Hosting the Estates

The physical setting of representative assemblies is a neglected area of study. Specialist and general works on the politics and procedures of parliaments in early modern Europe generally ignore it as an issue, leaving it to architectural historians as if it was of purely aesthetic interest, without political significance. ¹ However, in the Scottish context, where the usual venue of parliament provides a contrast with the European norm in the early modern period, questions can be asked about the reasons for and the significance of this divergence. Until the middle of the fifteenth century, Scottish parliaments met in ecclesiastical settings, usually the Augustinian abbeys of Scone, Cambuskenneth and Holyrood, with the Dominican convent at Perth favoured in the early fifteenth century. ² All of these had close associations with the ruling dynasty. The abbeys were twelfth-century royal foundations: Scone had the additional significance of being the royal inauguration site; Cambuskenneth was close to a prominent royal castle at Stirling; Holyrood was near Edinburgh and became one of the foremost royal residences in the fifteenth century. The Dominican convent at Perth was established by Alexander II in the thirteenth century, and its royal lodgings were a favoured residence until the assassination of James I there in 1437. ³ After that tragic event, parliaments ceased to meet in religious houses. There is some evidence in the earliest surviving parts of Linlithgow Palace that Scotland might have been going to follow the English and Continental pattern by moving its parliament into a royal palace but this did not happen, possibly because of the untimely death of the supposed architect of the scheme, James I. ⁴ Instead, from the middle of the fifteenth century, parliament normally convened in municipal buildings, the tolbooths of the royal burghs, with Edinburgh dominating and occasional sessions at Stirling and Perth. By 1455, the expectation was that parliament would be hosted by a burgh: a statute of that year instructed the burgh where parliament met to erect ‘a seit of thre segis ilkane hear than uthir to the commissaris to sit on’. ⁵