Access and control
Written records, then, were widely used in late medieval Aberdeen, both within and beyond the civic administration. The creation of common books offered a new and powerful means of gathering information and linking that information internally within the books and externally to other documents.
At least some members of the burgh community were able to request to see, or have copies made of, records within the common books. Challenge to the records could be considered a significant offence. In 1505, Sir John Stirling, notary and common clerk, protested in the burgh’s bailie court about a complaint that had been made against him by Matthew Branch. He noted that Branch had taken issue withane act of the saide court buk … sayande he sulde preiwe the saide act fals in four of fiwe poyntis to the gret Infamite ande dishonor to the saide bailyeis sittande as Jugez ande hyme that wrait the saide act [John Stirling].66
Despite his denial that he had ever made the complaint, Branch was found guilty and made to
sit one his kneis and ask the saide ser Johne forgefnes Ande thareftir the said Mathou deponit the gret aitht that the saide ser Johne was leile faithfule and trewe man and notor in ale his dowingis Ande hed med the said act Ande ale ponntis contenit in It Ande that the saide was leile and treue in ale ponntis contenit in It Alsua the said Mathou askit the saide bailyeis and notor forgefnes,
as well as paying a stone of wax to the holy blood shrine of the parish church and £20 to the building’s upkeep.67 This was the kind of punishment given to those who had committed acts of violence and it is telling of the extent to which the authority of the common books was guarded by the civic administration.
As we have seen, the internal evidence of the common books suggests they were used increasingly across the fifteenth century, just as a range of other developments increased engagement with the written word.
As the heart of a network of documents these books – and the civic archive of which they were a substantial part – must have been recognised for their potential as a means of reinforcing and maintaining the position of magistrate dynasties for which the continued prosperity of the burgh community was not an abstract ideal, but a means of ensuring the hegemony of their family and name in the generations to come. While the books presented an �institutional possibility’ that may have fed into wider changes in the consumption of law, it was a possibility introduced primarily for the small elite that dominated Aberdeen’s civic institutions, and one which helped enforce their social and political control of the town.68 The marriage of civic leadership with writing and archival practices was literally embodied by the sixteenth-century Menzies family which came to hold the office of provost (alderman) and town clerk simultaneously in the person of Thomas Menzies.69