Decretum fuit per burgenses: a fresh perspective on law-making in the medieval Scottish burghs

Abstract

Historians have long been aware of a text purporting to contain decisions made by the burgesses of four Scottish burghs: Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh and Stirling. This text is internally dated to 1295 or 1296 and purports to lay down rules governing succession to deceased burgesses, some of which have echoes in modern Scots succession law. The text of the decisions has attracted little study, in part because of its complex manuscript tradition. This article draws on important recent work on the Scottish legal manuscript traditions, to explore the transmission of the decisions and what they meant to those who first articulated them. In the process, it also asks about the interaction between the manuscript traditions that transmitted the legal texts and the traditional customary practices of Scottish burghs. These questions may have some bearing on how historians understand the development of the Scottish legal tradition during the medieval period.