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The battle of Bannockburn, fought on the fields south of Stirling at midsummer 1314, is the best-known event in the history of Medieval Scotland. It was a unique event. The clash of two armies, each led by a king, followed a clear challenge to a battle to determine the status of Scotland and its survival as a separate realm. As a key point in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the fourteenth century, the battle has been extensively discussed, but Bannockburn was also a pivotal event in the history of the British Isles. This book analyses the road to Bannockburn, the campaign of 1314 and the aftermath of the fight. It demonstrates that, in both its context and legacy, the battle had a central significance in the shaping of nations and identities in the late Medieval British Isles.

This book offers a history of ‘Scotland’ before Scotland existed, and before people even thought of this area as a single ‘country’. It traces the emergence and disappearance of various ethnic and political groups from Roman times till circa AD 900, and their shifting relationships. But it also calls into question what are often seen as straightforward and obvious concepts such as ‘ethnicity’, ‘Christian conversion’, ‘law’. While following a broad chronological narrative over nine centuries, and dealing with political and large-scale developments, it also explores in some depth the culture of the societies (and there were several) of the time. In addition to the more narrowly political dimension, it explores the texture of experience in people’s lives: how they imagined themselves and their own identities; how they saw their place in the world; how communities managed their own internal affairs such as marriage, childhood and social conflict; how people understood gender, wealth, political power and religious belief. Important texts which have sometimes been read rather naively are here read in new ways, identifying the commitments of their authors, and seeking the literary influences which shaped them (which means we must read and understand not only what early medieval writers wrote, but also what they were reading).

It has often been assumed that there was a common maritime law in northern Europe in the Middle Ages, shared between skippers and merchants who conducted their business along the North Sea and Baltic littoral. This study examines this assumption by studying the dissemination of law compilations across this region, and by comparing the contents of these and the judgements passed by urban courts in cases of shipwreck, jettison and ship collision. First of all, the history of the written laws are analysed. Then comparisons are made of regulations regarding shipwreck, jettison (and other forms of general average) and ship collision. Finally, in order to establish if there was a common practice as regards maritime law at the town courts of northern Europe, aspects of legal practice in the towns of Aberdeen, Kampen, Lübeck, Danzig (Gdańsk) and Reval (Tallinn) will be analysed and compared. In four chapters, the urban collections of sea law, local developments in lawmaking, the administration of maritime justice (including the use of the written laws in court), and proceedings in the urban courts in cases of shipwreck, jettison and ship collision, are dealt with. These four chapters are preceded by a chapter introducing and comparing the five towns researched in this study.

This is the third volume in The History of the Scottish Parliament. The contributors have taken advantage of the Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to discuss a comprehensive range of key themes in the development of parliament. The editors have assembled a team of established and younger scholars who each discuss a theme that ranges over the entire six centuries of the parliament's existence. These include broad, interpretive chapters on each of the key political constituencies represented in parliament. The chapters discuss parliament and the crown; parliament and the church; parliament and the nobility; and parliament and the burghs. Cross-cutting themes are also analysed. The political culture of parliament is the subject of one chapter, while parliament and the law, political ideas, and social control are dealt with in turn. Finally, parliament's own procedures are also discussed. The book offers a comprehensive account of the workings and significance of this institution to the history of late medieval and early modern Scotland.

This is the story of the pivotal period in Scottish history between 1214 and 1371. The century and a half between the death of King William the Lion and the accession of the Stewarts witnessed major changes in the internal character of the kingdom and its place in the wider European world. The opening decades of this era seemed to be dominated by the continued development of a defined Scottish realm, but the crisis that engulfed the kings and their people meant that issues of war and allegiance would make fourteenth-century Scotland a very different place. This book provides a detailed discussion of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a single period of both developing and fragmenting political hierarchies and communities. It sets out a political narrative that places events in their immediate context as well as highlighting special issues and groups in thematic chapters. The book also introduces a new discussion on the stability and unity of Scotland as a realm and community, and of the impact of war and dynastic crisis on a Medieval state.