Alanson’s career in context

Why is any of this significant for Scottish legal historians or historians more generally? The earlier study of â€?men of law’ in medieval Aberdeen mentioned above made it clear that Alanson had extensive experience of the administration of the law as it was collectively understood in Aberdeen – albeit that constraints of space meant that a great deal more could still be said about this.²¹ Presumably, he brought that experience to his representative work in the burgh courts on behalf of Agnes Lilburn, and also to his activities as a burgh commissioner in the administration of justice and law reform in meetings of Scottish parliaments in Edinburgh.

This is intriguing because contemporary sources indicate that the relationship between these two different groups of courts was complex. For example, it has been shown in the past that some litigants complained about the poor quality of the justice administered in the old courts of the medieval common law, often called their �ordinary’ courts. Consequently, they petitioned parliament and other �central’ bodies such as the royal council directly for remedies. One reason the litigants gave for their dissatisfaction was that the older courts were staffed by officials who lacked the sort of legal expertise and training that could be used to resolve the increasingly complex disputes that were arising in Scottish society during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. By contrast, many of the ecclesiastical judges who sat in the royal council, for example, did have that sort of training.

Arguably, further light can be shed on these developments by studying the careers of individuals like Alanson in more detail. As has been explained, Alanson was extensively involved in the administration of justice in the burgh courts of Aberdeen, which were amongst the old courts of the common law. On at least two occasions, he was also involved in the administration of justice by parliament. In addition, he may have been involved – however passively – in an attempt to create an authoritative version of the texts of the medieval Scottish common law. The accounts of the work of the burgh courts in the recently transcribed Aberdeen council registers allow researchers to reconstruct a great deal of the experience that a man like Andrew Alanson brought to the roles just mentioned. Perhaps more usefully, the exercise of reconstructing his work also allows one to consider the extent to which the sorts of general legal historical trends discussed above were in operation, and to do so at a level of great detail.

Therefore, this chapter will attempt to reconstruct Alanson’s career, with a particular focus on his work in the burgh courts and in the parliament. Such work will, it is hoped, lay a foundation for exploring the relationship between the work of the burgh courts of Aberdeen on the one hand, and that of more central fora for the administration of justice on the other. This, in turn, may ultimately help scholars to understand the extent to which litigants’ dissatisfaction with the ordinary courts of the common law – at least in Aberdeen – facilitated the development of more â€?centralised’ courts in late medieval Scotland.²³ It should be mentioned briefly that the careers of Richard Kintore and Master John Cadiou might also be usefully discussed to advance this sort of research; like Alanson, both men were heavily involved in the administration of burgh affairs – and in particular in the work of the burgh courts²⁴ – and they were also burgh commissioners to parliament.²⁵