ABSTRACT
Smith's volume was the first sign of a new concern for the history of Scotland's towns. This was fuelled, as the extract above suggests, both by a romantic interest in the manners and mores of yesteryear and a concern for what burgh sources could reveal about societal progress. Innes was another contributor to the embryonic field of burgh record scholarship and Volume I of the APS contained substantial material that was burghal rather than parliamentary or even primarily monarchical. The inclusion of these sources in the APS suggests that Innes believed the burghs to have contributed to Scotland's constitutional and legal development. Innes had a keen interest in publication of manuscript sources relating to economic history and to the burghs themselves. Burgh records were consequently predominantly legal; council minutes and court proceedings constituted the majority of extant internally-produced documentation. In the case of the burghs, therefore, Innes's attempt to build consensus over the value of Scotland's past was largely unsuccessful.
