#1230s

The early development of “parliament” in Scotland is even more obscure than in neighbouring England. Very few Crown documents have survived from the thirteenth century which relate to meetings that could be considered parliaments, and even the terminology used to describe the kinds of assembly we now call parliament can be ambiguous. Thirteenth century writers do not always use the same terminology we would expect, and it is unclear whether the words they actually use had exactly the same meaning in the thirteenth century as they do now, and indeed whether these words were used consistently. Some mediaeval chroniclers do refer to certain assemblies which were held by the kings of Scotland before 1235, and which they give the name “parliament”. In one Anglo-Norman work, the twelfth century chronicler Jordan Fantosme states that William the Lion held “sun plenier parlement” (translated as his “plenary” or “full” parliament) in 1173, when he wanted to consult the wise men of his kingdom on whether or not he should support the rebellion of Henry “the Young King” against the latter’s father Henry II of England. “Gesta Annalia”, a late thirteenth century Scottish chronicle, also uses a Latinised version of the French term “parliament”, to describe an assembly held by King Alexander II in 1215. However, no official documents associated with these “parliaments” survive, and the chroniclers who referred to them did not define their use of the term.

In records produced on behalf of the Scottish Crown, the word “parliament” itself doesn’t appear very often before the end of the thirteenth century. However quite a few surviving records do use the Latin word “colloquium” to refer to certain assemblies of the king and his barons- indeed this is the word used to describe the meeting held at Kirkliston in 1235. “Colloquium” has a similar meaning to the French word “parliament”, in that they both loosely describe a “talking together” or a discussion. In thirteenth century England, the Latin and French terms were often treated as interchangeable, and so early twentieth century historians, searching for early evidence of a similar institution in Scotland, were quick to identify any colloquium mentioned in Scottish records as a parliament in the usual sense of the word. However the word also carries its fair share of ambiguity. We do not know whether a “colloquium” in thirteenth century Scotland would have looked anything like our idea of a mediaeval parliament, nor whether the term always meant the same thing, nor can we identify what it was that set a “colloquium” apart from any other assembly or council in which the king of Scots consulted his leading vassals. There is also the danger that, having first encountered the terms “colloquium” and parliament in English and French contexts, historians have gone looking for a similar phrase in Scottish sources and inadvertently analysed the evidence through a subjective lens, based on a preconceived notion of what a parliament was.

Although more recent historians have acknowledged this danger, unfortunately the nature of the surviving evidence seems to compel them to work within the same framework, using the existed, if limited, terminology as best they can. The “colloquium” of thirteenth century Scotland does seem to be the closest thing we have to a word for the kind of formal assembly of the political community, chaired by a king, which we might describe more easily as a parliament in late mediaeval and early modern Scotland. It is also possible (indeed, likely) that the colloquium held at Kirkliston in 1235 was not the first of its kind. Nonetheless with such fragmentary evidence, it is probably reasonable to view that assembly as a very distant ancestor of the Scottish parliament that we know today.

So what might this parliament have looked like? During the Late Middle Ages, yet another phrase was commonly used to refer to both parliaments and general councils in Scotland- these were described as meetings of the “Three Estates”. This seems to have originated from the mediaeval theory that a Christian society should be made up of three sorts of people: those who prayed, those who fought, and those who worked. Different parts of Christian Europe developed regional variations on this theory but, in the context of the Scottish parliament, the “First Estate” (those who prayed) tended to refer to the higher clergy (bishops and important abbots). The “Second Estate” (those who fought) meant the higher nobility (from dukes down to lords of parliament and richer freeholders), and the “Third Estate” (those who worked) only referred to the commissioners elected to represent the country’s burghs (so not the common man as such).

However, in 1235 this parliamentary model had not yet evolved. The exact composition of thirteenth century Scottish parliaments is obscure, but in the record of the colloquium held at Kirkliston only the king and his ‘barons’ are mentioned. Evidence from other thirteenth century assemblies indicates that it was primarily members of the higher nobility who attended these- earls and the most powerful barons. Although they are not mentioned in the record of the Kirkliston assembly, the kingdom’s bishops also seem to have been permitted to attend these other “parliaments”. Burgh representatives do not appear until the 1290s, and A.A.M. Duncan has argued that they were not a regular fixture until much later. The other freeholders of Scotland (below the rank of earl and great baron) also do not seem to have attended parliament much before the fourteenth century. So the colloquium at Kirkliston in 1235 was probably just a meeting of the king and his leading nobles, though perhaps some of the bishops also attended.

In any case, the number of attendees would probably have been quite small- G.W.S. Barrow has argued that they would have “numbered in dozens or scores rather than in hundreds”. Also the Scottish parliament was always unicameral, in contrast to the English institution, which seems to have developed its separate Houses by at least the mid-fourteenth century. There was also no fixed location where parliaments were held as yet, and aside from the 1235 assembly at Kirkliston, during the thirteenth century meetings were also held in Stirling, Roxburgh, Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh, and Scone, among other places. Like the king, parliament would remain peripatetic for centuries, and though Edinburgh eventually emerged as the most popular location during the reigns of James II and James III, the Scottish parliament only established itself there permanently in the seventeenth century**. Other customs associated with pre-Union Scottish parliaments- for example the Riding of Parliament or the Lords of the Articles- were also probably unknown in the thirteenth century.

(The Scottish parliament or Estates processing in the late seventeenth century. Source- Wikimedia Commons)

Wherever they met and whoever attended, mediaeval parliaments must have differed in some way from regular assemblies. Their most basic function was to provide an opportunity for the king to consult the political community on important issues. But historians are divided over just what kind of issue which would have dominated proceedings at early parliaments. Twelfth and thirteenth century chroniclers seem to have been interested in the assembly’s role as a venue for political debate and diplomatic activity. However this was probably only part of the story. Meanwhile parliament’s financial role (approving extraordinary taxation) which was to be such an important factor in the development of the institution in England, does not appear to have been quite so central in Scotland. A third function of most parliaments- one which is particularly important in our own day- is to develop and enact laws. This was probably performed by early Scottish parliaments too, but we lack evidence for substantial legislative activity before the fourteenth century.

In 1928, while surveying the evidence of earlier thirteenth century assemblies as a preliminary to their investigation of Edward I of England’s Scottish parliaments, the historians H.G. Richardson and George Sayles focused on parliament’s function as the highest court in the land. They came to the conclusion that, “the primary purpose of these early parliaments of Scotland was the dispensing of justice.” Certainly this is the role which we can see the colloquium at Kirkliston performing in the single surviving record which that assembly produced. The next documented colloquium, which met in 1248 at Stirling, is also known only from the record of an arbitration which took place there, again under the eye of Alexander II, while legal cases again crop up on several occasions during the reigns of Alexander III and John Balliol and the minority of Margaret (the remainder of the documented parliamentary business during the late thirteenth century is largely concerned with international diplomacy, which may however simply be due to the fact that this was the only subject which was considered important enough to record). However, in the 1960s, A.A.M. Duncan disagreed with Richardson and Sayles’ verdict, pointing out that the fragmentary nature of the evidence makes it difficult to assign special significance to any one function of the early parliaments. For his own part, Duncan characterised the early Scottish parliament as a venue for the promotion of the Crown’s interests, and “the occasion on which the rights of the king could be asserted by customary judicial process with final authority.”

(The coat of arms of Alexander II of Scotland, as portrayed in the thirteenth century ‘Historia Anglorum’ of Matthew Paris. Reproduced by permission of the British Library under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.)

Given that any debate which can be had about the early Scottish parliament’s early activities is severely limited by the patchy and ambiguous evidence available, it is perhaps unsurprising that some historians have tended to dismiss the colloquium of 1235 and other early assemblies as hurriedly as possible, moving onto the better documented meetings after 1286. As discussed above, sometimes this has even led to doubt over whether the 1235 meeting can fairly be called the earliest parliament at all. As Keith M. Brown, Alastair J. Mann, and Roland J. Tanner state in their historical introduction to the online “Records of the Parliament of Scotland” project:

“Between 1235 and 1286, therefore, parliament exists for historians in a kind of limbo – we can see that the term is used (in the early colloquium form), but can tell almost nothing about what was meant by that term. What set the early colloquia apart from previous assemblies of the king and his subjects has been lost, although there could have been a clear distinction, and the primary purpose of those early assemblies is unknown – whether they were political, judicial or legislative. There are no criteria that can be used for parliament’s emergence other than the moment that contemporary Scots began to refer to their assemblies in official sources by either the word parliamentum or colloquium. The debate about the earliest known Scottish parliament, therefore, becomes very simple – it was the Kirkliston colloquium held in 1235. Whether this was the first assembly to be referred to as such, or whether it differed in any significant way from the royal councils and assemblies that had occurred before will almost certainly never be known.”

If there is anything else to be said, it is only that, over the centuries which followed the Kirkliston meeting, the Scottish parliament evolved in many different ways, most of which could not have been foreseen by any of the men present in 1235. The mediaeval institution did at different points in its history perform a variety of functions, whether political, financial, legislative, or judicial, and although the Crown did often attempt to use parliament to bolster its own position, communication between the two was not a one-way street, and on several occasions the Estates talked back. In the early modern period, further development of the institutions and ceremonial associated with parliament occurred, while the abolition of the institution in 1707 followed a century which had seen parliament operating in new territory on more than one occasion. The current devolved parliament, which met for the first time in nearly three centuries in 1999 and usually sits at Holyrood*** is not only a very different body to that which met at Kirkliston over six hundred years earlier, but has itself changed since it was reconvened over twenty years ago. Nonetheless, a line can be drawn between the shadowy, probably elitist, assembly which took place in 1235 and the principle of public consultation which is supposed to underly Scottish democracy today. Though political systems and values must inevitably evolve over time, and though many historical events are obscure, difficult to define, and not easily subsumed into a greater narrative, the colloquium at Kirkliston is at least worth remembering as the first stage in, “the journey begun long ago and which has no end.”

(The debating chamber in the current Scottish parliament building. Source- wikimedia commons, where this photo was kindly shared by user:pschemp)

Additional Notes:

*In many official and religious documents from the Middle Ages, the year was reckoned to begin on 25th March. So if the colloquium took place in 1235 but the letters were not made until 8th April 1236, then at least a fortnight must have passed between the date when the settlement between Melrose and Roger Avenel actually took place and the date when a document was created to record this.

** Interestingly Holyrood, where the modern parliament is now based, was technically in a separate burgh from Edinburgh in the Middle Ages, the burgh of Canongate.

***When it is not in recess, which it is currently in the run-up to the May elections.

Selected Bibliography:

- Records of the Parliaments of Scotland website and in particular the record of the Kirkliston Colloquium listed under the reign of Alexander II and the historical introduction. This website is a magnificent resource, so I encourage people to look it up anyway.

- Jordan Fantosme’s “Chronicle of the War Between the English and the Scots”, translated by Francisque Michel.

- “The Early Parliaments of Scotland”, by A.A.M. Duncan as published in the Scottish Historical Review, vol. 45 no. 139 Part 1 (April 1966). Link is to JSTOR.

- “The Scottish Parliaments of Edward I”, by H.G. Richardson and George Sayles, as published in the Scottish Historical Review, vol. 25, no. 100 (Jul. 1928). Link is to JSTOR.

- “The Origins and Development of the Scottish Parliament, 1249-1329″, by Alison A.B. MacQueen. Thesis submitted for award of PhD, available on St Andrews research repository here