Law and Legal Consciousness in Medieval Scotland

Law and Legal Consciousness in Medieval Scotland
Author: Hector L. MacQueen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 615
Release: 2023-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004683763

This book explores the rise of a Scottish common law from the twelfth century on despite the absence until around 1500 of a secular legal profession. Key stimuli were the activity of church courts and canon lawyers in Scotland, coupled with the example provided by neighbouring England’s common law. The laity’s legal consciousness arose from exposure to law by way of constant participation in legal processes in court and daily transactions. This experience enabled some to become judges, pleaders in court and transactional lawyers and lay the foundations for an emergent professional group by the end of the medieval period.

Death and the Royal Succession in Scotland, C.1214-C.1543

Death and the Royal Succession in Scotland, C.1214-C.1543
Author: LUCINDA H. S. DEAN
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2024-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1837651728

Illuminates how the ceremonial dimension of death and the succession reflected both Scottish royal identity and a broader culture of ceremony. To date, scholarly attention to royal ceremony in Scotland from the Middle Ages into the early modern period has been rather haphazard, with few attempts to explore how these crucial moments for the representation of royal authority. This monograph provides a long durée analysis of the ceremonial cycle of death and succession associated with Scottish kingship from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, including the final century of the Canmore dynasty, the crisis of the Bruce-Balliol conflict, and the emergence and consolidation of the Stewart family up to the funeral of last monarch buried in Scotland, James V, in 1543. Using a broad range of primary sources, including financial records and material culture, many of them previously untapped, it addresses key questions about kingship and power, the function of ceremony in legitimising royal authority, its significance in relation to the practical exercising of power, and evidence for Scottish similarities and distinctiveness within wider European contexts.

Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe

Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe
Author: Jackson W. Armstrong
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-11-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429553455

Drawing together an international team of historians, lawyers and historical sociolinguists, this volume investigates urban cultures of law in Scotland, with a special focus on Aberdeen and its rich civic archive, the Low Countries, Norway, Germany and Poland from c. 1350 to c. 1650. In these essays, the contributors seek to understand how law works in its cultural and social contexts by focusing specifically on the urban experience and, to a great extent, on urban records. The contributions are concerned with understanding late medieval and early modern legal experts as well as the users of courts and legal services, the languages and records of law, and legal activities occurring inside and outside of official legal fora. This volume considers what the expectations of people at different status levels were for the use of the law, what perceptions of justice and authority existed among different groups, and what their knowledge was of law and legal procedure. By examining how different aspects of legal culture came to be recorded in writing, the contributors reveal how that writing itself then became part of a culture of law. Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe: Scotland and its Neighbours c.1350–c.1650 combines the historical study of law, towns, language and politics in a way that will be accessible and compelling for advanced level undergraduates and postgraduate to postdoctoral researchers and academics in medieval and early modern, urban, legal, political and linguistic history.

Life at the Margins in Early Modern Scotland

Life at the Margins in Early Modern Scotland
Author: Allan Kennedy
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2024-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1837650233

An exploration of the diverse lived experiences of marginality in Scottish society from the sixteen to the eighteenth century. Throughout the early modern period, Scottish society was constructed around an expectation of social conformity: people were required to operate within a relatively narrow range of acceptable identities and behaviours. Those who did not conform to this idealised standard, or who were in some fundamental way different from the prescribed norm, were met with suspicion. Such individuals often attracted both criticism and discrimination, forcing them to live confirmed to the social margins. Focusing on a range of marginalised groups, including the poor, migrants, ethnic minorities, indentured workers and women, the contributors to this book explore what it was like to live at the boundaries of social acceptability, what mechanisms were involved in policing the divide between "mainstream" and "marginal", and what opportunities existed for personal or collective fulfilment. The result is a fresh perspective on early modern Scotland, one that not only recovers the stories of people long excluded from historical discussion, but also offers a deeper understanding of the ordering assumptions of society more generally. Specific topics addressed range from the marginalisation of people with disabilities in the domestic sphere to female sex workers, and the place of executioners in society.

The Advancement of Learning in Stuart Scotland, 1679-89

The Advancement of Learning in Stuart Scotland, 1679-89
Author: HUGH. OUSTON
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2024-08-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1837652007

A study of Scottish thinkers and writers in their political and cultural context. The "advancement of learning" was the term used by late seventeenth-century Scots for intellectual enquiry of all kinds. Encouraged by Stuart patronage, and echoing a Royalist ideology of continuity and order following the chaos of the Civil War, the "Virtuosi", Scottish writers and thinkers, sought to define Scotland's identity. They undertook structured, empirical enquiry into Scottish natural history and geography, human history and antiquities, law and society, while the legal and medical professions developed their status and purpose through institutions such as the Royal College of Physicians and the Advocates' Library. They both complemented and eclipsed the changing intellectual life of the Church and Universities. This book considers the work of leading authors, such as Sir George Mackenzie, Sir Robert Sibbald and Lord Stair, alongside the many other voices engaged in learned research and debate, examining their shared or contrasting philosophy and methods. It shows how a distinctively Scottish take on the "Scientific Revolution" was enhanced by close contacts with the Royal Society and English thinkers, and a conscious membership of the European Republic of Letters.

The Life, Poems, and Letters of Peter Goldman (1587-8-1627)

The Life, Poems, and Letters of Peter Goldman (1587-8-1627)
Author: William Poole
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2024-08-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1843847248

Reconstructs the life of Peter Goldman and presents a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters. The Dundonian physician Peter Goldman, one of an immigrant family of merchants, was the first Scot to take a medical degree from Leiden; he then undertook research in Oxford, London, and Paris, before resettling in Dundee. An important figure in contemporary Scottish literary culture, he maintained a wide correspondence with significant intellectual figures and influenced two landmark Scottish publishing projects: the Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (1637) and the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland (1654). However, his major literary achievement was his Latin poetry, which establishes him as a unique voice of his time. His longest and most prominent work is an elegy on the deaths of four of his brothers, strikingly narrated in the voice of their lamenting mother. This book reconstructs and provides a study of Goldman's life, career and writing. It also offers a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters, with accompanying commentary. Appendices provide an edited list of his remarkable library and a transcript of his testament.

Northern England and Southern Scotland in the Central Middle Ages

Northern England and Southern Scotland in the Central Middle Ages
Author: Keith J. Stringer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2017
Genre: England, Northern
ISBN: 9781783272662

This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the development of northern England and southern Scotland in the formative era of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. How did "middle Britain" come to be divided between two separate unitary kingdoms called "England" and "Scotland"? How, and how differently, was government exercised and experienced? How did people identify themselves by their languages and naming practices? What major themes can be detected in the development of ecclesiastical structures and religious culture? What can be learned about the rural and the emerging urban environments in terms of lordly exploitation and control, settlement patterns and how the landscape itself evolved? These are among the key questions addressed by the contributors, who bring to bear multi-faceted approaches to medieval "middle Britain". Above all, by pursuing similarities and differences from a comparative "transnational" perspective it becomes clearer how the "old" interacted with the "new", what was exceptional and what was not, and how far the histories of northern England and southern Scotland point to common or not so common foundations and trajectories. Keith Stringer is Professor Emeritus of Medieval British History at Lancaster University; Angus Winchester is Professor Emeritus of Local and Landscape History at Lancaster University.BR>Contributors: Richard Britnell, Dauvit Broun, Janet Burton, David Ditchburn, Philip Dixon, Piers Dixon, Fiona Edmonds, Richard Oram, Keith Stringer, Chris Tabraham, Simon Taylor, Angus J.L. Winchester.

Crossing Borders: Boundaries and Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Britain

Crossing Borders: Boundaries and Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Britain
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004364951

A set of essays intended to recognize the scholarship of Professor Cynthia Neville, the papers gathered here explore borders and boundaries in medieval and early modern Britain. Over her career, Cynthia has excavated the history of border law and social life on the frontier between England and Scotland and has written extensively of the relationships between natives and newcomers in Scotland’s Middle Ages. Her work repeatedly invokes jurisdiction as both a legal and territorial expression of power. The essays in this volume return to themes and topics touched upon in her corpus of work, all in one way or another examining borders and boundaries as either (or both) spatial and legal constructs that grow from and shape social interaction. Contributors are Douglas Biggs, Amy Blakeway, Steve Boardman, Sara M. Butler, Anne DeWindt, Kenneth F. Duggan, Elizabeth Ewan, Chelsea D.M. Hartlen, K.J. Kesselring, Tom Lambert, Shannon McSheffrey, and Cathryn R. Spence.

Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England

Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England
Author: Katherine Lewis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-09-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134454600

Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England explores the dynamic between kingship and masculinity in fifteenth century England, with a particular focus on Henry V and Henry VI. The role of gender in the rhetoric and practice of medieval kingship is still largely unexplored by medieval historians. Discourses of masculinity informed much of the contemporary comment on fifteenth century kings, for a variety of purposes: to praise and eulogise but also to explain shortcomings and provide justification for deposition. Katherine J. Lewis examines discourses of masculinity in relation to contemporary understandings of the nature and acquisition of manhood in the period and considers the extent to which judgements of a king’s performance were informed by his ability to embody the right balance of manly qualities. This book’s primary concern is with how these two kings were presented, represented and perceived by those around them, but it also asks how far Henry V and Henry VI can be said to have understood the importance of personifying a particular brand of masculinity in their performance of kingship and of meeting the expectations of their subjects in this respect. It explores the extent to which their established reputations as inherently ‘manly’ and ‘unmanly’ kings were the product of their handling of political circumstances, but owed something to factors beyond their immediate control as well. Consideration is also given to Margaret of Anjou’s manipulation of ideologies of kingship and manhood in response to her husband’s incapacity, and the ramifications of this for perceptions of the relational gender identities which she and Henry VI embodied together. Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England is an essential resource for students of gender and medieval history.