aI I §90-30460 SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY FIFTH SERIES VOLUME 7 Miscellany XII A Miscellany of the Scottish History Society TWELFTH VOLUME ★ EDINBURGH printed for the Scottish History Society by PILLANS & WILSON LTD., EDINBURGH 1994 Scottish History Society 1994 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-906245-16-8 ISSN 1360-2497 Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS A question about the succession, 1364 edited by A.A.M. Duncan 1 Autobiography, 1626-1670, ofjohn Hay, 2nd earl ofTweeddale edited by Maurice Lee, Jr. 58 Letters of Lord Balmerino to Harry Maule, 1710-1713, 1721-1722 edited by Gyve Jones 99 Appendix 168 Strike bulletins from the General Strike in Scotland, 1926 edited by Ian MacDougall 169 INDEX 272 vi A QUESTION ABOUT THE SUCCESSION, 1364 edited by A.A.M. Duncan INTRODUCTION The manuscript. In 1958 the late E.W.M. Balfour-Melville contributed greatly to our knowl- edge of a controversial episode in Anglo-Scottish relations in 1363 by publish- ing a most careful literal transcription of an ill-to-read manuscript treatise in the British Library.1 This text in MS Cotton Vespasian C.XVI (a miscellaneous collection of Scottish historical materials written in different hands), folios 34-40, was written on paper whose watermark is of the 1470s or 1480s in a small ‘pre-secretary’ hand of that period. It is a copy, possibly several times removed from the last author’s autograph, and certainly with many copyists’ errors which add to the difficulty of understanding the original Latin. In seeking to make a full translation I was made aware of the need for a critical edition; I had prepared this and it had been seen by Professor D.E.R. Watt, who offered me many valuable corrections and suggestions, before writing my paper on the negotiations of 1346-52 in the Scottish Historical Review, in which a new edition of the text was promised.2 But I put this text aside and might never have fulfilled my promise had not Mr A.B. Webster jogged my conscience and also greatly helped me by sending me a typescript edition of the text from §7, with some notes, prepared before 1982 by the late Professor H.S. Offler of Durham, who was aware of the 1 Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, ix (1958), 36-50, with a summary in English on 51-6. Balfour-Melville seems to have thought that the whole text had one author; he saw that it related not to the events of 1351 but to those of 1363-4, but preserved the near-contemporary error of Commensal (discussed below) in his title, ‘Debate in Council-General’ (p. 6). 2 A.A.M. Duncan, lHoni soil qiti mal y pense: David II and Edward III, 1346-52’, Scottish Historical Renew [SHR], Ixvii (1988), 113-41. 2 MISCELLANY XII interest of the text as an academic exercise. From this I obtained a few further textual emendations, the sources of some non-Biblical quotations which I had not recognised and, most valuably, its identification as a quaestio. In the text below, many readings are emended, with the MS version preserved in the textual notes. The text is broken up into paragraphs, perhaps somewhat arbitrarily, but, I hope, facilitating future references to it. The text is not one document but two, separated by the comment (§6) of a later annotator: first an introduction (§§1-5) by an anonymous (but tentatively identifiable) author whom I shall call Commensal, and secondly a treatise (§§7-58) from a booklet (libellus) containing learned arguments about terms proposed for an Anglo-Scottish setdement. This treatise was not, as Commen- sal thought (§5), an account of the arguments advanced in a general council held by Robert Stewart as Guardian probably in 1351; instead, it related to the Westminster proposals of October 1363, discussed between David II and Edward III and recorded in a memorandum hereafter called W, and to the debate in the parliament held at Scone in March 1364 at which W was rejected.1 The treatise is also anonymous, but Commensal ascribed it to Master William de Spyny, doctor of decreets and ‘advanced in civil law’,2 who had been his commensal colleague when Spyny was dean of Aberdeen, an office he obtained in 1387. He went on to be consecrated bishop of Moray (in his eighties, Commensal claimed), an event which took place at Avignon in 1397, when Spyny was pretty certainly in his seventies; he returned to Scotland early in 1398 and died in 1406. Commensal makes it clear that Spyny had related the events of his youth to him, and that he ‘found’ the treatise in an old booklet in Spyny’s own hand. I shall return to the identity and purposes of Commensal at the end of this Introduction. The quaestio. Freed from the misleading interpretation of Commensal, the treatise (§§7-58) does not read as the minute or even the recollection of any debate. It is a briefing paper, political opinion or consilium, composed by an author who openly acknowledged the nature of his text by the use of the first person on seven occasions. He adopted the device of the quaestio as it would be used in the schools, a form of disputation for training in philosophy, theology or law, 1 Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland [APS], i, 493-4. 2 For Spyny’s career I rely on D.E.R. Watt, A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to A.D. 1410 (Oxford, 1977), 503-6, and shall not repeat his references. A QUESTION ABOUT THE SUCCESSION, 1364 3 where a master might assign the arguments ‘for’ to one student, those ‘against’ to another, and himself give a determination. By the fourteenth century, lectures might also take the form of a series of quaestiones, read by the master, without any disputation. The form was thus a commonplace experience for the medieval student; in the Law faculty, where Spyny studied, it must have honed his forensic skills.1 Spyny justified using this form conventionally—man should not be pushed into conclusions, but should reach them through the exercise of reason. Hence the question, qmestio, ‘whether it is expedient to agree with the proposals of the English?’ (§7), followed by the arguments ‘for’, introduced, as in the schools, by probatur quod sic, ‘the “yes” is proved by ...’. There are fifteen arguments for (§§8-23), ten (numbered), based on their advantage to the Scots, two on that to the English (§§18-20), and three on their tendency to produce the desired end (finis)—peace and concord (§§21-23). This arrangement according to the advantage or ‘end’ of the argument leads to some duplication: §18, for example, would be in place with §§12-14, §20 with §10, and §22 seems an intrusion into an argument which runs from §21 to §23. Many of the safeguards included in W are not referred to at all, and if this were our only guide to W’s contents we should have little idea of how far Edward was prepared to go, in promises if not in performance. The arguments against (Oppositum, §§24-40) are sixteen, but in two groups. The first argues that acceptance would be unlawful, as invading papal rights (two arguments, §§24-5); the second, that acceptance would be a dishonour- able fraud, because of how the English would probably behave (seven arguments, §§26-32) and because it would be unfitting for the Scots to accept (seven arguments, §§33-40). Although §26 begins secundo, there is little attempt at numbering; but a new group of arguments is signalled by the opening words of §33. Appealing to law, logic, history and myth, at almost no point do these arguments contra touch upon those pro; the one discussion which they have on a common point—the proposal ofW that the king of England and Scotland should be crowned in Scotland (§§11, 34)—shows no concern with what the other has to say. This is deliberate, part of the structure of a quaestio, each side first making the best possible case without regard to that of the other. i For the quaestio see N. Kretzmann et al. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1982), 20-33. 4 MISCELLANY XII Then a decision or determination on the quaestio is given on the required grounds oflegality, fitness and expediency (§41): the Scots may not accept the proposals. But the schoolman Spyny has a further scholastic duty, to show why the arguments he has rejected, those in favour, are flawed—an answer to the arguments pro. Here Spyny would get fewer marks from an examiner, for while his eight points do refer to these arguments, they are less systematic than the schools would demand (§§42-52). He gives attention to only two of the first group of ten arguments. That the Scots have been weakened by war and have no leaders, is dealt with at great length (§§12, 42-45)—and with at least one digression (§43), which puts forward a spirited but most unconvincing argu- ment that the king has advanced the proposals in order to test his people, to provoke the spirit of bravery in them. This leads into an obscure passage (§44) apparently arguing that to have a common king ofEngland and Scotland would be less desirable than the feudal subjection of a Scottish king (which was not one of the options under discussion); this paragraph may, however, be advo- cating the payment of a ransom.