Notes
* We are grateful to Andrew Simpson for his comments on a draft version of this introduction. Any errors are our own.
1 For example, R. Lesaffer, European Legal History: A Cultural and Political Perspective, trans.
J. Arriens, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 235–88.2 For example, J. Wubs-Mrozewicz, �The late medieval and early modern Hanse as an institution of conflict management’, Continuity and Change 29, 2017, pp. 59–84.
3 T. Johnson, Law in Common: Legal Cultures in Late-Medieval England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, p. 55. See also R. Goddard and T. Phipps (eds) Town Courts and Urban Society in Late Medieval England, 1250–1500, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2020.
4 E. Frankot, �Of Laws of Ships and Shipmen’: Medieval Maritime Law and its Practice in Urban Northern Europe, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012 and J. Kopaczyk, The Legal Language of Scottish Burghs: Standardisation and Lexical Bundles 1380–1560, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
5 Modern print editions of some of this material are E. Gemmill (ed.) Aberdeen Guild Court Records, 1437–1468, Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 2005, and W.C. Dickinson (ed.) Early Records of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 1317. 1398–1407, Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1957.
6 J. Armstrong and A. Mackillop (eds) �Special section: Communities, courts and scottish towns’, Urban History 44(3), 2017, pp. 358–423.
7 This project was funded principally by a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant, 2016–2019, led by J. Armstrong. Its major digital output is E. Frankot, A. Havinga, C. Hawes, W. Hepburn, W. Peters, J. Armstrong, P. Astley, A. Mackillop, A. Simpson and A. Wyner (eds) Aberdeen Registers Online: 1398–1511, Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen, 2019, (accessed 1 January 2020) (hereafter ARO).
8 On medieval �political culture’ as comprising ideas, communication and networks see the overview given in J.
Watts, The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300–1500, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 129–57. Significant recent work on Scotland, England and the Empire includes: C. Hawes, â€?Community and public authority in later fifteenth-century Scotland’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015; C.D. Liddy, Contesting the City: The Politics of Citizenship in English Towns, 1250–1530, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, and D. Hardy, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire: Upper Germany, 1346–1521, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.9 On the â€?culturalisation’ of various historical disciplines and an overview of scholarship on legal culture, see H. Rudolph, â€?Rechtskultur in der Frühen Neuzeit. Perspektive und Erkenntnispotentiale eines modischen Begriffs’, Historische Zeitschrift 278, 2004, pp. 347–74. Modern legal culture is a more developed discipline; see, for example, V. Gessner, A. Hoeland and C. Varga (eds) European Legal Cultures, Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996, and K. Günther and S. Kadelbach (eds) Kulturen des Rechts, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2018.
10 D. Nelken, �Using the concept of legal culture’, Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 29, 2004, pp. 1–26, at p. 1. Nelken in this and other publications has also dealt with criticism of and problems with using the term �legal culture’. See, for example, �Thinking about legal culture’, Asian Journal of Law and Society 1, 2014, pp. 255–74, at pp. 257–67.
11 Friedman goes on: �[legal culture] covers those thoughts and ideas which act as motives or incentives for “legal behaviour”’. L.M. Friedman, The Republic of Choice. Law, Authority and Culture, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 213. Friedman first wrote on the subject in his article �Legal culture and social development’, Law and Society Review 4, 1969, pp. 29–44.
12 J.�. Sunde, �Live and let die: An essay concerning legal-cultural understanding’, in M.
Adams and D. Heirbaut (eds) The Method and Culture of Comparative Law: Essays in Honour of Mark Van Hoecke, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 221–34, at p. 222. See also U. Böker and J.A. Hibbard (eds) Sites of Discourse – Public and Private Spheres – Legal Culture. Papers from a Conference Held at the Technical University of Dresden, December 2001, Leiden: Brill, 2002, particularly the chapter by Böker.13 J.�. Sunde, �Champagne at the funeral: An introduction to legal culture’, in J.�. Sunde and K.E. Skodvin (eds) Rendezvous of European Legal Cultures, Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2010, pp. 11–28. Available online at. Quoted text from p. 10 of the online version. This is applied to modern Scottish legal culture in A.R.C. Simpson, �An introduction to Scottish legal culture’, in S. Koch, K. Skodvin, and J. Sunde (eds) Comparing Legal Cultures, Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2017, pp. 87–130.
14 Rudolph, �Rechtskultur’, p. 361.
15 L. Mather, �Law and society’, in R.E. Goodin (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, via Oxford Handbooks Online, (accessed 15 November 2019).
16 The �Legalism’ book series which began with P. Dresch and H. Skoda, Legalism: Anthropology and History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, and now with three further volumes in print, is the leading example of such work.
17 S.L. Winter, A Clearing in the Forest: Law, Life and Mind, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 332.
18 L. Rosen, Law as Culture, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
19 For example, E. Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France, Leiden: Brill, 1993; D. Heirbaut, �Exploring the law in medieval minds’, in A. Musson and C. Stebbing (eds) Making Legal History: Approaches and Methodologies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 118–30.
20 A. Musson, Medieval Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’ Revolt, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
21 For instance, E. Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; P.C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422–1442, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992; C.B. Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; and M. Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
22 For example, see R.F. Green, �Medieval literature and law’, in D. Wallace (ed.) The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 407–31, and E. Steiner and C. Barrington (eds) The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
23 P. Raffield, Images and Cultures of Law in Early Modern England: Justice and Political Power, 1558–1660, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. For a more general cultural history approach to law see E. Conte and L. Mayali (eds) A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages, Volume 2, London: Bloomsbury, 2019, and P. Goodrich (ed.) A Cultural History of Law in the Early Modern Age, Volume 3, London: Bloomsbury, 2019.
24 Johnson, Law in Common, p. 7.
25 D. Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe: The Medieval Kingdom and Its Contacts with Christendom, c. 1214–1545, East Linton: John Donald, 2001, and E.P. Dennison and G.G. Simpson, �Scotland’, in D.M. Palliser (ed.) Cambridge Urban History of Britain: Volume 1: 600–1540, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 715–37.
26 See below, Chapter 1, p. 24, citing among others an entry from 1509 (ARO-8- 1036-02).
27 ARO-6-0420-04.
28 ARO-4-0003-06.
29 ARO-2-0025-02 (1409); ARO-1-0277-07 (1406); ARO-1-0171-06 (1400).
30 ARO-8-0455-02.
31 See in the present volume, A. Havinga, �The vernacularisation of the Aberdeen Council Registers (1398–1511)’, esp.
pp. 97–8.32 A.R.C. Simpson and J.W. Armstrong (eds and trans.) �The roll of the burgh courts of Aberdeen, August–October 1317’, in M. Godfrey (ed.) Miscellany Eight, Edinburgh: Stair Society, 2020, pp. 57–93, at 84–5. See also in the present volume W. Hepburn and G. Small, �Common books in Aberdeen, c. 1398–c. 1511’, section �Documentary culture in Aberdeen’, pp. 46–8.
33 On these themes see M. Mostert and P.S. Barnwell (eds) Medieval Legal Process: Physical, Spoken and Written Performance in the Middle Ages, Turnhout: Brepols, 2011; J. Benham, M. McHaffie and H. Vogt (eds) Law and Language in the Middle Ages, Leiden: Brill, 2018. On towns specifically see A. Bartoszewicz, Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland, Turnhout: Brepols, 2018; M. Mostert and A. Adamska (eds) Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns: Medieval Urban Literacy I, Turnhout: Brepols, 2014; and M. Mostert and A. Adamska (eds) Uses of the Written Word in Medieval Towns: Medieval Urban Literacy II, Turnhout: Brepols, 2014.
34 M. Boone, �“Estre le bien commun et general d’icelle preferé au bien privé et particulier”. Vrijwillige rechtspraak, stedelijke identiteit en stedelijke diplomatiek’, in H. Brand, J. Benders and R. Nip (eds) Stedelijk verleden in veelvoud. Opstellen over laatmiddeleeuwse stadsgeschiedenis in de Nederlanden, Hilversum: Verloren, 2011, pp. 197–211, at p. 208.
35 For an overview of the Scottish context see E.P. Dennison, The Evolution of Scotland’s Towns: Creation, Growth and Fragmentation, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp. 7–46, and J. Armstrong and A. Mackillop (eds) �Special Issue: Scottish urban archives and histories: Context and a legal historical perspective’, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies 9(2), 2018.
36 H.L. MacQueen and W.J. Windram, �Laws and courts in the burghs’, in M. Lynch, M. Spearman and G. Stell (eds) The Scottish Medieval Town, Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988, pp.
208–27.37 See also Frankot, Medieval Maritime Law, pp. 145–9.
38 Musson, Medieval Law in Context, p. 9.
39 With regard to this, see C. Lansing, Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008.
40 A. Brown and J. Dumolyn, �Medieval urban culture: Conceptual and historiographical problems’, in A. Brown and J. Dumolyn (eds) Medieval Urban Culture, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, pp. 1–25, at p. 22. On material culture see E. Gemmill, �Debt, distraint, display and dead men’s treasure: Material culture in late medieval Aberdeen’, Journal of Medieval History 46, 2020, pp. 350–72 (which appeared just as the present book was being submitted).
41 For instance: E. Hartrich, Politics and the Urban Sector in Fifteenth-Century England, 1413–1471, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019; Liddy, Contesting the City; C. Fletcher, �News, noise, and the nature of politics in late medieval English provincial towns’, Journal of British Studies 56, 2017, pp. 250–72, at p. 253; C. Hawes, �The urban community in fifteenth-century Scotland: Language, law and political practice’, in Armstrong and Mackillop (eds) �Special section: Communities, courts and Scottish towns’, pp. 365–80; Hawes, �Community and public authority’,pp. 47–72, 73–105; and P. Lantschner, The Logic of Political Conflict in Medieval Cities: Italy and the Southern Low Countries, 1370–1440, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
42 S.R. Blanshei (ed) A Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Bologna, Leiden: Brill, 2018 (especially chapters by De Benedictis, and Blanshei and Cucini); K.J.P. Lowe and T. Dean (eds) Murder in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017; T. Dean, �Police forces in late medieval Italy: Bologna, 1340–1480’, Social History 44(2), 2019, pp. 151–72; and L. Armstrong and J. Kirshner (eds) The Politics of Law in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. See also Lansing, Passion and Order and R. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980.
43 On the city court of sixteenth-century Freiberg as record keeper see J. Jordan, â€?Rethinking disputes and settlements: How historians can use legal anthropology’, in S. Cummins and L. Kounine (eds) Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early Modern Europe, Farnham: Ashgate, 2016, pp. 17–50, at pp. 34–5. On law and cultural networks in Magdeburg see G. Köster, C. Link and H. Lück (eds) Kulturelle Vernetzung in Europa: Das Magdeburger Recht und seine Städte. Wissenschaftlicher Begleitband zur Ausstellung â€?Faszination Stadt’, Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2019.
44 D.L. Smail, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Touching on similar themes and with reference to major cities, including Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Dijon, see P. Arnade and W. Prevenier, Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble: Pardon Letters in the Burgundian Low Countries, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.
45 H. Brand, S. Rabeler, and H. von Seggern (eds) Gelebte Normen im urbanen Raum? Zur sozial- und kulturgeschichtlichen Analyse rechtlicher Quellen in Städten des Hanseraums (13. bis 16. Jahrhundert), Hilversum: Verloren, 2014.
46 Johnson, Law in Common, pp. 17, 55–6 (and 55–85 generally).
47 P.J. Hamilton-Grierson, �Falsing the doom’, Scottish Historical Review 24, 1997, pp. 1–18. We use the word �appeal’ loosely here, not to imply the technical modern sense. See A.M. Godfrey, Civil Justice in Renaissance Scotland: The Origins of a Central Court, Leiden: Brill, 2009, pp. 21–2.
48 On the chamberlain’s annual ayre to the burgh courts, see for example H.L. MacQueen, Common Law and Feudal Society in Medieval Scotland, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993, pp. 34, 55–66, 247, and W.C. Dickinson, �The administration of justice in medieval Scotland’, Aberdeen University Review 34, 1951–1952, pp. 338–51
49 Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, ed. C. Innes, 2 vols, Edinburgh: Spalding and Maitland Clubs, 1845, vol. 1, p. 145; MacQueen, Common Law, p. 53; and P. Stein, The Character and Influence of the Roman Civil Law: Historical Essays, London: Hambledon Press, 1988, p. 301
50 Quoniam Attachiamenta, ed. T.D. Fergus, Edinburgh: Stair Society, 1996, pp. 146–7. This text allows 40 days for a party absent from a judgement to make an appeal (i.e. to false the doom).
51 Scotland under Jus Commune: Census of Manuscripts of Legal Literature in Scotland, Mainly between 1500 and 1660, ed. G. Dolezalek, 3 vols, Edinburgh: Stair Society, 2010, vol. 1, pp. 151, 153, 174; vol. 2, pp. 70, 92, 322, 332–4; vol. 3, pp. 48, 185, 223, 225, 329, 331–5, 363, 296, 431–3.
52 The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707, ed. K.M. Brown et al., St Andrews, 2007–2020, (accessed 1 January 2020) (hereafter RPS), 1430/8. This was to be done within time to walk 40 paces. Also RPS, 1504/3/65, 1504/3/70; A1504/3/141, A1504/3/146. See Godfrey, Civil Justice, pp. 21–2.
53 RPS, 1488/1/25.
54 RPS, 1487/10/14.
55 RPS 1469/16; RPS 1471/5/9; Godfrey, Civil Justice, pp. 25, 66, 232; A.R.C. Simpson and A.L.M. Wilson, Scottish Legal History. Volume 1: 1000–1707, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017, pp. 109, 118, 121; and Dickinson, �The administration of justice in medieval Scotland’, p. 349.
56 More than 300 mentions of litigants who �protestit’ in court are suggestive of another mechanism for appeal.
57 ARO-1-0016-01 (13 March 1399).
58 On a probable family relation of the Crabs see H.S. Lucas, �John Crabbe: Flemish pirate, merchant, and adventurer’, Speculum 20, 1945, pp. 334–50.
59 ARO-4-0369-09 (16 November 1444).
60 Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives, CA/2/1/1 Sasine Register 1486–1502 (hereafter SR), p. 36.
61 The entry includes the words: �that dome you has gevin belangand me is evil [and] fals’ [and] Rottin in it self for cause it is gevin agan the common law’. The source of the entry has not yet been identified.
62 E. Beveridge (ed.) The Burgh Records of Dunfermline: Transcribed from the Original Manuscript Volume, Courts, Sasines, etc. 1488–1584, Edinburgh: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1917 (at p. 5 of the main text).
63 ARO-7-0138-05 (29 September 1489).
64 ARO-7-0145-03 (9 October 1489).
65 ARO-7-0591-01, 02 (12 December 1494).
66 ARO-7-0585-05 (21 November 1494).
67 ARO-7-0591-02: The speech included the line �the quhilk dome […] is evile gevin ande fals in It Self’.
68 ARO-7-0594-02 (23 December 1494).
69 ARO-7-0699-01, 02 (11 January 1496); ARO-7-0705-04 (10 February 1496). The speech included the line �the quhilk dome […] is evile and fals in It Self’.
70 ARO-8-0106-01 (2 May 1502). The speech included the line �that dome […] Is fals evile and Rottyn in It Self’.
71 ARO-8-0109-02 (13 May 1502).
72 There are numerous mentions of the chamberlain and his ayre throughout the corpus. The latest, however, appears to be from the last case of 1502. The last chamberlain ayre in Scotland was held in 1517 in Edinburgh: A.L. Murray, �The last chamberlain ayre’, Scottish Historical Review 39, 1960, p. 85.
73 See, for instance, M.F. Kluge, Die Macht des Gedächtnisses: Entstehung und Wandel kommunaler Schriftkultur im spätmittelalterlichen Augsburg, Leiden: Brill, 2014 (especially part IV, concerning 1368–1450).
74 On related points see C. Neville, Land, Law and People in Medieval Scotland, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp. 24–30, and Hawes, �Community and public authority’, pp. 23–34, 74–105.
75 See below, p. 24.
76 See below, p. 33.
77 See below, p. 42.
78 See below, p. 62.
79 See below, p. 106.
80 See below, p. 240.