Government in medieval Scotland facts for kids
Government in medieval Scotland, includes all forms of politics and administration of the minor kingdoms that emerged after the departure of the Romans from central and southern Britain in the fifth century, through the development and growth of the combined Scottish and Pictish kingdom of Alba into the kingdom of Scotland, until the adoption of the reforms of the Renaissance in the fifteenth century.
Kingship was the major form of political organisation in the early Middle Ages, with competing minor kingdoms and fluid relationships of over- and under-kingdoms. The primary function of these kings was as war leaders, but there were also ritual elements to kingship, evident in ceremonies of coronation. The Kingdom of Alba, which emerged from the unification of the Scots and Picts in the tenth century, retained some of these ritual aspects, most obviously in the coronation ceremony at Scone. While the Scottish monarchy remained a largely itinerant institution, Scone remained one of its most important locations, with royal castles at Stirling and Perth becoming significant in the later Middle Ages before Edinburgh developed as a capital in the second half of the fifteenth century. The Scottish crown grew in prestige throughout the era and adopted the conventional offices of western European courts and later elements of their ritual and grandeur.
In the early period, the kings of the Scots depended on the great lords of the mormaers (later earls) and Toísechs (later thanes), but from the reign of David I, sheriffdoms were introduced, which allowed more direct control and gradually limited the power of the major lordships. While modern knowledge of early systems of law is limited, royal justice can be seen as developing from the twelfth century onwards with local sheriff, burgh, manorial and ecclesiastical courts and offices of the justicar to oversee administration. The Scots common law began to develop in this period, and there were attempts to systematise and codify the law and the beginnings of an educated professional body of lawyers. In the late Middle Ages, major institutions of government including the King's Council and Parliament developed. The Council emerged as a full-time body in the fifteenth century, increasingly dominated by laymen and critical to the administration of justice. Parliament also emerged as a major legal institution, gaining an oversight of taxation and policy. By the end of the era it was sitting almost every year, partly because of the frequent minorities and regencies of the period, which may have prevented it from being sidelined by the monarchy.
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Kingship
In the early medieval period, with its many competing kingdoms within the modern boundaries of Scotland, kingship was not inherited in a direct line from the previous king. A candidate for kingship usually needed to be a member of a particular dynasty and to claim descent from a particular ancestor. Kingship could be multi-layered and very fluid. The Pictish kings of Fortriu were probably acting as overlords of other Pictish kings for much of this period and occasionally were able to assert an overlordship over non-Pictish kings, but sometimes had to acknowledge the overlordship of external rulers, both Anglian and British. Such relationships may have included obligations to pay tribute or to supply armed forces. In victory subordinate rulers may have received rewards in return. Interaction and intermarriage into subject kingdoms may have opened the way to absorption of such sub-kingdoms and, although there might be later overturnings of such annexation, it is likely that kingship was being gradually monopolised by a handful of the most powerful dynasties.
The primary role of a king was to act as a war leader, reflected in the very small number of minorities or female reigning monarchs in the period. Kings organised the defence of their people's lands, property and persons and negotiated with other kings to secure these things. If they failed to do so, the settlements might be raided, destroyed or annexed and the populations killed or taken into slavery. Kings also engaged in the low-level warfare of raiding and the more ambitious full-scale warfare that led to conflicts of large armies and alliances and which could be undertaken over relatively large distances, like the expedition to Orkney by Dál Riata in 581 or the Northumbrian attack on Ireland in 684.
Kingship had its ritual aspects. The Scottish kings of Dál Riata were inaugurated by putting their foot in a footprint in stone, signifying that they would follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. The Kingdom of Alba, unified in the ninth century and which would develop into the kingdom of Scotland, had Scone and its sacred stone at the heart of its coronation ceremony, which historians presume was inherited from Pictish practice, but which was claimed to date back to the first arrival of the Scottish kings from Ireland. It was here that Scottish kings before the wars of independence were crowned, on the Stone of Scone, before its removal by Edward I in 1296. The first ceremony for which details survive is that for Alexander III in 1249. They describe a ceremony that combined elements of ancient heritage, the Church and secular lordship. He was consecrated by the Bishop of St Andrews and placed on the throne by the Mormaers of Strathearn and Fife and his genealogy recited in Gaelic back to his Dalriadric Scottish ancestors by a royal poet from the Highlands. There was no anointment or crowning ceremony, as was common elsewhere in Europe. Later kings seem to have resented this omission and attempted to remedy it by appeals to the Pope. However, Scottish kings are usually depicted wearing crowns and carrying the normal regalia associated with kingship.
For most of the medieval era, the king was itinerant and had no "capital" as such. David I (r. 1124–53) tried to build up Roxburgh as a royal centre, but in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, more charters were issued at Scone than any other location. Other popular locations in the early part of the era were nearby Perth, Stirling, Dunfermline and Edinburgh. In the later Middle Ages the king moved between royal castles, particularly Perth and Stirling, but also holding judicial sessions throughout the kingdom, with Edinburgh only beginning to emerge as the capital in the reign of James III at the cost of considerable unpopularity. The unification of the kingdom, the spread of Anglo-Norman custom, the development of a European trading economy and Robert I's success in achieving independence from England did much to build up the prestige of the institution.
Like most western European monarchies, the Scottish crown in the fifteenth century adopted the example of the Burgundian court, through formality and elegance putting itself at the centre of culture and political life, defined with display, ritual and pageantry, reflected in elaborate new palaces and patronage of the arts. Renaissance ideas began to influence views on government, described as New or Renaissance monarchy, which emphasised the status and significance of the monarch. The Roman Law principle that "a king is emperor in his own kingdom" can be seen in Scotland from the mid-fifteenth century. In 1469 Parliament passed an act that declared that James III possessed "full jurisdiction and empire within his realm". From the 1480s the king's image on his silver groats showed him wearing a closed, arched, imperial crown, in place of the open circlet of medieval kings, probably the first coin image of its kind outside of Italy. It soon began to appear in heraldry, on royal seals, manuscripts, sculptures and the steeples of churches with royal connections, as at St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. The first Scottish monarch to actually wear such a crown was James V, whose diadem was reworked to include arches in 1532. They were re-added when it was reconstructed in 1540 and this remains the Crown of Scotland. The idea of imperial monarchy emphasised the dignity of the crown and included its role as a unifying national force, defending national borders and interest, royal supremacy over the law and a distinctive national church within the Catholic communion. New Monarchy can also be seen in the reliance of the crown on "new men" rather than the great magnates, the use of the clergy as a form of civil service, and the development of standing armed forces and a navy.
King's council
After the crown, the most important government institution in the late Middle Ages was the king's council, composed of the king's closest advisers. Unlike its counterpart in England, the king's council in Scotland retained legislative and judicial powers. It was relatively small, with normally less than 10 members in a meeting, some of whom were nominated by parliament, particularly during the many minorities of the era, as a means of limiting the power of a regent.
The council was a virtually full-time institution by the late fifteenth century, and surviving records from the period indicate it was critical in the working of royal justice. Nominally members of the council were some of the great magnates of the realm, but they rarely attended meetings. Most of the active members of the council for most of the late Medieval Period were career administrators and lawyers, almost exclusively university-educated clergy. The most successful of these moved on to occupy the major ecclesiastical positions in the realm as bishops and, towards the end of the period, archbishops. By the end of the fifteenth century, this group was being joined by increasing numbers of literate laymen, often secular lawyers, of which the most successful gained preferment in the judicial system and grants of lands and lordships. From the reign of James III onwards, the clerically dominated post of Lord Chancellor was increasingly taken by leading laymen.
Parliament
After the council, the next most important body in the process of government at the end of the era was parliament, which had evolved by the late thirteenth century from the King's Council of Bishops and Earls into a 'colloquium' with a political and judicial role. By the early fourteenth century, the attendance of knights and freeholders had become important, and probably from 1326 burgh commissioners joined them to form the Three Estates, meeting in a variety of major towns throughout the kingdom. It acquired significant powers over particular issues, including consent for taxation, but it also had a strong influence over justice, foreign policy, war, and other legislation, whether political, ecclesiastical, social or economic. Under Robert I, the importance of the parliament grew as he called them more frequently and its composition shifted to include more representation from the burghs and lesser landowners. In 1399, a General Council established that the King should hold a parliament at least once a year for the next three years, so "that his subjects are served by the law".
From the early 1450s, a great deal of the legislative business of the Scottish parliament was usually carried out by a parliamentary committee known as the 'Lords of the Articles', chosen by the three estates to draft legislation that was then presented to the full assembly to be confirmed. Before the sixteenth century, parliamentary business was also carried out by 'sister' institutions, including the General Council and the Convention of Estates. These bodies could deal with taxation, legislation and policy-making, but lacked the ultimate authority of a full parliament. In the fifteenth century, parliament was being called on an almost annual basis, more often than its English counterpart, and was willing to offer occasional resistance or criticism to the policies of the crown, particular in the unpopular reign of James III. However, from about 1494, after his success against the Stewarts and Douglases and over rebels in 1482 and 1488, James IV managed largely to dispense with the institution, and it might have declined, like many other systems of Estates in continental Europe, had it not been for his death in 1513 and another long minority.
Images for kids
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The seal of Walter Fitzalan (1106–77), the first hereditary royal stewart
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The Regiam Majestatem is the oldest surviving written digest of Scots law.
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An engraving of Robert II depicted enthroned as a lawgiver on his great seal
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