Overview

This volume contains the full texts of 175 acts issued under the seal of King Alexander III, together with notes on a further 155 'lost acts' that survive only in notices. These acts, many of which have never been published before, have been collected from a variety of archives in Scotland, England, Belgium and France.The Introduction examines the administrative contexts of the later thirteenth century in which the royal chancery drafted and authenticated charters, brieves and other written instruments, and the varied sources from which the collection is compiled. The texts include full Latin transcriptions and detailed English-language summaries of the contents of each act, together with a series of notes and comments on context and significance. By drawing together both original archive sources and widely scattered published sources, the volume offers a unique opportunity to understand how Scottish government and administration operated in the key period before the reign of Robert Bruce.The Regesta Regum Scottorum series has already made available in print a definitive edition of the written acts of several of the medieval kings of Scotland. It remains the standard reference for Scottish, British and European scholars interested in the history of royal chanceries, the evolution of medieval royal government and the growth of literate modes of expression in the Middle Ages.

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9780748627325

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Reviews

It would be a niggardly reviewer who would do other than heartily applaud the editors and publisher for this splendid addition to a series which is so vital to anyone with a serious interest in medieval Scotland. -- Norman H. Reid, The Scottish Historical Review

'There is much to commend it: one gains a clear impression of the increasing sophistication of the late thirteenth-century royal household and the changing societal trends which increased both the proportion of secular recipients of grants and the variety of document forms demanded of the chancery... There are excellent concise analyses of the various document types and subject matters, palaeography, sigillography and dating, within which headings are enfolded a wealth of valuable detail about subjects as diverse as the scribes themselves (and hence the composition of the chancery) and their scribal habits, and the legal position of the king and his advisors during the minority...It would be a niggardly reviewer who would do other than heartily applaud the editors and publisher for this splendid addition to a series which is so vital to anyone with a serious interest in medieval Scotland.'--Norman H. Reid The Scottish Historical Review

Author Information

Cynthia J. Neville is the George Munro Professor of History at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. She has published extensively on various aspects of the legal and social history of the Anglo-Scottish border lands in the period 1200-1500 and on the social and cultural encounter between Gaels and Europeans in medieval Scotland. She is the author of Violence, Custom and Law: The Anglo-Scottish Border Lands in the Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh University Press, 1998) and Native Lordship in Medieval Scotland: The Earldoms of Strathearn and Lennox, c.1140-1365 (2005). Grant G. Simpson, formerly of Aberdeen University, is the author of many books and articles, including Scottish handwriting, 1150-1650: An introduction to the reading of documents, and is a Fellow of the Societies of Antiquaries of Scotland and of London.

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