Records of the Convention of Royal Burghs, 1555; 1631-1648

Material from conventions of Scottish parliamentary towns sheds fresh light on their activities and actions, from giving judgements in disputes to raising money for building projects.

The convention of the royal burghs of Scotland was a national representative assembly of parliamentary towns that was unique in Europe. It met in plenary session at least once every year by the end of the sixteenth century, as well as convening in ad hoc sessions for specific business. It had a wide range of responsibilities, including defence of the burghs' collective and individual trading privileges, lobbying central government, promoting manufactures and trade, arbitrating in disputes between burghs, apportioning national taxes among its members, co-ordinating the raising of money for public building projects within burghs, and maintaining and regulating the Scottish staple port at Veere on what was then the island of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands.
When much of its records were published in the nineteenth century, minutes from before the 1580s were fragmentary and awhole volume (covering the years 1631-1649) was lost. This volume goes some way to rectifying these deficiencies by making available in print, for the first time, the records of a convention at Perth in 1555, those of most of theconventions between 1631 and 1636, the minutes of a convention from 1647 and some other papers from the 1640s. They are presented here with an introduction and elucidatory notes.

Alan MacDonald is senior lecturer in History at the University of Dundee; Mary Verschuur lectured in the department of History at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.