ABSTRACT
Craftsmen burgesses had been seeking some say in burgh elections since the middle of the fifteenth century but at the heart of the sixteenth-century argument between the merchants and craftsmen of Perth was not merely the issue of voting rights but the question of political representation. Yet by late December 1560 it was clear that no internal resolution of the conflict was possible and the merchants and craftsmen of Perth sought outside arbitration of their quarrel. In 1572 the regent, James Douglas, earl of Morton, was persuaded to grant Perth's craftsmen an equal share of the council seats with the merchants and in the same grant he proposed that the office of treasurer of the burgh be alternated between a merchant and a craftsman.
