laif of the lordis in Edinburgh’ also invited

May 1533

Summons E21/26 ff.66r–67v. Summons E21/31 f.22vf

Summons E21/26 f.61r

Source (all from the NRS)

0

5

6

0

1

2

4

6

0

9

6

1

Bishops Abbots Earls Lordsa Councillors— Councillors— clerics below burgess the rank of administrators abbot 0

3 burghs

1

0

Councillors— Others including lairds and secular non-burgess administrators

27

14

3 plus ‘laif’ of lords

Total

e

For the summons see: NRS E21/25 ff.50v–51r.

NRS CS6/2 f.153r. f Hannay cites a sederunt in the acts of the lords of council and session in relation to this convention (‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, p. 103). Although there is evidence of payments for summons, no such sederunt can now be located. There is a gap in the register between 25 August 1536 and November 1537 (i.e. there is a volume missing between NRS CS6/8 and NRS CS6/9), nor does it appear in the additional warrants of the books of sederunt (NRS4 CS4/1, NRS CS4/4). Whilst many of the warrants of acts and decreets (NRS CS15/1) for this period are unfit for production amongst those currently available for consultation there are no stray sederunts. It seems likely Hannay erroneously wrote ‘sederunt’ in place of ‘summons’.

d

c

Hannay suggested this convention was 35 strong (‘General Council and Conventions of Estates’ p. 103) on the basis of the sederunt in the council register. There is a possible further source: NRS CS5/44 f.16 is a dateless list of 45 names which appears amongst a set of early seventeenth-century notes on the council register and between items dated November 1530 and February 1530/1. A modern hand dates this to 21 January 1530 connecting it with the opening of a session on that date old style (NRS CS5/42 f. 1r is dateless but the preceding and following dates make 21 January the most likely). However, the names given do not exactly correspond to any of the sederunts from January 1530/1. It is unclear what this document is, either a real ‘sederunt’ (as it claims) or an attempt to reconstruct membership of the lords of session. If it were a copy of a real but no longer extant sederunt from January 1530/1 it was probably related to the convention. Comparing the two lists of names would give a hypothetical overall attendance of 55.

b

This is a compilation of those present 9–11 July 1528 who seem likely to have attended part of, if not the whole, convention. The sederunt lists contain gaps suggesting the clerk was uncertain about who was present at each individual meeting, so an inclusive approach is taken here.

a

These totals include Masters (the honorific title given to an earl’s eldest son and heir) and Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, who appeared amongst this group in the parliamentary sederunt.

19 September 1533 November 1536

Described as

Date

  APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS  

309

310 

APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

Table A3: Breakdown of Convention Attendance This table provides a detailed breakdown of attendance at the meetings given in Table A2. This is drawn from the sources cited in Table A2. Highlighted columns contain information drawn from summons rather than a sederunt. Some contextual information on attendance is indicated by the following symbols. – Dead ~  Not yet in post/post resigned/underage (16 or under) /  Abroad (through choice—e.g. travel, education or diplomatic service) !  In ward or in exile ? The sederunt for the 11 July 1528 convention contains blanks. This suggests further people were in attendance. Possible candidates are those whose names appear in the surrounding sederunts, the possibility of their presence is indicated by a question mark in the box next to their name.

James Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews (d.1539) Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow, Chancellor (d.1547) George Crighton, Bishop of Dunkeld Gavin Dunbar, Bishop of Aberdeen (d. March 1532) George Learmonth, co-adjudicator of Aberdeen William Stewart, dean of Glasgow, Provost of Lincluden, elect Aberdeen 1532, Treasurer 1529. Alexander Stewart, abbot of Scone 1518, bishop of Moray from 1529 (d.1537) Henry Wemys, bishop of Galloway William Chisholm, bishop of Dunblane John Hepburn, bishop of Brechin Robert Montgomery, bishop of Argyll (Lismore) James Hay, bishop of Ross Andrew Stewart, bishop of Caithness Robert Maxwell, bishop of Orkney John Campbell, bishop of the Isles (Sodor) Fearchar Mac Eachainn, bishop of the Isles Patrick Hepburn, prior of St Andrews, bishop of Moray from 1538 David Beaton, abbot of Arbroath, archbishop of St Andrews from 1539 George Drury, abbot of Dunfermeline Robert Cairncross, abbot of Holyrood Thomas Ker, abbot of Kelso (d.1534 succeeded by infant James Stewart) Andrew Drury, abbot of Melrose Alexander Milne, abbot of Cambuskenneth (first president of the session, d.1548) X

X

X

?

~

? ?

X

X

X X

?

X

X

X

X

~ X

~ X

X X X

X

X X

X X

X X

X X

X X

X

X X

X X

X

X

X X

X

X

X

X

~

X

– X

X –

X X

X

X

X

X

X

– X

X –

X X

X

X X

X X

X

– X

X X

X

X ~ X

X

X

X

– X

X X

X X

X

~

X

X

–

X –

X

~

X

–

–

X

11 July 1528 8 November 9 January 5 June January September December April May 1530 1531 1531 1532 1532 1532 1533 1533

/

~

X

–

–

(continued)

X

–

/

X

~

X X X

X

–

X –

X

September November 1533 1536

George Gordon, earl of Huntly James Stewart, earl of Moray James Hamilton, first earl of Arran James Hamilton, second earl of Arran Colin Campbell, third earl of Argyll Archibald Campbell, fourth earl of Argyll Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox Patrick Hepburn, earl of Bothwell Hugh Montgomery, second earl of Eglinton William Keith, third earl Marsichall James Douglas, earl of Morton David Lindsay, eighth earl of Crawford William Graham, earl of Montrose John Stewart, third earl of Atholl Gilbert Kennedy, third earl of Cassillis George Leslie, earl of Rothes ~

~

X ~

X ~ ?

~ X

X

– ~ – X ~ X

– ~ –

X ~ X

X X

X

X

X

~

X

X X

~ X

X

X – ~ – X X

~ X

X

X X

X X – ~ – X X

X X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

~

/ !

– ~ –

X

X

~ X

X

/ !

– ~ –

X

X

X

X X

/ !

– ~ –

X

X

/ !

– ~ –

11 July 1528 8 November 9 January 5 June January September December April May 1530 1531 1531 1532 1532 1532 1533 1533

Alexander Hamilton, abbot of Kilwinning Robert Reid, abbot of Kinloss (lord of session, bishop of Orkney from 1541) Ninian Fleming, prior of Whithorn John Philips, abbot of Lindores John Roul, prior of Pittenweem James Hepburn, dean of Dunkeld ? Donald Campbell, abbot of Coupar Angus X John Hamilton, abbot of Paisley (archbishop of St Andrews from 1546) John Hume, abbot of Jedburgh X James Haswell, abbot of Newbattle James Stewart, commendator of Dryburgh Alexander Dunbar, prior of Pluscarden

(continued)

X

X

/ ! X

X X – X –

X

X X X

/

–

–

X

X

X

September November 1533 1536

John Colquhoun de Lus John Dingwell, provost of St Trinity, Edinburgh

William Cunningham, Master of Glencairn, fourth earl from c.1541 John, lord Erskine Robert, fifth lord Maxwell George, sixth lord Seton Malcolm, lord Fleming George Hume, fourth lord Hume John Lyon, sixth lord Glamis d.1528 William Ruthven, master of Ruthven (lord Ruthven September 1528) Robert, third lord Sempill Patrick, third lord Gray Lord Graham [sic—Master of Montrose?] John Hay, third lord Yester Alexander Livingston, lord Livingston Henry Stewart, lord Methven James Ogilvy, fourth lord Ogilvy Lawrence third lord Oliphant Walter Lindsay, lord St John Andrew Stewart, third lord Avandale Hugh, fourth lord Somerville William Herries, third lord Herries Robert Creighton, fourth lord Creighton (d.1536) Ninian Ross, third lord Ross William Abernethy, fifth lord Salton John, fifth lord Lindsay of Byres (extraordinary senator of the college of justice 1532) Robert, lord Lyle Alexander, second lord Elphinstone William, fourth lord Sinclair John Johnston, laird of Johnston ? ?

X

X

X

X X

X

X

X X X

X X X X X

X X X

X

X

X X X

X X

X

–

X X –

X

X

X X

– X

X

X

X

X

– X

X

~ X

?

X ? ?

X X ?

X

X

– X

X

X

X

X X

X

X X X X X X X

X

– X

X

X

X

X

– X

X

–

X

X

–

X X X X

(continued)

X

X X

X

X

– X

X X

X

Burgh of Dundee Burgh of Perth Burgh of Stirling

George Creighton Richard Bothwell, parson of Ashkirk Alexander Dunbar, dean of Moray James Hepburn, dean of Dunkeld Robert Forman, dean of Glasgow William Gibson, dean of Restalrig James Brown, dean of Aberdeen Henry White, official of St Andrews Thomas Coutts, official of Lothian Sir Thomas Erskine of Brechin, secretary, 1526–42 Sir James Hamilton of Finnart James Colville of Easter Wemyss, comptroller (to February 1529, also 9 September 1530–8) Sir William Scott of Balwearie Sir John Campbell of Lundy Master Adam Otterburn of Auldhame, king’s advocate 1527–37 Nicholas Crawford of Oxgangs, justice clerk 1525–35 Thomas Scot of Pitgono, justice clerk 1536–9 Thomas Hay, dean of Dunbar James Foulis of Colinton, clerk register 1532–48 James Lawson, leading Edinburgh burgess Francis Bothwell, leading Edinburgh burgess

(continued)

?

?

?

?

? ? ?

X X

X X

X

X

X

X

X

–

X –

X

X X

X X

X

X

X X

X

X

X X

X

X X X X X

X

–

X

X

–

X

X X

X X

X

X

X

X X

X X

–

X X

X

X

X X

X X

X

–

X

–

–

11 July 1528 8 November 9 January 5 June January September December April May 1530 1531 1531 1532 1532 1532 1533 1533

X

–

X X X

–

September November 1533 1536

  Appendix A: Attendance at Conventions 

315

Table A4: Attendance at Parliament, Session, Lords of Articles and Council on 25 February 1541 Lords of the articles elected December 1540 RPS, 1540/12/7.

Parliamentary Sederunt 25 February 1541, morning RPS, 1540/12/41.

David Beaton archbishop of St Andrews Gavin Dunbar, archbishop of Glasgow, chancellor William Stewart, bishop of Aberdeen Patrick Hepburn, bishop of Moray Robert Cairncross, bishop of Ross Alexander Milne, abbot of Cambuskenneth

David Beaton archbishop of St Andrews Gavin Dunbar, archbishop of Glasgow, chancellor William Stewart, bishop of Aberdeen Patrick Hepburn, bishop of Moray

Robert Reid, abbot of Kinloss

George Gordon, earl of Huntly Archibald Campbell, earl of Argyll James Hamilton, earl of Arran William Graham, earl of Montrose John Erskine, lord Erskine William Ruthven, lord Ruthven Walter Lindsay, lord St John

Alexander Milne, abbot of Cambuskenneth Robert Reid, abbot of Kinloss George Dury, abbot of Dunfermline

Session 25 February 1541 (morning?) NRS CS6/14 f. 199v (see ff. 119r, 175r, 190v for attendance on previous days since no sederunt is listed)

‘Council and Articles’ 25 February 1541 (afternoon?) NRS CS6/14 f.201r.

[Alexander Milne, abbot of Cambuskenneth?]

David Beaton, archbishop of St Andrews Gavin Dunbar, archbishop of Glasgow, chancellor William Stewart bishop of Aberdeen Patrick Hepburn, bishop of Moray Robert Cairncross, bishop of Ross Alexander Milne, abbot of Cambuskenneth

[Robert Reid, abbot of Kinloss?]

Robert Reid, abbot of Kinloss

Gavin Dunbar, archbishop of Glasgow, chancellor

George Gordon, earl of Huntly Archibald Campbell, earl of Argyll James Hamilton, earl of Arran

George Gordon, earl of Huntly Archibald Campbell, earl of Argyll James Hamilton, earl of Arran

John Erskine, lord Erskine William Ruthven, lord Ruthven Walter Lindsay, lord Walter Lindsay, lord St John St John William Keith, earl Marischal William Hay, earl of Erroll, constable

John Erskine, lord Erskine William Ruthven, lord Ruthven Walter Lindsay, lord St John

(continued)

316 

APPENDIX A: ATTENDANCE AT CONVENTIONS

(continued) Lords of the articles elected December 1540 RPS, 1540/12/7.

Parliamentary Sederunt 25 February 1541, morning RPS, 1540/12/41.

Session 25 February 1541 (morning?) NRS CS6/14 f. 199v (see ff. 119r, 175r, 190v for attendance on previous days since no sederunt is listed)

‘Council and Articles’ 25 February 1541 (afternoon?) NRS CS6/14 f.201r.

Simon Preston, provost of Edinburgh William Adamson, for Edinburgh Oliver Maxton, provost of Perth David Rollock for Dundee Thomas Menzies of Pitfodels, provost of Aberdeen James Learmonth of Clatto, provost of St Andrews Sir Thomas Erskine of Brechin and Halton, secretary James Foulis of Colinton, clerk register Mr Robert Galbraith, parson of Spott Mr James Sinclair, parson of Snaw Mr Henry Balnaves of Halhill

James Foulis of Colinton, clerk register Mr Robert Galbraith, parson of Spott Mr James Sinclair, parson of Snaw

Mr Richard Bothwell, parson of Ashkirk William Gibson, dean of Restalrig William Lamb, parson of Conveth Mr John Lethame, parson of Kirkcrist Thomas Bellenden of Auchnoull, justice clerk Henry Lauder, advocate

Sir Thomas Erskine of Brechin and Halton, secretary James Foulis of Colinton, clerk register Mr Robert Galbraith, parson of Spott Mr James Sinclair, parson of Snaw Mr Henry Balnaves of Halhill Mr Richard Bothwell, parson of Ashkirk William Gibson, dean of Restalrig

Mr John Lethame, parson of Kirkcrist Thomas Bellenden of Auchnoull, justice clerk Henry Lauder, advocate

  Appendix A: Attendance at Conventions 

317

S ederunt of Lords of Council and Articles, 17 February 1541, NRS CS6/14 f.179r David Beaton, archbishop of St Andrews; Gavin Dunbar, archbishop of Glasgow, chancellor; William Stewart bishop of Aberdeen; Patrick Hepburn, bishop of Moray; Robert Cairncross, bishop of Ross; Alexander Milne, abbot of Cambuskenneth; Robert Reid, abbot of Kinloss; James Hamilton, earl of Arran; John, lord Erskine; Walter Lindsay, lord St John; Richard Bothwell; William Gibson; Robert Galbraith; John Lothan; John Sinclair; Sir Thomas Erskine of Brechin and Halton, secretary; James Foulis of Colinton, clerk register; Thomas Bellenden, justice clerk; Henry Balnaves; Henry Lauder.

Appendix B: Repassed Legislation

Table B1: Legislation in the 1535 Parliamentary Session Scored through = remained at article stage, some of these were passed in 1541. Foreign policy advice on 10 June excluded (1535/6–8) Judicial activities including general and specific remissions and procedure relating to them (e.g.1540/12/27) are not included. Statutes relating to royal finances (e.g. tax, annexation, revocation and feuing) do not count as general statutes and are grouped with private acts. All references are to the RPS edition.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4

319

320 

APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION

Legislation first Act made during reign of

Described as being sourced in/ relationship to previous statutes

All relevant statutes identified

Robert I (r.1306–29)

1535/9 Privileges of the Kirk

Existing privileges

1318/3 (repassed in most subsequent legislative sessions)

1535/25 Slaying salmon

‘actis’…‘with addition’. Composition no longer to be taken, instead all cases to go to particular diets.

1318/13 1401/2/11 1424/10 1425/3/13 1430/27 1450/1/2 1458/3/34–5 1490/2/21

1535/26 Fish cruives and yairs

‘soverane lordis fader, quham God assolye, and utheris his progenitouris’. Addition—new penalty.

1318/13 1425/3/13 1469/27 1478/6/86 (citing James I & David) 1458/3/35 1488/10/52 1490/2/21

1535/32 Provision for Innkeepers

‘actis maid of before be King James the First and utheris’ Provisions extended and order for yearly update on prices to be made.

1357/11/18 1424/23 1426/14

1535/15 (see also 1540/12/81) Keeping money in the realm

‘Sovereign lord’ and ‘progenitouris’. Enhanced incentives for searchers.

1370/2/9 1372/3/3 1426/8 1427/7/3 1428/3/10 1450/1/29 1466/39 1468/4 1473/7/14 1478/6/81 1482/12/82 1484/2/41 1488/1/19 1493/5/13 A1496/6/3 A1504/3/112 [1504/3/29] A1524/8/8 1526/6/36 1532/7

David II (r.1329–71)

(continued)

  APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION 

321

(continued) Legislation first Act made during reign of

Robert II (r.1371–90)

Described as being sourced in/ relationship to previous statutes

All relevant statutes identified

1535/40 ‘the actis maid of befor’. burgh privileges /privileges of merchants in burghs approved

1357/11/15 1427/7/5 1467/10/18 May also encompass individual confirmations e.g. 1327/4/11

1535/45 No-one to trouble burghs using privileges

Privileges ‘grauntit to thame be oure soverane lord and his predecessouris, kingis of Scotland, and in contrar the actis and statutis maid tharupoune’. New legal recourse provided.

1357/11/15 1427/7/5 1467/10/18 May also encompass individual confirmations e.g. 1327/4/11

Old acts and statutes. Fines silently increased.

1401/12/15 1424/22 1425/3/11 1458/3/31, 39 A1493/5/19 1504/3/33

1535/22 Slaying hares

‘acte maid of before’, to be kept in all points.

1401/2/14 1458/3/37

1535/37 slaughter

‘actis of parliament maid of before’… ‘with additioune’. Increased clarity for implementing officers; penalties extended to harbouring rebels.

1397/1–2 1432/3/2 (also incorporated in 1469/25) 1471/5/3

None

Robert III 1535/17 (r.1390–1406) Destroying woods, burning moors

(continued)

322 

APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION

(continued) Legislation first Act made during reign of

Described as being sourced in/ relationship to previous statutes

All relevant statutes identified

James I (r.1406–47)

1535/38 Masterful Beggars

‘the acte maid tharupoune of befor be King James the First…with this additioune’. System to restrict to parish of origin and order for particular diets.

1428/3/5 1429/10/6 1450/1/20 [1458/3/18—same topic different approach] 1478/6/88 A1504/3/114

1535/21 Orchard breaking

‘actis maid of before’. Revision—henceforth to be called to particular diets.

1425/3/11 A1504/3/13

1535/53 Riding in sober manner

No mention of previous acts. Adapts previous, adds an exception and specifies a punishment.

1428/3/11

1535/34 Export ban into England

Not noted. Not exactly the same concerns as previous act but broadly an export ban.

Variant on: 1436/10/11 1525/2/14

1535/16 Planting orchards

‘King James the Secund and utheris oure soverane lordis progenitouris…with this addicioune…’. More details, fines imposed.

1458/3/28 A1504/3/119

1535/42 Time limit on sailing with staple goods

‘acte maid be Kingis James the Secund…with this additioune’; fine quadrupled and exception included.

No act from James II which is a close match identified, the nearest are 1458/3/2 1467/1/5

1535/44 Choosing burgh officers

‘pane of acts and statutes of before’ to be implemented for avoiding burgh jurisdiction. The act mixes an old provision and new concerns.

1458/3/58 (part of the new act incorporates part of this old act) 1491/4/21 (part of this act melded with additional material in 1535)

James II (r.1447–60)

(continued)

  APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION 

323

(continued) Legislation first Act made during reign of

Described as being sourced in/ relationship to previous statutes

All relevant statutes identified

James III (r.1460–88)

1535/19 Slaughter of does

Act of ‘King James the Thrid,…to be putt to executioune in all punctis’.

A1474/5/16

1535/41 Penalties on export bans

‘King James the Thrid, and als ratifiit and apprevit be umquhile oure soverane lord that last decessit’. Some amendments. Increase of fines and clarity on searchers.

1467/1/1, 3 1490/2/19

1535/27 Boats for fishing

‘acte and statute maid of before’.

1471/5/3 A1493/5/21 A1504/3/115

1535/39 Fleeing to girth

‘acte of parliament maid tharupoune of before’. More responsibility on masters of girths to implement act.

1469/25 (this act in turn incorporates provisions of 1432/3/2)

James IV 1535/23 (r.1488–1513) Remedy for destroying houses etc.

‘acte maid tharupoune be the maist excellent prince King James the Ferd’. More detail on who was responsible for checking the acts were implemented.

1491/4/10

1535/20 Breakers of dovecots

No mention of specific previous acts; text mentions it is an extension applying penalties to helpers.

1504/3/30

1535/28 Wappenscha wings

Acts of King’s father mentioned, with addition, but the manuscript breaks off before the addition is given.

No direct match, adaption of the schedule given in: 1425/3/24 1426/20 1458/3/7 1491/12/17 1504/3/40

(continued)

324 

APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION

(continued) Legislation first Act made during reign of

Described as being sourced in/ relationship to previous statutes

Minority of James V (1513–28)

1535/10 Against heretics

Gives date first passed, 17 July 1525/7/32 1525. Has a new addition and MS marked by Foulis incorporates a 1527 conciliar addition. Clarifies and extends boundaries of heretical activity.

1535/11 Process of cursing

Act made of before by his grace, with addition of procedural tightening and removal of appeal prospects.

1525/7/48 MS marked by Foulis

1535/51 Procedure of ayres

Gives date first passed as 10 July 1525 (extant MS dates to 3 August). Unacknowledged addition clarifying procedures and setting fines

1525/7/50 MS marked by Foulis

1535/52

Not noted, text identical

A1515/7/3

All relevant statutes identified

New acts: 1535/18, 24 (in response to a specific event but the text suggests this was intended to apply beyond that specific tax), 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 43, 46, 54 Private, royal financial or otherwise time-limited acts: 1535/12 (provincial council), 14, 55

Table B2: Legislation in the December 1540 Parliamentary Session This parliament also heard a reading of the statutes of 1535 made in the last session. Judicial activities including general and specific remissions and procedure relating to them (e.g. 1540/12/27) are not included. Statutes relating to the royal lands (e.g. annexation, revocation and feuing) do not count as general statutes and are grouped with private acts. Scored through = remained at article stage, some of these were passed in 1541. All references are to the RPS edition.

  APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION 

325

Legislation first Act made during reign of

Described as being sourced in/relationship to previous statutes

All relevant statutes identified

Robert I (r.1306–29)

‘in oure sovirane lordis tyme that now is and his predecessouris’. ‘ratifeis and apprevis the actis and statutis maid tharupoune of befor’, with addition extending definition covered by the act.

1318/3

David II (r.1329–71) Robert II (r.1371–90) Robert III (r.1390–1406) James I (r.1406–47)

James II (r.1447–60) James III (r.1460–88)

1540/12/12 Freedom of Holy Kirk 1540/12/25 Leasing-makers

1318/23 1425/2/23 1458/3/38

None None None

1540/12/30 No previous act Arms and armour acknowledged. at wappenschawing Fines increased considerably. Discretion of local commissioners replaced with specific guidance. 1540/12/31 No previous acts Arms and armour acknowledged, provisions at wappenshawing updated. for burgesses 1540/28 ‘ratifyis and apprevis the acte maid be his hienes fader of maist noble mynd’.

Adaption of provisions in: 1430/15 1481/4/8 1491/4/17

Adaption of provisions in: 1430/18 1491/4/17 Adaption of the schedules given in: 1425/3/24 1426/20 1458/3/7 1491/12/17 1504/3/40 1535/28—proposed, with addition (not recorded) not passed until 1540

None None

(continued)

326 

APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION

(continued) Legislation first Act made during reign of

Described as being sourced in/relationship to previous statutes

Act ‘maid of auld’ No change to substance. Addition specifies punishment is provided for by common law, canon, civil and statutes. 1540/12/11 ‘augmenting, strenthning Addition to the act and helping’ previous act. of cursing None

All relevant statutes identified

James IV 1540/12/21 (r.1488–1513) 1540/12/22

A1504/3/135

Minority of James V (1513–28) Earlier in the personal rule (1528–40)

1525/7/48 1535/11

1504/3/26

New acts: 1540/12/13, 1540/12/14, 1540/12/15 (consciously acknowledges novelty), 1540/12/16, 1540/12/17, 1540/12/18 (one off order comparable to 1504/3/26), 1540/12/19 (but picks up on old problem of notaries—1504/3/26, A1504/138), 1540/12/20 (acknowledges novelty—arises from previous), 1540/12/23, 1540/12/24, 1540/12/29, 1540/12/34, 1540/12/32 (echoes temporary provisions in 1484/2/30), 1540/12/33, 1540/12/34 Private acts and acts appertaining to the royal lands: 1540/12/10 (revocation), 1540/12/26

Table B3: Legislation in the March 1541 Parliamentary Session Judicial activities, private acts and statutes related to the royal lands are not included amongst general statutes. All references to the RPS edition. Legislation first made during reign of

Act

Robert I (r.1306–29)

None

Described as being sourced in/relationship to previous statutes

Relevant predecessor statutes identified

(continued)

  APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION 

327

(continued) Legislation first made during reign of

Act

Described as being sourced in/relationship to previous statutes

Relevant predecessor statutes identified

David II (r.1329–71)

1540/12/79 Privileges of Burghs

‘oure soverane lordis lawis, statutis and actis of parliament maid of before…with all privilegis grantit to thame be oure soverane lord and his maist noble progenitouris’. ‘actis and statutis maid of before’.

1357/11/15 1427/7/5 1467/10/18 1535/40 May also encompass individual confirmations, for example, 1327/4/11

1540/12/81 Ban on export of money from realm, especially for purchase of benefices.

1370/2/9 1372/3/3 1426/8 1427/7/3 1428/3/10 1450/1/29 1466/39 1468/4 1473/7/14 1478/6/81 1482/12/82 1484/2/41 1488/1/19 1493/5/13 A1496/6/3 A1504/3/112 [1504/3/29] A1524/8/8 1526/6/36 1532/7 1535/15 (continued)

328 

APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION

(continued) Legislation first made during reign of

Act

None Robert II (r.1371–90) Robert III 1540/12/68 (r.1390–1406) Slaughter, mutilation and harbouring rebels

James I (r.1406–47)

Described as being sourced in/relationship to previous statutes

Relevant predecessor statutes identified

1397/1 1399/1/14 1432/3/2–6 1440/8/4 1469/25 1478/6/80 1540/12/99 1399/1/19 Sale and export of 1425/3/9 tallow 1486/3/3 1526/11/26 (noted acts ‘of before’; increased punishment) 1540/12/73 ‘actis of parliament 1425/3/3 Hospital reform maid tharupoune of 1458/3/13 befor be oure soverane 1466/42 lordis maist noble 1469/30 progenitouris’. 1540/12/82 Nothing cited, adapts 1478/6/87 Standard barrel for some of previous 1487/10/20 salmon and other provisions. 1489/1/5 fish Also part of general weight and measure provisions including 1426/16–17 1427/3/2–6, which cite David I None

James II (r.1447–60) None James III (r.1460–88) James IV 1540/12/80 (r.1488–1513) Of packing and peeling 1540/12/96 No legate to be received in the realm

‘actis of parliament maid of before be oure soverane lordis progenitouris’ with extended duties on officers. Part of the group of acts from ‘parliamentis in his less aige, and now sene ovir agane’.

None.

A1504/3/134. The 1504 statute was particular this makes it general. Part of the group of 1488/1/24 acts from ‘parliamentis A1493/5/6—possibly in his less aige, and 1526/6/41 (cited ‘auld now sene ovir agane’. actis’) (continued)

  APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION 

329

(continued) Legislation first made during reign of

Act

Described as being sourced in/relationship to previous statutes

Relevant predecessor statutes identified

Minority of James V (1513–28)

1540/12/69 Staunching of theft 1540/12/92 Notary’s mark needed to certify evidents 1540/12/93 Burning corn, fire-raising, ravishing 1540/12/94 Restricting legal action for benefices at Rome

Nothing mentioned.

A1515/7/3

Part of the group of acts from ‘parliamentis in his less aige, and now sene ovir agane’. Part of the group of acts from ‘parliamentis in his less aige, and now sene ovir agane’ Part of the group of acts from ‘parliamentis in his less aige, and now sene ovir agane’.

1525/7/31

1540/12/95 Nearest of kin to have goods of intestate deaths 1540/12/97 Three market days for selling bread

Part of the group of acts from ‘parliamentis in his less aige, and now sene ovir agane’. Part of the group of acts from ‘parliamentis in his less aige, and now sene ovir agane’. 1540/12/98 Part of the group of Three market days acts from ‘parliamentis for selling flesh in his less aige, and now sene ovir agane’. 1540/12/100 Part of the group of Counterfeiting acts from ‘parliamentis coins in his less aige, and now sene ovir agane’. 1540/12/101 Part of the group of Taking place of acts from ‘parliamentis bishops and in his less aige, and abbots after death now sene ovir agane’.

1525/7/52

1526/6/37 (this tightened up provisions in ‘auld actis and statutis’. These included 1471/5/4; 1484/2/39; 1488/1/20; 1488/10/49; A1493/5/4–5; A1496/6/3; 1525/7/20) 1526/6/40

1526/11/54

1526/11/55

1526/11/57

1526/11/11 (also included

(continued)

330 

APPENDIX B: REPASSED LEGISLATION

(continued) Legislation first made during reign of

Act

Described as being sourced in/relationship to previous statutes

Earlier in the personal rule (1528–40)

1540/12/55–6 Provision of artillery in realm 1540/12/67 Bringing in property 1540/12/86 Forestallers

Relevant predecessor statutes identified

Suggested but not passed in 1535: 1535/29–30 1535/36

1535/35

New acts: 1540/12/55, 56 (possible inspiration from 1425/3/19), 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 70 (some precedents for export ban and market control elements, e.g. 1535/34), 71 (parliament had previously dealt with similar things 1451/10/9, A1493/5/11), 72 (the principle government should deal with prices was established in 1450/1/22, 1452/5–6, 1535/55), 77 (response to a ‘new inventit’ problem), 1540/12/78 (but A1504/3/121 and 1535/11 deal with similar concerns). 1540/12/83—cites ‘common law’, extension of practices in 1426/5; 1540/12/84 (related to 1469/30, A1493/5/15, A1496/6/6/). 1540/12/85; 1540/12/87 (clarifies and specifies provisions implied in 1426/10/16–17, 1427/3/2–6, 1458/3/19, 1467/10/9, 1468/1/10); 1540/12/88 (precedent set in 1455/8/2, 1472/12 etc.) Private acts/acts relating to the royal lands: 1540/12/72, 1540/12/75, 1540/12/18 (precedent set in: A1504/3/136)

 Table B4: Comparative Summary of the Three Sessions Year

Total Acts

1535 39 1540 25 1541 42

Private/royal land/time limited acts

New acts

Repassed acts (of which % Articles not source acknowledged) repassed made statutes in that session

3 2 3

9 15 19

27 (24) 8 (6) 20 (13)

69 32 48

4 0 0

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Index

A Abel, Adam (Observantine Friar), 64, 65 Aberdeen, bishop of, see Dunbar, Gavin, bishop of Aberdeen (d.1532); Stewart, William, dean of Glasgow, provost of Lincluden, bishop of Aberdeen, treasurer Aberdeen, burgh of, 46, 49, 143n15, 145, 147, 151, 155, 157, 163, 164, 169–170, 172, 175, 199, 203, 206–208, 211–212, 212n160, 216, 271 provosts of (see Menzies, Gilbert, provost of Aberdeen; Menzies, Thomas of Pitfodels, provost of Aberdeen) Administrators, royal, 5–6, 14, 23, 35–37, 40, 48–51, 71–73, 78, 87–88, 102–103, 110, 127, 153, 154, 171, 240, 284, 288–289, 291 See also Campbell, John of Lundy; Crawford, Nichol, justice clerk;

Erskine, Sir Thomas of Brechin, secretary; Foulis, James, clerk register; Lauder, Henry, lord advocate; Otterburn, Adam, lord advocate, provost of Edinburgh Advocate, King’s, see Lauder, Henry, lord advocate; Otterburn, Adam, lord advocate, provost of Edinburgh Albany, duke of, see Stuart, John, duke of Albany, Governor of Scotland Annexation of customs and lands to the crown, 13, 40–42, 179–181, 202–203, 218–222, 225, 229, 232, 252, 273, 283 Argyll, earls of, see Campbell, Archibald, fourth earl of Argyll; Campbell, Colin, third earl of Argyll Arran, earl of, see Hamilton, James, first earl of Arran; Hamilton, James, second earl of Arran, Governor of Scotland 1543–54

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Blakeway, Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89377-4

347

348 

INDEX

Articles, lords of, see Lords of the articles Artillery, ‘tax’ for, 211, 214–216, 218 Ayr, burgh of, 46, 58, 161, 164, 169, 245 Ayres, justice, see Justice ayres B Balnaves, Henry of Halhill, 316, 317 Barton, Robert, comptroller, 25 Beaton, David, Cardinal, archbishop of St Andrews, abbot of Arbroath, 64, 123, 158–159, 161, 191–195, 200, 220, 311, 315, 317 Beaton, James, archbishop of St Andrews, 23, 102n71, 103n73, 111, 187–191, 243–245, 258n126, 276–277, 297, 311 Bellenden, John, author of La Discours Particulier, 231 Bellenden, John, translator, 6, 29, 33–34 Bellenden, Thomas, justice clerk and councillor, 3, 64, 194, 277, 316, 317 Boece, Hector, historian, 6, 29, 33, 87 Borders, Anglo-Scottish, 46, 48, 61, 70, 74, 88, 90–94, 96–9, 101, 105–126, 135, 210, 211, 234, 247, 258, 271–272 See also Canonbie; War, with England Bothwell, earl of, see Hepburn, Patrick, earl of Bothwell Bothwell, Francis, Edinburgh burgess, 19n61, 46, 102n71, 110, 172, 210, 237n83, 314 Bothwell, Richard, parson of Ashkirk, 190n61, 314, 316 Buchanan, George, 55, 68, 125–126, 128, 193, 195, 243, 284, 294

Buchan, earl of, see Stewart, John, earl of Buchan Burghs attendance at conventions of burghs, 73, 139–140, 176, 287 attendance at parliament, 10, 57, 140, 148, 154, 164–166, 176, 180, 287 commissioners on committee of the articles, 46 private acts in parliament, 166–7, 176 royal interference in appointments in, 162, 170 securing privileges, 166–171, 176 use of crown administrative structures, 140–141, 167–171 See also Aberdeen, burgh of; Ayr, burgh of; Conventions of burghs; Dundee; Edinburgh, burgh of; Lanark; Linlithgow; Lords of the articles; Peebles; Perth (St Johnston); Selkirk; Staple, Scottish; Taxation C Cairncross, Robert, abbot of Holyrood, bishop of Ross, 310, 315, 317 Campbell, Archibald, fourth earl of Argyll, 71, 74, 89, 92, 101–105, 122–125, 297, 299, 300 Campbell, Colin, third earl of Argyll, 89, 101–105 Campbell, John, bishop of the Isles, 101 Campbell, John of Cawdor, 93 Campbell, John of Lundy, 50, 94, 107, 110, 127, 149–150, 197–198, 214, 297 Campeggio, Lorenzo, Cardinal, 244

 INDEX 

Canochston, Alexander John, see Mac Dhòmhnaill, Alaisdair, of Islay Canonbie, 61, 105–111, 126, 206 See also Borders, Anglo-Scottish Canongate, 166–167 Cassillis, earl of, see Kennedy, Gilbert, second earl of Cassillis, d. 1527; Kennedy, Gilbert, third earl of Cassillis Cessford, laird of, see Kerr, Walter, laird of Cessford Charles I, King of Scots, 66 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 149–150 Charteris, Patrick, treason trial of, 233–234 Charters, Robert, laird of Amisfield, 170 Chisholm, William, bishop of Dunblane, 101 Church, 191, 196, 210, 244 legislation in support of, 63, 76, 190, 197, 252, 255, 259–262, 275–280, 286 presence in royal administration (see also Beaton, David, Cardinal, archbishop of St Andrews, abbot of Arbroath; Dunbar, Gavin, archbishop of Glasgow, chancellor (d.1547); Stewart, William, dean of Glasgow, provost of Lincluden, bishop of Aberdeen, treasurer), 5, 12, 23, 32, 58, 72, 101–103, 132, 134, 182, 186, 190–191, 193–195, 288 reform of, 1, 3, 67, 278 taxes on (see Taxation) See also Heresy Clement VII, Pope, 23, 62–63, 186, 244–245 Cockburn, William of Henderland, 90 Coinage, 76, 177–178, 265

349

College of justice foundation of, 5–6, 32–34, 36, 62, 70, 75, 165, 232, 255–258, 261–262, 276 lack of changes to record as a result of foundation, 7, 18, 32–33 senators of, 73, 257 taxation to fund (see also Taxation), 179, 186–191, 221, 243, 260 See also Court of session; Parliament, Scottish, 1532 session Collison, John, parliamentary commissioner from Aberdeen, 49 Colville, James, of Easter Wemys, comptroller, 102n71, 116, 190n61, 246–247, 249, 250, 282, 288, 314 Colville, Robert, 247, 250, 282 Common Law (ius commune), 248–249, 254, 282, 326 Conventions attendance at, 28, 56–57, 70–73, 84–85, 91, 109–111, 286, 305–314 changing over time, 11–12, 28, 51–55 held in a series, 107, 113, 124, 126, 132–133, 136–137, 286 of the three estates, 11, 55–56 period of summons for, 27 relationship to council, 12–13, 26–28, 55, 59–61, 117, 122, 124–126, 130–133, 135, 286–287, 289 relationship to parliament, 12–13, 254–255 and taxation, 12, 36, 65, 98–99, 118–119, 203–212 terminology to describe, 11–12, 25, 52–56, 117, 130, 135, 142 to discuss religious reform, 3, 11, 67, 69

350 

INDEX

Conventions (cont.) to discuss royal marriage, 23–24, 26, 56, 69–70, 86, 139 to discuss warfare, 12–13, 23–24, 28, 61, 70–72, 83, 86, 98–99, 109, 114–120, 124–125 varied form, 20–21 July 1528, 53–54, 60, 117, 284, 294, 308, 310–314 May 1530, 60, 91–98, 117, 124, 294 November 1530, 23–28, 60, 69, 80, 98, 134, 204, 235, 308, 310–314 January 1531, 24, 27, 54, 60, 83–84, 98–99, 205–206, 235, 308, 310–314 June 1531, 20, 60, 124, 295, 308, 310–314 January 1532, 61, 70–72, 107, 109, 115, 117, 124, 125, 206, 296, 306, 308, 310–314 March 1532, 62, 64, 69, 296 May 1532, 70, 187–188, 278, 296 June 1532, 61 September 1532, 61, 66, 107, 113–117, 120, 124, 211, 297, 308, 310–314 December 1532, 65, 72, 107, 117, 297, 308, 310–314 January 1533, 65, 107, 118–119, 122, 206–208, 297 April 1533, 55, 73, 119–120, 297, 308, 310–314 May 1533, 73, 120, 298, 309–314 September 1533, 73, 299, 309–314 November 1536, 56, 61, 73, 287, 301, 309–314 after coronation of Marie de Guise, 1540, 3, 11, 67, 140, 278, 301 summer of 1542, 67–68, 136, 302 1545, 68–69

1561, 68–69 possible further conventions with weaker evidence, 62–68, 129, 295–305 Conventions of burghs, 10–11, 140 attendance at, 144–146, 153, 164 crown officials and, 142, 161–162 development over time, 140–145, 161–163, 174, 290 discussion of the staple in, 11, 13, 83, 140–141, 144, 146–164, 287 records of, 142–146, 143n15 taxation granted in (see Taxation) 1522, 143, 146–147 1526, 143–144, 152–156, 161 April 1529, 143–145, 163, 165, 168–170, 197, 294 March 1531, 83, 143, 145, 151, 169, 295 March 1534, 143, 146, 152–153, 162, 163, 175, 198–199, 300 December 1539, 143–144, 155–156, 162, 163, 168, 175, 301 April 1541, 143, 157–158, 162–164, 175, 302 further unrecorded meetings, 144, 153 Conventions of the three estates, see Conventions Council, secret, privy English (see England) French (see France) Hungarian (see Hungary) Scottish (see also Conventions; James V, correspondence with; Lords of the articles; lords of the articles and council; Session, court of), 1, 3, 6, 10–13, 21, 24–60, 62, 66–68, 70–80, 85, 101–105, 110, 113, 123,

 INDEX 

128–137, 139, 146–147, 150, 154–156, 158–161, 173–175, 194, 204, 207, 211, 228, 237, 239–241, 243, 254, 258, 265, 270, 272, 279, 286–289; administrative vs. advisory role, 31–32, 76–78, 80, 121; altering texts of parliamentary statutes, 255–257, 259–261; attendance at, 102–103; burgess influence on, 208–209; change over time, 7, 31–35, 51–52, 57, 142; for the commonweal, 33–34; composition of, 91, 98, 162, 172, 182n20, 225, 288; corporate unity of, 77; jurisdictional separation from session, 6–7, 32–33, 122, 134, 142, 288; managing warfare, 64, 83–84, 86, 88–89, 92–105, 108–109, 114, 116–117, 119–122, 124–125, 209, 223; meeting places, 46; records of, 7–8, 15, 17–20, 32–34, 42, 48, 56, 69, 80, 92–94, 118–119, 139, 167, 183, 217, 246, 281, 287, 290; summoning conventions and parliament, 17, 83, 107, 284; and tax (see also Taxation), 178–182, 187, 199, 205, 210, 224 Swedish (see Sweden) Counsel, 3, 5–7, 12–15, 21, 29–32, 36, 46–48, 51, 71, 77–81, 85–87, 90, 103, 115, 124, 126, 129–30, 132–133, 174, 219, 227, 245, 250, 287 See also Conventions; Council, secret, privy; Parliament, Scottish

351

Court of session, see Session, court of Crawford, Nichol, justice clerk, 36, 48, 71, 78, 190n61, 237n38, 314 Crighton, George, bishop of Dunkeld, 102n71, 190, 297, 298, 311 Cromwell, Thomas, 285 Crown income, 40, 89, 177, 186, 201–203, 216–219, 221, 223 See also Annexation of customs and lands to the crown; Customs; Taxation Crusade, 23, 62, 112, 187, 278 Cullane, Andrew, provost of Aberdeen, 49 Cunningham, William, master of, 313 Cupar, 164 Customs, see crown income D Darius, Silvester, papal envoy, 62–63, 66, 186, 276 David II, King of Scots, 263, 281, 320, 325, 327 Debatable lands, 106–107 See also Canonbie Denmark-Norway, 220 Douglas, Alison, lady Wedderburn, 306 Douglas, Archibald, earl of Angus, 53–54, 78, 111–112, 191, 239, 250, 307 forfeiture of (see also Parliament, Scottish, 1528 session), 165, 220, 251, 282–284 regime of, 33, 147–148, 150, 234, 259–261 troublesome to James V, 74, 89, 106, 233, 253 Douglas, James, earl of Morton, 14–15, 167, 312

352 

INDEX

Douglas, James, of Parkheid, 247 Douglas, Janet, lady Glamis, 231–234 Douglas, Sir George of Pittendreich, 220, 233–234, 282 Drummond, Alexander of Carnock, 232 Dumbarton, 169 Dumfries, 96, 108 Dunbar, Gavin, archbishop of Glasgow, chancellor (d.1547), 23, 47n96, 62, 71, 78, 94, 102n71, 113, 120, 123, 190, 190n61, 256, 258n156, 277, 297, 298, 311, 315, 317 speaking on behalf of James V, 61, 76, 109, 125 Dunbar, Gavin, bishop of Aberdeen (d.1532), 46, 243, 243n65, 258n126, 311 Dundee, 46, 139, 147, 152, 155, 163, 164, 170, 216, 306, 314, 316 Dunkeld, bishop of, see Crighton, George, bishop of Dunkeld E Edinburgh, burgh of, 46, 164, 166–167, 171–172, 200, 202, 210, 273, 306 burgh council of, 152, 155, 159, 160, 162 negotiating on the staple, 147, 151–152, 155–160 position amongst burghs, 172–174, 202, 208–209 provosts of (see Bothwell, Francis, Edinburgh burgess; Lawson, James, provost of Edinburgh and councillor,Maxwell, Robert, bishop of Orkney; Maxwell, Robert, fifth Lord; Otterburn, Adam, lord advocate, provost of

Edinburgh; Preston, Simon, provost of Edinburgh) role of burgesses of in James’s administration, 5, 25, 36–37, 73, 139, 162, 208, 210 Eglinton, earl of, see Montgomery, Hugh, second earl of Eglinton Elizabeth I of England, younger cousin of James V, 78, 87 England, 43, 63, 234, 247, 250–251, 285 council of, 65–66, 87, 91 pilgrimage of Grace, 1536, 34 relations with Scotland (see also Borders, Anglo-Scottish; Canonbie; London, Treaty of, 1534; Taxation, for warfare), 7, 14, 29, 55, 59, 61, 64–68, 70, 71, 97, 105–127, 135, 182–184, 194–196, 203, 206, 210, 211, 234, 243–244, 275, 294, 322 Erskine, John Lord, 23, 37, 45, 102n71, 242, 297, 299, 313, 315, 317 Erskine, Sir Thomas of Brechin, secretary, 23, 25, 35–37, 48, 62, 102n71, 127, 130, 239, 295, 314, 316, 317 Estates, see Conventions; Parliament, Scottish Eure, William, English border official, 3, 11–12, 67, 192–193, 277 Exchequer, 7, 8, 17, 27, 39, 50, 74, 102, 133, 154, 174, 189, 203, 206, 219, 271, 288 F Falkland, 20, 98, 172, 242 Ferniherst, laird of, see Kerr, Andrew, laird of Ferniherst Feuing, 184, 191, 222, 225

 INDEX 

Fleming, Malcolm, third lord Fleming, 45, 71, 116–117, 121, 297 Forbes, master of, 231 Forestalling, 168, 269–270, 275, 330 Foulis, James, clerk register, 16, 25, 35–37, 78, 102n71, 121–122, 159, 173, 210, 220–221, 253, 260, 272, 279–280, 288, 314, 316, 317 France, 95 council of/advice giving in, 34–35, 79, 134–135 James V visits, 56, 61, 172, 189, 200, 203–204, 218, 251, 284 relations with Scotland, 23, 64, 127–132, 139, 158, 182–184, 194, 199, 214 François I of France, father-in-law of James V, 64, 75, 79, 106, 111, 130–132, 134, 194 G Galloglass, 123–124 Geddes, William, 43–44, 229, 238–239 Glamis, Lady lord (see Lyon, John, lord Glamis) See also Douglas, Janet, lady Glamis Glasgow, archbishop of, see Dunbar, Gavin, archbishop of Glasgow, chancellor (d.1547) Glasgow, burgh of, 205–6 Glencairn, William Cunningham, Master of, see Cunningham, William, Master of Gonzolles, Antoine, 182–183 Gordon, George, earl of Huntly, 45, 88, 245–246, 297, 299, 312, 315 Graham, William, earl of Montrose, 23, 35, 37, 45, 71, 115, 297, 299, 300, 312, 315

353

Gray, Patrick, third lord, 45, 102n71, 115, 297, 299, 313 Guise, Marie de, Queen of Scots, 1, 3, 8, 11, 36, 64, 67, 80, 128, 131, 136, 167, 213, 215, 219, 245, 251–252, 278, 301 H Haddington, 113, 117–118, 166 f.109, 167 Hamilton, James, first earl of Arran, 182–184, 312 Hamilton, James, of Kincavill, 220, 221n198 Hamilton, James, second earl of Arran, Governor of Scotland 1543–54, 8, 80, 102n71, 165, 215, 248, 257, 299, 300, 312 Hamilton, Sir James, of Finnart, 41, 78, 91, 94, 220, 231, 238, 297, 299, 300, 314, 315 Hay, James, Bishop of Ross (d.1538), 62, 94, 101, 310 Hay, John, third lord Yester, 115, 313 Hebrides 1531 projected campaign against, 23–24, 50, 60–61, 70, 80, 83–84, 88–94, 96–105, 113, 123, 204–206, 217, 235–237 1540 voyage to, 135, 216–217, 275, 283 Henderson, James, Edinburgh burgess and troublemaker, 157–158 Henry VIII of England, uncle of James V, 5, 34, 46, 53, 66, 95–96, 106–107, 110–112, 114, 185, 234, 244, 251, 275–276, 278, 285 failed plans to meet James V at York, 30, 96, 192–194 ‘son of perdition and of Satan’, 195

354 

INDEX

Henry VII of England, grandfather of James V, 36–37, 65, 72, 201 Hepburn, Patrick, bishop of Moray, 315, 317 Hepburn, Patrick, earl of Bothwell, 102, 108, 110, 237n41, 258, 312 Hepburn, Sir Patrick of Waughton, 232–233, 237–238, 240 Heresy, 5, 63–64, 76, 101n67, 179, 182, 187–188, 190, 195, 195n87, 220–221, 224, 228, 230, 259–261, 275–280 Holstein, duke of, 46–47 Hostelries, 263 Howard, Thomas, third duke of Norfolk, 182–183 Hume, George Lord, 59, 64, 100, 116, 119–122, 209, 299, 313 Hume, John, abbot of Jedburgh, 59, 116, 312 Hume, John, of Blackadder, 233–234 Hungary, 26 council of, 134–135 Huntly, earl of, see Gordon, George, earl of Huntly I Imperium, 6, 19, 35, 284–286, 291 Inflation, 177–178, 216, 218n185, 268, 320 Inverkeithing, 153, 164 Inverness, 235, 238n41 excessively cold in winter, 14 Ireland, 106, 113, 122–124 Isles, see Hebrides J James III, King of Scots, 3, 8, 9, 96, 170, 178, 223, 224, 235, 263, 280, 281, 323, 325, 328

James II, King of Scots, 9, 51, 202, 263, 280, 322, 325, 328 James I, King of Scots, 9, 14, 51, 178, 200, 202, 223, 224, 230, 252n101, 263, 278, 280, 281, 285, 320, 322, 325, 328 parliaments of 1424–6 (see also Parliament, Scottish), 263, 266, 285 James IV, King of Scots, 3, 4, 30–31, 75, 88, 112, 186, 222, 263, 264, 280, 282 general/great council of, 28, 52, 56, 60, 70–72 parliaments of, 8, 88, 178, 213–214, 230n11, 289, 323, 326, 328 James VI, King of Scots, 4, 14, 171, 230, 280, 289 Conventions of estates and parliaments of, 11, 56, 70–1, 88 James V, King of Scots attendance at campaigns in person, 92, 94–96, 135–136 attendance at meetings, lack thereof, 24, 29, 48, 61, 73–81, 109, 114–116, 242–243, 246 conventions of (see Conventions) correspondence with council, 19, 113, 120–121, 289 council of (see also Council, secret, privy), 5–8, 288–289 court of, 1, 4–5, 8, 20, 21, 27, 51, 177, 277, 284 critiques of, 252–253 dispensing with statutes, 170–171, 175 extra-marital liaisons of, 128, 186, 209 France, visit to, 189, 218, 219, 284

 INDEX 

‘hamecuming’ from France, 58, 61, 67 historiographical reputation, 3–5, 14, 228, 284–285 negotiations for marriage of, 23, 127–132, 149, 182–183, 185–186 papacy, correspondence and relations with, 185, 192–193, 244 parliaments of (see Parliament, Scottish) ‘Prince of England,’ 182 revocation of, 188–189, 202, 219–220, 251 self-fashioning as a Catholic monarch, 210 speaking at parliament and convention, 279–280, 286 vexed, 130 voyage to the Isles, 1540, 135 Justice ayres, 218, 231, 257–259, 266, 324 Justice clerk, see Bellenden, Thomas, justice clerk and councillor; Crawford, Nichol, justice clerk; Scott, Thomas, of Pitgono, justice clerk and councillor Justiciary court, 213n16, 231, 233–234 K Kemp, Henry, cupbearer, 123 Kennedy, Gilbert, second earl of Cassillis, d. 1527, 183 Kennedy, Gilbert, third earl of Cassillis, 312 Kennedy, Hugh, alleged traitor, 233–234 Kerr, Andrew, laird of Ferniherst, 59, 108, 110

355

Kerr, Walter, laird of Cessford, 59, 108, 110 Knox, John, 196, 220 L Lanark, 163–164, 167 Lauder, Henry, lord advocate, 37, 248, 253–254, 286, 288, 316, 317 Lauder, John, 111, 244 Law, 9, 10, 13, 16, 35, 38, 44, 77, 116, 132–134, 136, 165–166, 180, 197, 203, 222, 227–229, 232, 243, 248–249, 251, 254–282, 286 codification of, 14, 230, 262, 281–282 conciliar intervention in, 259–261 conciliar statutes on the college of justice de facto adopted as, 255–257 dropped, 257–258 literary representation of making, 1 made without reference to full parliamentary sederunt, 165–166, 255–259 ‘Old Laws,’ 262, 281 parliament enjoyed a monopoly on making permanent, 12, 60, 227–278 repassing, 14, 43, 230–231, 239, 262–273, 281, 288, 290, 318–330 suspended by monarch (see also James V, King of Scots), 170–171 See also Common Law (ius commune); Lords of the articles; Parliament, Scottish Lawson, James, provost of Edinburgh and councillor, 94, 110, 162, 172, 173, 190n61, 210, 237n38, 314

356 

INDEX

Learmonth, David, provost of St Andrews, 183, 316 Leasing-making, 43, 229, 239, 253, 263–264, 273, 325 Legislation, see Law Leith, 40, 158, 182n23, 268 Lennox, earl of, see Stewart, Matthew, earl of Lennox Leslie, George, fourth earl of Rothes, 45, 71, 102, 102n71, 299, 300, 312 Leslie, John, bishop of Ross, 63–64, 68, 260, 294 Leslie, Robert, of Inverpeffer, 248–251, 254, 282, 288 Lindsay, David, eighth earl of Crawford, 114, 312 Lindsay, David, Lord Lyon, 29–30, 36, 127 interlude of 1540, 1–3, 37, 209, 277–278, 280 Satire of the Three Estates, 2, 259 Lindsay, Robert, of Pitscottie, 67–68, 193, 212, 220, 249, 250 Lindsay, Walter, lord St John, 46, 91, 102, 313, 315, 317 Linlithgow, 1, 37, 117n121, 151, 164, 211 Lit de justice, 75 Livingston, Alexander, lord Livingston, 102, 313 London, Treaty of, 1534, 66, 90, 106, 242 Lords of the articles, 9–10, 28, 83, 84, 124, 130, 144, 165, 255, 258, 264, 267, 279, 280 advising the monarch in a quasi-­ conciliar fashion, 46–49, 151–152, 219, 272 appointments to, 45–46, 50 attendance at the committee of, 24, 45–46, 50–51, 58–59, 71, 73–74, 289, 315–316

burgesses absent from, 39, 46–50, 74 lords of the articles and council, 10, 13, 28, 37–51, 80–81, 85, 130, 137, 147, 229, 238–239, 261, 287–288, 315–317 receive power of parliament in 1535, 38, 45–47, 58, 73–74, 129–131, 165–166, 190, 213, 224, 235–236, 245, 259, 270–272, 274, 285, 287, 289 reviewing statutes, 263–272, 274–275 Lubeck, 46 Lutheranism, see Heresy Lyon, John, lord Glamis, 220, 231 M Mac Dhòmhnaill, Alaisdair, of Islay, 50, 61, 83–84, 89–90, 92, 98, 100–106, 113, 122–125, 133, 206, 232, 235–237, 240, 243, 245, 245n71 Mac Dhòmhnaill, Eoin, lord of the Isles, 235 MacDonald, Alexander of Islay, see Mac Dhòmhnaill, Alaisdair, of Islay MacDonald, John, lord of the Isles, see Mac Dhòmhnaill, Eoin, lord of the Isles Mac Eachainn, Fearchard, bishop of the Isles, 101, 311 Mac Gill’Ethain, Eachann, of Duart, 92, 97–98, 106 MacLean, Hector of Duart, see Mac Gill’Ethain, Eachann, of Duart Madeline de Valois, Queen of Scots, 127–128, 130, 139, 213–214, 219 Magnus, Thomas, English ambassador, 234 Mair, John, scholar, 29, 180, 221

 INDEX 

Maitland, Richard of Lethington, 220 Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, Regent of the Low Countries, 149–151, 214 Margaret of Denmark, Queen of Scots, 127, 220 Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, 24, 127, 177, 182–184, 184n29, 218 Mary, Queen of Scots, 4, 9, 79–80, 128, 231, 290 conventions of, 68–69 council of, 32, 54, 79–80 parliaments of, 8–9, 15–16, 165, 230 Mary Tudor, Queen of England-­ proposed fiancée of James V, 182 Maxwell, Robert, bishop of Orkney, 91, 94, 311 Maxwell, Robert, fifth Lord, 59, 74, 108, 110, 112, 121, 172, 182, 299, 313 McCachane, Ferquhard, Bishop of the Isles, see Mac Eachainn, Fearchard, bishop of the Isles McGill, James, clerk register, 231 Meetings, multiple/in a series, 3, 21, 24, 64, 83–86, 91–92, 95, 98, 102–105, 107, 110–111, 113, 117, 132–133, 136–137, 174, 181, 186, 225, 243, 290 Menzies, Gilbert, provost of Aberdeen, 49 Menzies, Thomas of Pitfodels, provost of Aberdeen, 316 Misrule, Lords of (also abbots/lords of Bonnacord), 169–170 Moffat, John, conservator of the staple, 144, 171 Montgomery, Hugh, second earl of Eglinton, 45, 71, 115, 258n126, 299, 312 Montrose, earl of, see Graham, William, earl of Montrose

357

Moray, earl of, see Stewart, James, earl of Moray, half-brother of James V and lieutenant d.1543 Morton, earl of, see Douglas, James, earl of Morton N Norfolk, duke of, see Howard, Thomas, third duke of Norfolk Northumberland, earl of, see Percy, Henry, sixth earl of Northumberland O Oliphant, Laurence, third lord, 23, 313 Orkney, 220, 221 Otterburn, Adam, lord advocate, provost of Edinburgh, 36, 37, 46, 48, 102n71, 110, 162, 172, 173, 183, 190n61, 205–206, 208, 210, 237n38, 258, 314 P Papacy-correspondence and relations with Scotland, 30, 62–63, 111, 186–188, 192–194, 196, 244, 266, 276, 286 See also Clement VII, Pope; Darius, Silvester, papal envoy; Paul III, Pope (1534–49); Taxation, on the clergy Parliament, Scottish 1424–6 sessions, 38, 266, 279, 285 1443 session, 279 1488 session, 8 1504 session, 88, 268, 273 1506 session, 88 1509 session, 88 1515 session, 8 1524 session, 182–184, 270

358 

INDEX

Parliament, Scottish (cont.) 1525 session, 8, 39, 114, 259, 270, 275, 276, 278 1526 session, 114, 144, 148, 151–152, 161, 168, 173, 285 1528 session, 4, 8, 47, 58, 114, 128, 164–165, 232, 233, 251, 255, 257–259, 276, 283–284, 294 1531 session, 24, 49, 50, 83–84, 88, 99–100, 151, 161, 164–165, 173, 174, 232, 235, 245, 276, 295 1532 session, 57, 62, 88, 112, 114, 164–165, 187–188, 197, 232, 255, 260, 265, 276, 280, 286, 296 1533 session, 15–16, 88, 230, 240–243, 276, 298 1535 session, 38, 45–47, 49, 50, 58, 66, 73, 114, 128–129, 154, 164–165, 189–190, 202–203, 209, 212–213, 224, 230, 232, 254, 255, 259–262, 264–272, 274–277, 282–283, 289, 300, 319–324, 330 1538 session, 15–16, 128, 131, 213, 230, 240, 245–247, 276, 301 1540 session, 40, 42, 58, 164–165, 190, 203, 215, 220, 222, 230, 243, 247–255, 257, 259, 261, 262, 264, 265, 269, 271–274, 277–279, 282–283, 286, 302, 315–316, 324–326, 330 1541 session, 40–42, 164–165, 168, 188, 190, 197, 203, 214–216, 219, 222, 230, 250, 254, 255, 261, 262, 268, 274–280, 282–284, 302, 315–316, 326–330 1543 session, 8, 248, 257 1554 session, 8 in absentia convictions in, 13, 230–237, 240, 247–248, 282

attendance at, 57–58, 140, 148, 164–165 commissioners of, 219, 236–237, 240–241, 245, 258 committees of, 9–10, 37 continued sessions of, 233, 236–237, 240–241 as a court, 13, 17, 88, 100, 165–167, 181, 227–229, 231–254, 282, 285–286 historiography surrounding, 8–10 as a law-making body, 13, 136, 142, 165, 197, 203, 227–229, 255–280, 284, 318–330 literary representations of (see also Lindsay, David, eighth earl of Crawford), 1–2 offered legitimacy, 8–9, 12, 161, 274 printed acts of, 16, 43, 229, 252, 256, 258–259, 261, 263, 271–272, 279, 283–284 records of, 15–16, 43, 229–230, 239, 243, 255–256 and regime change (see also Parliament, Scottish, 1528 session), 8–9 role in diplomacy and royal marital negotiations, 127–130, 212–213 role in planning for warfare restricted, 88–89, 107, 112 and royal lands, 127–128, 180, 283–284 support for royal finances, 219–222, 225 taxation in (see also Taxation), 17, 127–128, 178–180, 197, 199 See also Law; Lords of the articles; Treason Paul III, Pope (1534–49), 192–195 Peebles, 97–98, 120, 168–170 Percy, Henry, sixth earl of Northumberland, 63, 123, 210–211 Perdovan, John, royal messenger, 205

 INDEX 

Perth (St Johnston), 23, 25, 60, 139, 147, 151, 152, 155, 156, 164, 170, 242, 257 Pilgrimage of Grace, 34 Pittenweem, 176 Poland, 222, 280 Pope, see Clement VII, Pope; Paul III, Pope (1534–49) Preston, Simon, provost of Edinburgh, 155–156, 162, 170, 316 Privy council, see Council, secret, privy Provincial council, 1536, 78, 189–192, 271, 276–279, 300 R Ravenna, Benedict, Cardinal of, 111 Ray, Harry, English pursuivant, gossip, and spy, 67, 204 Reid, Robert, abbot of Kinloss, bishop of Orkney, 42n82, 252n101, 278n201, 312, 315, 317 Remissions, 101n65, 175–176, 234, 236, 245n71, 250–252, 273 Revocation, acts of, 188–189, 202–203, 218–220, 251–252, 273, 283 Robert I, the Bruce, King of Scots, 281, 325, 326 Robert II, King of Scots, 54, 321, 325, 328 Robert III, King of Scots, 263, 266, 281, 321, 325, 328 Ross, bishop of, see Hay, James, Bishop of Ross (d.1538); Leslie, John, bishop of Ross Ross, John of Craig, 43–44, 229, 238–239 Rothes, earl of, see Leslie, George, fourth earl of Rothes Rouen, Treaty of, 1517, 127–131, 182 Ruthven, William lord, 23, 297, 313, 315

359

S Salmon, 203, 215, 269, 320, 328 Satire of the Three Estates, see Lindsay, David, Lord Lyon; Lindsay, David, eighth earl of Crawford Scott, Thomas, of Pitgono, justice clerk and councillor, 107, 110, 116, 299 Scott, William, of Balwearie, 102n71, 107, 110, 183, 314 Scrimgeour, James, constable of Dundee, 110 Secrecy, 51, 87, 107–109, 123, 132, 135, 287 Secretary, 36–37, 87 See also Erskine, Sir Thomas of Brechin, secretary Secret council, see Council, secret, privy Selkirk, 153, 167, 173 Sempill, Robert, third lord, 115, 313 Session, court of, 6–8, 17–19, 27, 32–34, 39, 40, 42–43, 54, 57, 59, 74–77, 94, 116, 117, 121–122, 133, 142, 171, 172, 174, 190, 210, 213, 254–256, 262, 288 See also Council, secret, privy Seyssel, Claude de, 134–135 Shetland, 220–221 Sinclair, Henry, parson of Glasgow, 159 Sinclair, James, parson of Snaw, 316 Sinclair, Oliver, 123, 237 Sinclair, William, fourth lord, 313 St Andrews, archbishop of, see Beaton, David, Cardinal, archbishop of St Andrews, abbot of Arbroath; Beaton, James, archbishop of St Andrews St Andrews, burgh of, 46, 63, 147, 152, 155, 156, 187, 211–212, 212n159, 244 provosts of (see Learmonth, David, provost of St Andrews)

360 

INDEX

St Andrews, University of, 243–244 Staple, Scottish, 11, 13, 14, 30, 50, 64–65, 84, 132, 140–164, 167, 172–176, 178, 197–199, 285, 287, 295 Antwerp, 155–157, 159, 160, 162 Bruges, 147 Middelburg, 50, 147–153, 157–160, 162, 173–175, 198–200, 199n99 Veere, 146–149, 151, 153, 155–60, 175, 199 Statutes, see Law Stewart, Henry, Lord Methven, 312 Stewart, James, commendator of St Andrews later earl of Moray d.1570, 68, 186 Stewart, James, earl of Moray, half-brother of James V and lieutenant d.1543, 29, 31, 37, 45, 65, 71, 94, 102–105, 115–120, 122, 124–125, 207–208, 210–211, 242, 246, 299, 312 Stewart, John, earl of Buchan, 114 Stewart, Matthew, earl of Lennox, 169, 312 Stewart, William, dean of Glasgow, provost of Lincluden, bishop of Aberdeen, treasurer, 65, 71, 91, 102n71, 123, 145, 152, 161, 187, 190, 216, 242, 311, 315, 317 Stirling burgh of, 46, 139, 147, 151, 152, 164, 172, 269, 306, 314 meeting place for conventions, 60–61, 89, 90, 97, 101, 120–122 palace of, 98, 171–172, 210, 211 Stuart, John, duke of Albany, Governor of Scotland, 8, 23, 26, 62, 95–96, 121, 125, 127, 128,

130, 147–148, 150, 160, 181–182, 296 Suavenius, Peter, envoy from the Duke of Holstein, 47, 47n96, 47n98, 66 Sweden, 180n12 council of, 133–134 T Tacitus, 87 Taxation, 13, 14, 57, 112, 176–227, 257, 289–290 accounting practices for, 185 on the burghs, 174–175, 180, 197–203, 224; 1526, 148–149, 154, 175, 199; 1529, 150, 197, 213, 217; 1534, 152–153, 160, 162, 173, 198–199; 1541, 158, 173, 199–200 on the clergy, 185–197, 222–227; 1540–1, 180, 186, 192–194, 217; 1542, 180, 196, 302; for the college of justice, 179, 186–191, 221, 243–244; the ‘Great Tax,’ 186–191, 217, 243; of the three teinds, 186–191, 217, 243 collection, 76, 184–185, 209–210 for compulsory purchase of artillery, 214–216 division of, 181 granted across multiple meetings, 181–184, 186, 224–227, 290 granted in a convention, 12–13, 70, 180, 222–227, 243, 290; 1530–1, 23–24, 99, 203–206, 217, 238; 1533, 65, 118–119, 206–209, 217; 1536, 56, 131, 139, 200, 203–204, 211, 217, 224; 1542, 68, 211–212, 218

 INDEX 

granted in parliament, 17, 127, 180, 212–217, 222–227, 290; 1535, 47, 128–129, 131, 212–213, 271; 1538, 17, 128, 131, 213, 215, 245, 301 overall value in context of crown finances, 217–222 resistance to, 9, 189–193, 197, 210–211, 222–224, 243–244 for the royal marriage, 47, 139, 203–204, 212–213, 225 varied vocabulary surrounding, 194, 215–216 for warfare (see also Taxation, granted in a convention, 1530–1; Taxation, granted in a convention, 1533; Taxation, granted in a convention, 1542), 118–119, 173, 196, 204–209, 211, 224–225 Third estate, see Burghs Treason, 13, 15, 43, 53, 59, 110, 150, 220, 227–229, 231–254 posthumous trials, 248–249 trials by assise, 90, 231–232 trials in parliament, 15, 21, 24, 83–84, 88, 100, 132, 133, 165, 227–229, 232–243, 245–248 See also Beaton, James, archbishop of St Andrews; Charteris, Patrick, treason trial of; Colville, James, of Easter Wemys, comptroller; Douglas, Archibald, earl of Angus; Douglas, Janet, lady Glamis; Hepburn, Sir Patrick of Waughton; Leslie, Robert, of Inverpeffer; Mac Dhòmhnaill, Alaisdair, of Islay

361

Treasurers’ accounts, 20, 31, 56, 117n121, 136n179, 147n28, 150n41, 183n26, 185, 206 Twizelhaugh, act of, 121, 217 V Veere, lord of Maximillian, 158 Odulph, 153, 156–158 See also Staple, Scottish W Wappenschawings, 64, 113, 113n106, 115–116, 125, 215, 262, 271–272, 325 War, 13, 14, 60, 75, 88, 127, 132, 134, 141, 150, 174, 181, 217, 223, 257, 271–272, 275, 279, 289–290 with England, 1523, 121, 125 with England, 1532–3, 28–29, 35, 61, 65, 70–71, 86, 105–126, 173, 203, 205–210, 242; Irish aspects of this campaign, 106, 113, 122–124 with England, 1542, 68, 125, 135, 195–196, 211–212 with England, 1558, 125, 207 See also Council, secret, privy; Parliament, Scottish; Taxation Wemys, Henry, bishop of Galloway, 299, 311 Western Isles, see Hebrides White, Henry, 190n61, 297, 314 Y Yester, lord, see Hay, John, third lord Yester