Conclusion
Andrew Alanson might, or might not, have accepted the label of �man of law’. Regardless, studying his career enriches our understanding of fifteenth-century Scottish legal history, and Scottish history more generally.
It illustrates many of the trends in the development of the law identified by legal historians in remarkable detail. Some of the difficulties that litigants are thought to have faced in the administration of justice, such as delay, a lack of legal expertise amongst those responsible for making decisions and indeed uncertainty concerning the provisions of the supposedly authoritative texts of the law emerge clearly in the Aberdeen council registers. As regards delay, a statute of 1455 attempting to limit its effects in resolving disputes over small claims was implemented in various different ways by burgh councils between 1456 and 1473, latterly during Alanson’s time as provost. While the express provisions of the statute were never fully applied, the council did attempt to uphold its overall purpose.In addition, the Lilburn litigation, explored earlier in this chapter, provided an example of the difficulties that could arise due to the lack of legal expertise in the Aberdeen burgh courts. It will be recalled that Alanson represented Lilburn in court in a succession dispute; and in the course of that dispute, the question of Agnes Lilburn’s right to inherit was referred to the provosts and �men of law’ of Dundee, Perth and Edinburgh. Perhaps significantly, only the provost of Edinburgh said he had been able to consult �men of law’. In addition, the same response drew attention to a text of the medieval common law of Scotland – the Leges Burgorum – as an authority to be used in resolving the dispute. The difficulties in using such a text were well known; as already stated, part of the problem was that they were transmitted in a �relatively uncritical and private system of manuscript collections’.98 Parliament attempted to deal with this in 1469, and again in 1473, as discussed earlier.
The effects of all of these difficulties were felt and illustrated in the career of Andrew Alanson. So too were the various attempts to address these issues. As one must assume was the case with many of his predecessors as councillors, bailies and provosts of Aberdeen, Alanson had gained significant experience of the operation of the procedures of the Scottish common law, at least as they were understood in contemporary Aberdeen.99 Arguably, he brought that experience to bear on his work as a judge in the burgh courts and as a trusted representative for his peers in the courts, both as a procurator and a forespeaker. He also presumably brought it to bear on his work as a lord auditor of causes and complaints in parliament, where he participated in attempts to address the perceived shortcomings of the ordinary courts through the provision of a supplementary first-instance parliamentary forum for the resolution of disputes. If that might have helped to address delays in the administration of justice, Alanson’s statute of 1473 might have had the same effect; it certainly had the same intent. Furthermore, there is the tantalising possibility that Alanson participated directly in the commission that was tasked with advising parliament about the merits of reducing the medieval laws of the Scottish realm to a single, authoritative volume, with the �laif’ (the rest) to be �distroyit’. Regrettably, it seems one can only wonder what he made of this proposal – if anything.
Nonetheless, however much experience he had of the operation of the law as applied in Aberdeen, it remained the case that he lacked formal legal training and expertise. Fundamentally, he was, and remained, a highly respected and trusted merchant burgess and guild brother of Aberdeen who knew a great deal about the operation of the Aberdonian burgh courts. In the decades following Alanson’s death, the legal world in which he had operated was gradually transformed. The so-called �Education Act’ of 1496 probably reveals a sense that leaving legal administration to experienced laymen with no formal training in the law was no longer satisfactory.100 The statute provided that all �baronis and frehaldaris’ that were of �substance’ should educate their eldest sons, ensuring that they would spend �thre yeris at the sculis of art and jure, sua that thai may have knawlege and understanding of the lawis’; the express aim of the act was that justice might �reigne universalie throw all the realme, sua that thai that ar schireffis or jugeis ordinaris under the kingis hienes may have knawlege to do justice, that the pure pepill sulde have na need to seik oure soverane lordis principale auditouris for ilk small injure’.
It has been suggested that Bishop William Elphinstone sought to go some way towards satisfying this apparent demand for greater legal learning and expertise through the foundation of a new university in Alanson’s native Aberdeen in 1495.101 Demands for such learning amongst those holding judicial office would only grow as time passed; and it came to be expected of the lords of the conciliar session, which had acquired de facto supreme jurisdiction in Scottish civil matters prior to its reconstitution as the College of Justice in 1532.102It is a curious twist of history, and perhaps a fitting one with which to end the present chapter, that Alanson’s legacy made a small but direct contribution to facilitate the growing demands for legal expertise, at least in his native Aberdeen. It will be recalled that Andrew Alanson and his wife, Christian Cadiou, had endowed an altar in honour of Mary Magadalene in the burgh kirk of St Nicholas. At some point before 1506, Bishop William Elphinstone acquired the right of patronage of the altar, and he used this as a basis for funding a bursary in Roman civil law at his new university.103 Consequently, if one can discern the influence of major trends in contemporary legal development in Alanson’s career, one can also see how such trends ultimately came to shape his legacy. In exploring these points, it is hoped that the present chapter has shown how much light the study of the newly transcribed Aberdeen council registers can shed on both the late medieval Scottish common law and also on the trusted administrators and �men of law’ who helped to shape it.