The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: Politics and the three Estates, 1424–1488

By Roland Tanner

In this ground-breaking study of the medieval parliament, Roland Tanner gives the Scottish Parliament a human face by examining the actions and motives of those who attended. In the past, the Scottish Parliament was seen as a weak and ineffective institution – damned because of its failure to be more like its English counterpart. But Roland Tanner shows that the old picture of weakness is far from accurate. In its very different way, the Scottish Parliament was every bit as powerful as the English institution. The ‘Three Estates’ (the clergy, nobility and burgh representatives who attended Parliament) were able to wield a surprising degree of control over the Crown during the fifteenth century. For instance, they threatened to lock James I’s taxation in a box to which he, the king, would have no access, made James II swear not to alter acts of Parliament, and prevented him from using his own lands and wealth as patronage for his supporters, and forbade James III to leave the country. Roland Tanner has avoided a dry constitutional approach. Instead he has sought to bring Parliament to life through the people who attended, the reasons why they attended, and the complex interactions which occurred when all the most wealthy, powerful and ambitious people in the kingdom gathered in one place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781788854214

Book preview

THE LATE MEDIEVAL SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT

Scottish Historical Review Monographs are major works of scholarly research covering all aspects of Scottish history. They are selected and sponsored by the Scottish Historical Review Trust, in conjunction with Tuckwell Press

EDITORIAL BOARD

Ewen A. Cameron, Edward J. Cowan and Roger A. Mason, with the Trustees of the SHR Trust

CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING VOLUMES

THE LATE MEDIEVAL SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT

Politics and the Three Estates, 1424–1488

ROLAND TANNER

This eBook was published in Great Britain in 2021 by John Donald,

an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2001 by Tuckwell Press

Copyright © Roland Tanner, 2001

eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 421 4

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The right of Roland Tanner to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

To my mother and father, Shelagh and Anthony Tanner

Contents

Abbreviations and Conventions

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Taxation and Anglicisation, 1424–1428

The Battle for Taxation, 1424–1427

The Short-sighted Statesman: The Shire Commissioners Act of 1428

2 North and South: 1428–1435

From the Castle to the Kist, 1428–31

The Calm Before the Storm, 1432–1435

3 A Radical and Conservative Assembly, 1436–1439

‘In the name of the three astattes’: 1436–1437

The Douglas Lieutenancy, 1437–1439

4 Crichton, Livingston and Douglas, 1439–1449

The Crichton Hegemony, 1439–1443

The Douglas Supremacy, 1443–1449

5 Parliament in the Douglas Civil War, 1450–1453

Confrontation and Capitulation, 1450–1453

The King’s Coalition, 1454–1455

6 ‘Parliament Exhorts and Requires’: Guidance and Supervision, 1455–1460

The Poverty of the Crown and other Inconveniences

‘The commoune profett of the Realme and Justice to be kepit’

7 Parliament and Faction, 1460–1468

Young Lords and Old Lords, 1460–1465

The Boyds, 1466–1468

8 The Return to Opposition, 1469–1478

9 Parliament in the Stewart Crisis, 1479–1482

Losing Control

Turning the Corner

10 The King’s Loyal Parliament? 1483–1488

Conclusion. Parliament’s Fifteenth-Century Zenith?

Appendix: Parliaments and General Councils, 1424—1488

Bibliography

Index

Abbreviations and Conventions

Personal names and place-names have been modernised where identified. Personal names conform to G. S. Black, The Surnames of Scotland (New York, 1946), with the exception of certain names that are more familiar to historians in other forms (e.g. Scheves, rather than Shivas). Place-names have been modernised according to The Ordnance Gazetteer of Great Britain (London, 1987). Sums of money are in pounds Scots unless otherwise stated (the pound Scots being worth roughly half a pound sterling before c. 1450, and roughly a third thereafter). The letters thorn and yogh are represented by ‘th’ and ‘y’ respectively. Dates have been modernised.

With the exception of those titles given below, sources are cited in full when first mentioned and given in abbreviated form thereafter, according to the Scottish Historical Review conventions.

Acknowledgements

This book was researched between 1994 and 2000 amidst the debate about a new Parliament for Scotland. While researching the old Parliament, I saw the new institution move from being an aspiration to a reality, a process which seemed to make my own work much more pertinent. I hope I can be forgiven, therefore, for giving my first acknowledgement to an institution – the new Scottish Parliament – with the hope that it is as influential and durable as its predecessor.

I would like to acknowledge the funding received from the School of History towards the research for my Ph.D., research which formed the basis for this book. I can also add my voice to the countless authors who have praised the courtesy and helpfulness of the staff of Scottish repositories, particularly at the National Archives of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland and the Special Collections Department of St Andrews University Library. Many thanks also to John and Val Tuckwell and the editors and trustees of the Scottish Historical Review for their interest in publishing this book.

Over the course of my research I have benefited from the generous help and advice of numerous scholars and colleagues. Dr Alexander Grant introduced me to Scottish history and the fifteenth century as an undergraduate at Lancaster, gave me sound advice when I decided to pursue a postgraduate career, and has been generous with advice ever since. At St Andrews, the staff and postgraduates of the Department of Scottish History and the wider School deserve thanks for having always made St Andrews a very pleasant place to work. Thanks must go to: Dr Roger Mason (particularly for carrying out final editing and proof-reading of this book), Dr Michael Brown, Dr Simon Taylor, Dr Helen MacDonald, Dr Michael Penman, Catriona Logan, Dr Stephanie Thorson and Dr Stephen Alford. Special mention must go to Dr Pamela Ritchie, who has been a very supportive friend, colleague and companion since 1993, and who, just as importantly, accompanied me for countless lunchtime pints and bacon sandwiches in Bert’s Bar. While she was always enormously supportive of my work, it is for reasons unconnected to academia that I owe her my greatest debt of gratitude. Upon finishing my Ph.D. I might have been forgiven for some ‘Parliament fatigue’, but my colleagues on the Scottish Parliament Project, where I have been employed since 1998 – Professor Keith Brown, Dr Alan MacDonald, Dr Alastair Mann, Dr Pamela Ritchie (again), and the three project postgraduates, Alison McQueen, Derek Patrick and Gillian MacIntosh – made sure that that never happened and have given new perspectives to my research which have improved this book significantly. While working for a year as a research assistant in the Department of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow I was equally lucky to have the help and kind advice of Professor James Kirk and the other members of the department. Thanks also to my external examiner, Dr Stephen Boardman, whose comments at and since my viva have led to many improvements. My Ph.D. supervisor, Dr Norman Macdougall, deserves the greatest thanks of all. His generosity with his time and wise advice since 1993 – academic and otherwise – have been invaluable, while the trips to the Russell Hotel which followed our monthly meetings kept vitamins high when funds were low.

Outside the academic world very special thanks must go to Jannette MacDonald, without whom this would have been quite impossible. Thanks also to James Robertson, Angela Cran, Seán Semple (and Buachaille Etive Mor), Kay and Jackie MacDonald and Chris Flechard. But my greatest debt of all is to my parents, Anthony and Shelagh Tanner, firstly for their willingness to entirely fund my first year at St Andrews and then make up the many and substantial shortfalls in other sources of funding during the rest of my researches without complaint, and secondly, and more importantly, for their faith in the value of what I was doing. It is to them, therefore, with thanks, that I dedicate this book.

Roland Tanner

St Andrews, August 2001

Introduction

What was a medieval Parliament? The answer is an institution with several quite different functions: a legislature for passing acts concerning law and order, trade, finance, agriculture and any number of other subjects; a court of appeal and court of forfeiture; a body which discussed and decided policy regarding war, diplomacy or other extraordinary matters and raised taxation to fund them. It was attended by representatives of the Three Estates – the prelates, king’s secular tenants-in-chief and commissioners chosen by the royal burghs. Unlike the English Parliament, these men sat in a single chamber to discuss the matters put before them by the king or private individuals. For much of the fifteenth century Parliament was augmented by a sister institution, General Council, with almost identical powers, but lacking the ability to forfeit for treason. The Scottish Parliament also developed three committees. Two, the Lords Auditors of Causes and Complaints and the Lords for the Falsing of Dooms, dealt with civil justice. The final committee, seen from the mid-fifteenth century, was called the Lords of the Articles, and drafted the agenda of ‘articles’ put before it at the beginning of Parliament into finished legislation, which the full assembly of Parliament then accepted, modified or rejected.

It is easy, however, when considering the function of such a complex institution, to miss the most obvious, but important, point: a medieval Parliament took place in a room in which all the most wealthy and powerful men of the realm sat together to discuss issues of common interest – the one place other than a coronation or a gathering of the king’s host for war where figures of such standing met in large numbers. In its membership, therefore, a medieval Parliament saw a concentration in one room of landed, ecclesiastical and urban wealth and power far beyond that of any modern representative assembly. The business of Parliament, then, was fundamentally shaped by the people who attended it. Any ‘constitutional’ principles which it might develop during its history were always likely to be of secondary importance. Yet studies of the medieval Scottish Parliament (and indeed of the entire pre–1707 period) have tended to concentrate upon the institution’s developing constitution, failing to put its meetings into the political context of the times in which they sat, and paying little or no attention to the available records of attendance. As a result, the judgements that have been made about the medieval Scottish Parliament have tended to be either superficial or based too heavily upon assessments of the ‘Scottish constitution’ and its differences from its English neighbour. Thus Professor Robert Rait, in The Parliaments of Scotland, published in 1924, a work covering the entire history of the Scottish Parliament from its origins to 1707, came to generally harsh conclusions about the Scottish Parliament’s ability to resist royal demands at virtually any point in its history. For instance, of Parliament in the reign of James I, Rait claimed that it ‘had no authority behind it except the monarch, in whose hands it was an instrument’ – in other words the Scottish Parliament was simply a rubber-stamp for royal decisions.¹ Elsewhere Rait claimed that Parliament in the reigns of James II and James III was ‘a court of registration’ for the actions of whichever faction happened to be in power.² Of the period between 1479 and 1483 when James III faced prolonged crisis, arrest and imprisonment, Rait stated ‘no opposition is ever traceable in Parliament. The party in power had it in complete control and it registered their decrees automatically.’³ As his final justification for studying Parliament at all, Rait could only offer that ‘its defects and its impotence are essential for the explanation and the illustration of the conditions in which successive generations lived their lives’.⁴

Comments on Parliament’s role in particular political events were the exception in a work that generally treated the institution thematically and constitutionally. Rait’s judgements on the Scottish Parliament were based primarily on what he saw as the defects of its constitution, largely in isolation from an analysis of political events which might serve to confirm or disprove such notions. Rait saw the Scottish Parliament challenged by rivals – General Council (during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), and Convention of Estates (from the sixteenth century) – which exercised powers similar to Parliament, and therefore might be deemed to undermine its authority.⁵ Above all, Rait attacked the existence of the Lords of the Articles. Rait claimed that through most of the Scottish Parliament’s history ‘the whole business of Parliament, apart from judicial cases, tended to be entrusted to them [the Lords of the Articles], and … their reports were normally accepted with little discussion. The appointment of the Lords of the Articles was, therefore, … the most important act of the whole house.’⁶ Moreover, Rait claimed that the Lords of the Articles quickly became little more than a committee of the king’s Privy Council, and were therefore the main tool by which king or governing faction controlled parliamentary business.⁷ Such an argument was used as an excuse for the abolition of the committee in 1640 and 1689 (although it is doubtful whether the Crown ever had as much power over the Articles as was suggested by the abolitionists),⁸ but Rait did not examine the personnel that made up the committee in the fifteenth century to test his theories of domination by councillors.

Rait came to these conclusions as the result of a number of factors. Firstly, the length of period under consideration precluded the detailed examination of the surviving acts, and particularly the sederunt (attendance) lists and available records of the personnel of the Committee of the Articles. Secondly, Rait was not a medievalist, but was primarily interested in Parliament after 1500, with the result that, as T. F. Tout pointed out in his review of The Parliaments of Scotland, he tended to ‘argue back from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to an earlier age’.⁹ Thus conclusions that were possibly more justifiable in a later period came to be applied to the fifteenth century without being tested by evidence. Thirdly, and most importantly, Rait was working in the tradition of English historians such as Bishop William Stubbs and F. W. Maitland who had portrayed in exalted fashion the ‘steady and virtually predestined’ development of the English Parliament from its origins to its status as the ‘Mother of Parliaments’ and Parliament of the Empire.¹⁰ If the English Parliament, with its two chambers, speaker and shire commissioners as the driving force of the Commons, was the ultimate parliamentary success story, then the Scottish Parliament, with its one chamber, Lords of the Articles and, before 1594, lack of shire commissioners, had to be described as a railure almost by default. Thus Rait, along with R. K. Hannay in a number of articles published in the Scottish Historical Review, and C. S. Terry, in his study of the post–1603 Parliament, created a peculiarly Scottish form of Whig history.¹¹ To suggest that the Scottish Parliament was anything other than a constitutional dead-end would be to challenge the view of Scotland as part of the British State and the British Empire.

This view of the Scottish Parliament in general, and the fifteenth-century Parliament in particular, has been seen as unsatisfactory for some time. Most importantly, Dr Irene O’Brien, in her Ph.D. thesis ‘The Scottish Parliament in the 15th and 16th Centuries’, submitted in 1980 and covering the period 1424–1625, attempted to revise Rait’s interpretation, and came to a more positive conclusion about the powers of the institution, concluding that ‘whether or not the system can be said to be constitutionally sound, the Estates in Scotland could observe Parliament’s day-to-day operation with some satisfaction’.¹² Valuable research was carried out by Dr O’Brien into the manuscripts that make up the printed Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, volume ii, and the deficiencies of Thomas Thomson’s edition, particularly for James I’s reign, were highlighted and to a certain extent rectified by the inclusion of valuable missing acts.¹³ Nevertheless, O’Brien’s study, like Rait’s, chose a large time-period to study, resulting in a work which was again based around a thematic approach, and severely limited the extent to which individual Parliaments could be put in the context of the times in which they sat. O’Brien’s Parliament, like Rait’s, was an empty room, in which the Estates made only brief appearances.

Some of the most valuable work on the Scottish Parliament in the fifteenth century, together forming the most useful revision of Rait’s interpretation hitherto available, has come from the various general and detailed studies that have been published in the last thirty years. Professor Ranald Nicholson, in Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, published in 1974, included a valuable chapter outlining parliamentary business in the majority of James III.¹⁴ Nicholson noted that the sheer numbers involved in the various committees and commissions appointed by Parliament argued against the ability of the Crown to pack them with supporters, and that there were instances of clear opposition to the Crown in the 1470s.¹⁵ Dr Alexander Grant also included a brief analysis of Parliament in his study of late-medieval Scotland, coming to positive conclusions about the assembly’s role in the Crown’s relationship with society at large, and concluding that the Scottish Parliament was ‘far from powerless’.¹⁶ Professor A. A. M. Duncan’s brief study of James I’s reign placed a re-analysis of the king’s relationship with Parliament at its centre.¹⁷ Above all, the recent studies of the reigns of the Stewart monarchs from 1371 to 1513 in the Stewart Dynasty in Scotland series, Dr Michael Brown’s study of the Black Douglas family and Ph.D. theses by Dr Stephen Boardman, Dr Trevor Chalmers and Dr Alan Borthwick, have all added greatly to the available knowledge of the political events that occurred in or around individual Parliaments or General Councils in the late medieval period, or particular aspects of parliamentary competence.¹⁸

Nevertheless, there has been no sustained attempt to provide an analysis of the political role of the Three Estates in Parliament and General Council which, with reference to the political background at any given moment, explains why Parliament was called, who attended (and who did not), why they attended, and what they did, and draws conclusions from this about the institution as a whole in the fifteenth century. Such an analysis forms the core of this study, if the Scottish Parliament was weak, then why was it called so often (on average over once a year between 1424 and 1488, far more often than its English equivalent)?¹⁹ The implications of contemporary accounts, such as those provided by Walter Bower, John Shirley, Piero del Monte and the Auchinleck Chronicler, which all include instances of debate in Parliament, or even accounts of outright seizure of the king in the name of the Estates, need to be explained. Equally the numerous acts which seem to imply open resistance to royal desires have to be accounted for.

A different approach has been used to previous studies of Parliament. Firstly, a far shorter period has been examined than in the two previous works to deal with the medieval Parliament. The reigns of James I, James II and James III saw a very high number of meetings – more than at any other point in the medieval period – while from 1424 an increasing number of acts survive, with the official parliamentary register extant from 1466. Secondly, this study has restricted itself to an analysis of the political role of the Three Estates, therefore excluding analysis of Parliament’s important judicial role except where it has a bearing on political events. It should be noted that excellent modern studies of aspects of Parliament’s judicial role – specifically the role and personnel of the Lords Auditors of Causes and Complaints and the role of Parliament in fee and heritage disputes – have already been made by Dr Trevor Chalmers and Dr Alan Borthwick.²⁰ Thirdly, by choosing a period of sixty-four years, it is possible to deal with each Parliament or General Council individually, and chronologically, enabling meetings of the estates to be seen much more clearly in the context of the times in which they sat, and their relationship to, and influence over, political events outside the Parliament chamber. In short, an attempt has been made to give Parliament a human face. By placing Parliament firmly within its political context, this study will seek to shed light not only on the function and effectiveness of the Scottish Parliament itself, but also on the broader political society of which it formed a part.

1 R. S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland (Glasgow, 1924), 32; see also Rait’s preliminary volume on the Scottish Parliament, which is often far more outspoken about the institution’s failures: R. S. Rait, The Scottish Parliament Before the Union of the Crowns (London, 1901).

2 Rait, Parliaments, 33.

3 Ibid., 34.

4 Ibid., 125.

5 Ibid., 127–163.

6 Ibid., 8.

7 Ibid., 10.

8 J. R. Young, The Scottish Parliament, 1639–1661: A Political and Constitutional Analysis (Edinburgh, 1996), 3, 21–2; W. Ferguson, Scotland: 1689 to the Present (Edinburgh, 1968), 8. In 1621 and 1633 the Crown had to go to enormous lengths in order to secure the people it wanted on the Articles (J. Goodare, ‘The Scottish Parliament of 1621’, Historical Journal, xxxviii (1995), 29–51; M. Lee, The Road to Revolution: Scotland under Charles I (Urbana, III., 1985), 131–2).

9 T. F. Tout, ‘The Parliaments of Scotland’, SHR, xxii (1924), 95–100, 96.

10 In the introduction to Rait, The Scottish Parliament Before the Union of the Crowns, pp. vii–xxvi, Rait makes his debt to Stubbs and Maitland clear, and sets out his imperial perspective. See also W. Ferguson, ‘Introduction’, in C. Jones (ed.), The Scots and Parliament (Edinburgh, 1996), 1–10, 1–2.

11 See R. S. Rait, ‘Parliamentary representation in Scotland’, SHR, xii (1915); R. S. Rait, ‘Parliamentary representation in Scotland – The Lords of the Articles’, SHR, xiii (1916); R. K. Hannay, ‘General Council and Convention of Estates’, SHR, xx (1923); R. K. Hannay, ‘On ‘Parliament’ and General Council’, SHR., xv (1918); R. K. Hannay, ‘Officers of the Scottish Parliament’, Juridical Review, xliv (1932); C. S. Terry, The Scottish Parliament: Its Constitution and Procedure, 1603–1707 (Glasgow, 1905).

12 I. E. O’Brien, ‘The Scottish Parliament in the 15th and 16th Centuries’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1980), p. viii.

13 O’Brien, ‘Scottish Parliament’, 1–54, apps A-K, 327–49, app M-N, 352–386.

14 R. Nicholson, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974), 422–71.

15 Ibid., 425–31.

16 A. Grant, Independence and Nationhood: Scotland, 1306–1469 (London, 1984), 166–70.

17 A. A. M. Duncan, James I, King of Scots, 1424–1437 (2nd edition, Glasgow, 1984).

18 S. I. Boardman, Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III (East Linton, 1996); M. H. Brown, James I (Edinburgh, 1994); C. McGladdery, James II (Edinburgh, 1990); N. A. T. Macdougall, James III: A Political Study (Edinburgh, 1982); N. A. T. Macdougall, James IV (Edinburgh, 1989); M. H. Brown, The Black Douglases (East Linton, 1998); S. I. Boardman, ‘Politics and the feud in late medieval Scotland’ (Ph.D. thesis, St Andrews University, 1989); T. Chalmers, ‘The king’s Council, patronage, and the governance of Scotland 1460–1513’ (Ph.D. thesis, Aberdeen University, 1982), chapter 3, 152–94; A. R. Borthwick, ‘The king, Council and councillors in Scotland 1430–1460’ (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh University, 1989), and see also A. R. Borthwick, ‘Montrose v, Dundee and the jurisdiction of Parliament and Council over fee and heritage in the mid-fifteenth century’, in Jones, The Scots and Parliament, 33–53.

19 See below, appendix; HBC, 568–72.

20 Chalmers, ‘The king’s Council’, chapter 3, 152–94; Borthwick, ‘Montrose v, Dundee’, 33–53.

CHAPTER ONE

Taxation and Anglicisation, 1424–1428

1424 has long been seen as a new beginning in a Scottish parliamentary context. In that year James I returned from a captivity in England that had lasted eighteen years, dating from his capture while trying to travel to safety in France in 1406. The first Parliament after his release in May 1424 – indeed the first full Parliament since at least 1406 – marked the point when the institution suddenly became much more central to the political life of Scotland after a period when Parliaments had seldom sat and the less formal institution, General Council, had predominated, although it also sometimes sat only intermittently.¹ This new beginning in 1424 was clearly understood by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Scots. The majority of manuscript collections of acts over the next two centuries begin their records of Parliaments in 1424, as does the first attempt at a printed version of all the acts of the Scottish Parliament, published in 1566. The reason for this change derived from James I’s intention to use Parliament and General Council in a much more rigorous way – a relationship with the institution not seen since at least the reign of David II. This new predominance for Parliament introduced by James I in 1424 was to last until 1496, and would be typified throughout that period by meetings held at least annually, large legislative programmes, relatively frequent requests for taxation, and a consequently high level of political conflict and controversy between Crown and Estates.

The Battle for Taxation? 1424–1427

The first Parliament of James I’s active reign was unusual in many ways. Beginning on 26 May 1424, five days after the king’s coronation, it was the first full Parliament to meet since 1406.² We know of a large attendance, and the extant acts reflect the atmosphere of a new beginning for both the Stewart monarchy and the institution of Parliament in a way that reflects later Parliaments in 1455 and 1469.³ James I met with a far more favourable response from Parliament than in later years; the result of genuine enthusiasm for a rejuvenated monarchy in partnership with the Estates after the many years in which guardians had governed Scotland, first on behalf of the ‘incapacitated’ Robert III, and later while James was incarcerated in England.

The attendance was large. Although before the official parliamentary register becomes extant in 1466, and particularly in James I’s reign, attendance lists (known as sederunt lists) are scarce and fragmentary, it is often possible to build up attendance lists from other sources. According to Bower, twenty-six barons had been knighted at Scone on 21 May 1424, and there is every reason to believe they would have attended Parliament too.⁴ Other documents made near the time of the meetings confirm that nearly all the major secular and ecclesiastical magnates of the realm were still present at Perth in the days after Parliament ended.⁵

At this stage, it is unsurprising to find that most of the figures present would have been supportive of the king. Although figures such as Murdoch, duke of Albany, and Henry Wardlaw, bishop of St Andrews, would come into conflict with the king in the near or more distant future, there is no reason to believe they would have been antagonistic towards the Crown at this first meeting. Yet the list of people chosen to audit James I’s taxation, raised to begin the repayments of the £40,000 ransom owed to England, does show a degree of independence in the Estates’ selection that was to be typical of later years. Taken together, this rare list of people chosen to administer the tax is an intriguing mixture of royal servants and powerful magnates. Career bureaucrats, often with experience in finance, such as William Lauder, bishop of Glasgow, John, abbot of Balmerino, and Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm,⁶ rubbed shoulders with more independent men, such as Walter, earl of Atholl and James Douglas of Balvenie, the latter known for embezzling royal funds under the Albany governorship.⁷ Close royal allies worked alongside more obscure local lairds such as Sir Patrick Dunbar of Biel, but the overall impression is of a committee largely made up of men soon to rise in royal service.

The other figures almost certain to have been present seem to reflect a similar picture of men whom the king would broadly have been happy to see in attendance. William Douglas, earl of Angus (possibly knighted at the coronation), and William Sinclair, earl of Orkney, were both figures who would be close to the king in subsequent years, Angus pursuing his rivalry with the earls of Douglas, and Orkney following in something of a family tradition of service to James I.⁸ Both would be on the assize to forfeit the Albany Stewarts in May 1425, and Angus would be the custodian of the duchess of Albany.⁹ Sir Herbert Maxwell of Caerlaverock continued the strong Douglas presence.¹⁰ Thomas Somerville of Carnwath and Adam Hepburn of Hailes would both be favoured by the king during the 1420s.¹¹ Clearly a reasonable cross section of the Three Estates had assembled in Perth, most hoping to benefit from the largesse of the newly crowned king, with a strong Black Douglas contingent, presumably in the (unrecorded) company of Archibald Douglas, earl of Wigtown. What is perhaps most important, however, is the apparent isolation of the duke of Albany among the Estates. Of his political allies, only Bishop Stephenson of Dunblane was selected to take part in administering the tax, nor are his allies obvious amongst those knighted at the coronation or at Perth. This was perhaps unsurprising in the wake of the arrest on 13 May at Edinburgh of Murdoch’s son, Walter Stewart of Lennox; nevertheless Murdoch was as yet still nominally in favour with the king, and had even supported and encouraged the arrest of his son.¹² Instead Murdoch, as he sat in Parliament, must have noticed that he was surrounded by figures with ambitions at his expense.

The twenty-nine statutes that survive for this Parliament reflect the make-up of the known sederunt?and make it one of the largest legislative Parliaments of the century.¹³ Together they amount to a formidable assertion of power by the king over the realm, demanding the obedience of all the lieges of whatever ‘estate, degre or conditioun he be’.¹⁴ As yet the Estates seem to have been happy to pledge this obedience. Dr. Michael Brown has argued that three acts in particular amounted to ‘a revocation of royal rights’.¹⁵ Perhaps most important of these three was an act that ‘all the gret and smal custumys and buroumaillis of the realme byde and remane with the king’. The granting out of the royal customs revenues had been extremely widespread under the early Stewarts, to the detriment of the royal finances. If James wanted to establish a wealthy and prestigious monarchy, then the customs were of central importance.¹⁶ Yet by reclaiming the customs he risked antagonising some powerful figures. The Exchequer rolls for the years before James Fs return provide ample evidence of the use and abuse of the customs by the duke of Albany, the earls of Douglas and Mar, James Douglas of Balvenie and William Borthwick. Except for Douglas and Mar, all are known to have been at Parliament, and it is probable that Mar was also present.¹⁷ Indeed, Douglas had been so instrumental in James’s release that he may have expected a less prompt and forceful return to the letter of the law. Fortunately for James, the earls of Douglas and Buchan (who as chamberlain had overseen much of the embezzling) were in France from March 1424, but the presence of his son and heir with Douglas of Balvenie must have meant that this act was not passed without certain reservations.¹⁸ By stating clearly that this source of revenue was no longer available for the legal or illegal enrichment of the lieges, the king, albeit with consent of ‘the hail Parliament’, was acting to the detriment of some of his most powerful magnates. Moreover the act was one of the most successful of this Parliament; by May 1425 the gross customs receipts had risen from £2,779 8s. 2d. to £4,400 4s. 9d.¹⁹

As with the customs, so with Crown lands. James asked that all the sheriffs make an enquiry to their bailies about what ‘landis, possessionis, or annuell rentis’ pertained to the king or his ancestors since the reign of David II, and to whom they belonged at present. The act concluded that, ‘gif it likis the king’, he would summon all his tenants to prove their rights by charters and evidence. Finally, another act ordered that officers and ministers of the law be appointed, and those officers who currently held posts but were ineffective in putting them into action were to be removed.²⁰ Together these acts indicated the king’s intention to reassert the Crown’s rights over its traditional sources of revenue and power. There were many among the Estates who would be threatened by this action, most obviously the Albany Stewarts, whose territory had often been built up by ‘dubious methods’. In subsequent months, particularly after the death of the earl of Buchan in France, James would use this fact to his advantage.²¹

The declaration of intent did not end there. Acts were passed banning war among the lieges, rebellion against the king, and forbidding persons of whatever Estate to ride through the country with unnecessarily large retinues. The latter statutes expressed the king’s wish to be involved in every aspect of the realm’s business, from acts banning killing salmon at forbidden times, banning football, forbidding begging, asserting the king’s right to gold and silver mines, banning the purchasing of benefices by churchmen contrary to the king’s wishes, and dealing with the striking of money. Many were not controversial, at least from a political point of view, while others were probably quite impracticable.²² Overall, however, the impression is of a rejuvenated and interventionist monarchy expressing its interest in every aspect of Scottish life, and using Parliament as one of the main tools by which it sought to intervene in the affairs of the Estates. This was a radical concept, not familiar to any Scot since at least the death of David II in 1371, and perhaps not before. The implications for future conflict were obvious. While this legislative programme was passed successfully, and with apparent enthusiasm, the Estates were being asked to ratify a drastic reduction in their own independence from royal control.

Yet even in this first Parliament the legislative programme may have been the subject of considerable dispute. At the very least there seems to have been a lengthy discussion before taxation was agreed. James had returned from England with a ransom of £40,000 sterling to be paid at a rate of £6,666 per annum. A large part of the legislation passed at this Parliament dealt with the first instalment of the ‘general zelde’. ‘For it war grevouse and chargeande on the commonys to raise the haille fynance at anyse’, the first instalment was to amount to twelve pence in the pound on all lands, rents, and goods throughout the realm, while cattle and corn were to be taxed at separate rates. Assessors were to be appointed and to swear obedience to the king in the shires, and a book, amounting almost to a small Domesday, was to be made recording the names of each person living within towns and the amount of their goods. This was to be presented to the king at Perth on 12 July ‘nixt to cum’.²³ Professor A. A. M. Duncan has argued from internal evidence within the act that this implies 12 July 1425, not 1424. Indeed, from an earlier version of the act found by Dr. Irene O’Brien, it would seem that there was a prolonged dispute over the wording of the taxation, possibly until shortly after 12 July 1424, thus explaining the otherwise unusual date as being one year from the conclusion of the acts.²⁴ Further supporting this notion is the fact that the burgh commissioners had to raise the first instalment of the tax, amounting to 20,000 English nobles, from Flemish money-lenders, to tide James over until the tax was collected a year later, at which point the burghs would be repaid.²⁵ The final draft saw considerably more favourable methods of control for the king, so the lengthy dispute ended in his favour, but the implications are quite obvious. Even at this most loyal and enthusiastic assembly, James was facing trouble from the Estates over the methods and timing of payments of the tax.

Part of this problem almost certainly stemmed from the attitude of James to the Scottish Parliament, and his opinion of its duties to him. It is perhaps no surprise that in the first few years after James’s return a particular phrase is used which is almost unknown in a Scottish parliamentary context, but well known in an English one. Twice in this first Parliament there are references to the ‘commonys’ – firstly in the quotation cited above concerning the need for annual taxation, and secondly in the act dealing with the appointment of officers of the law ‘to hold the law to the kingis commonis’.²⁶ Even more significantly the word was used three years later in the act made at the General Council of 1 March 1428 that attempted to set up a system or shire commissioners. James I was familiar witn the concept of the English Commons, the lower house of Parliament which played such a pivotal role in taxation. During his captivity, and particularly due to his involvement in the Hundred Years’ War on the English side, he will have witnessed ‘the custom, clearly recognised, that the king had the right to demand subsidies from his Parliaments to suoport his wars’.²⁷ Despite the reputation of the English Parliament for its power over the English kings, the ability of the English monarchy to sustain its French ambitions was based on the Commons’ willingness to provide generous payments over long periods. Meanwhile the Commons, who from the 1390s effectively had the final decision in grants of tax, were also willing to accept virtually annual requests for taxation simply to support the king’s routine financial requirements, indeed taxation was nearly always the reason for summoning the English Parliament; in short ‘the business of the Commons was to grant taxes’.²⁸ No such tradition existed in early fifteenth-century Scotland, indeed the only tradition was of direct taxation being a last resort. Only once before, in the peculiar circumstances of the reign of Robert I, at the 1326 Parliament at Cambuskenneth, had an annual taxation been granted, on that occasion of two shillings in the pound for life.²⁹ In contrast, David II had paid his ransom from customs revenues, a fact that must have weighed on the minds of the assembled Estates in 1424.³⁰ This is not to deny the considerable influence that the English Commons had over taxation, but only to point out the different basis of that influence to the Scottish Parliament. The Commons derived its power from the ability to refuse taxation periodically for particular reasons. The Scottish Parliament’s power came from the ability, rarely used, to grant tax in the first place. James I had little appreciation of the different Scottish tradition, a fact that would lead to severe problems in subsequent meetings. Contrary to the received view of Scottish and English historians since Rait, a Scottish monarch may have seen the English Parliament as a more malleable body than its Scottish counterpart.

Whatever James wished the Scottish Parliament to become, he was to be sadly disappointed. If this most obedient of meetings took a month and a half to grant taxation, it did not suggest that the enforcement of annual taxation, even if only for the period it took to pay the ransom, was going to be easy. This proved to be the case. Although the first contribution was paid by the Estates to the extent of around 14,000 marks in the first year, future levies of tax would collect ‘unbelievably less’.³¹ When Parliament met again, beginning on 12 March 1425 at Perth, eight months after the conclusion of the previous meeting, the tensions that had been present in the first meeting took on a new dimension.³² The meeting had been called to agree the second instalment of the taxation, but no such agreement was reached.³³ Instead, on the ninth day of Parliament, Murdoch Stewart, duke of Albany, was arrested along with his son, Sir Alexander Stewart, John Montgomery of that Ilk, and Alan Otterburn, Albany’s secretary.³⁴ The length of time that passed before the arrests suggests strongly that they were not premeditated by the king; instead they resulted from Albany’s behaviour at Parliament. The failure to obtain a grant of tax was probably at least partially the cause rather than the result of Albany’s arrest. Dr. Michael Brown has gone so far as to suggest a ‘campaign of criticism’ against the king on a number of issues.³⁵

James’s taxation policy was probably the main cause of this dissent, and this dissatisfaction was at such a high level that the Estates were willing to defy the king only a year after his return from captivity. The Exchequer rolls record the total payments made to James I by the burghs in the two taxes of 1424 and 1426.³⁶ In the two taxes they paid almost 40,000 nobles (20,000 marks) to the king, presumably largely from the sums raised in Flanders to be paid back by the money raised from the other Estates (of which probably only a limited amount was ever repaid).³⁷ Only 10,000 marks, however, is recorded as having reached England in two payments of 14 February 1425 and 9 July 1425, derived solely from money raised from the first taxation of 1424–5, almost exclusively by the burghs.³⁸ No further payments were ever made, and by 14 July 1429 the Pell Issue Rolls of Henry VI would mention that ‘the king of Scotland had not been able to receive, or obtain’ the outstanding payments of the ransom. In most years the quittances of the ransom were optimistically entered in the accounts, only to be cancelled later due to non-payment.³⁹

The remaining 10,000 marks raised by the burghs were never paid to England, although in the king’s possession, as were whatever other sums were raised by the first and second Estates. This money was not spent as yet – that would happen only from 1428. Yet it must have become clear very quickly that the king had little intention of spending the taxation on its intended purpose. If the money was not going to England, then it would have been apparent that the king hoped to use it for his household expenses. This was unlikely to endear him to the Estates, who saw taxation as an extraordinary expenditure, not to be squandered, in their terms, on the upkeep of the king. Certainly the dating of the two payments of the ransom in February and July 1425 suggests that major problems developed in the spring of 1425. If Professor Duncan’s interpretation of the grant of taxation of 1424 is correct, and the Estates’ contribution was to be paid on 12 July 1425, then the tax had not been collected when the first ransom payment of 8,000 marks was made on 14 February 1425.⁴⁰ This must have come instead from the chevisance (loan) raised in Flanders. The payment of 2,000 marks made on 9 July probably came from the contributions from the Estates as money began to be collected before the 12 July deadline. Payments stopped abruptly thereafter. The remaining 10,000 marks raised by the burghs, referred to in the accounts as the second year of the contribution, was presumably raised in the taxation of 1426.⁴¹

If taxation was the main grievance at the March 1425 Parliament, there were also other issues that would have concerned a number of magnates, including Albany, and he would have been the obvious choice to lead any vocal criticism. Twenty-five statutes were passed, again a large legislative output. Many were straightforward enough, dealing with merchandise, Lollards, the protection of woodland, and the catching of salmon and deer.⁴² Yet several acts hint at the problems the king was facing outside Parliament, and were clearly introduced by the king as an attempt to deal with them. Indeed two hint at James using Parliament to enable him to deal legally with the Albany Stewarts: to find ‘meenys and weyes for-to doo hem [them] to dethe as his traytoures’.⁴³ The fifth act banned ‘ligis and bandis’ being made by any of the lieges or the realm. Simply to forbid the making of bonds was quite impracticable, but the act had a much more specific aim. it was a way of attacking the Albany Stewarts by making links between them theoretically illegal. Dr Jenny Wormald and Dr Michael Brown have argued mat the act was specifically aimed at the bond made between Albany and Mar on 16 November 1420, by which