03 December 2014, Starts: 17:15

 Negotiating the border: landholding, legal culture and Scottish identity in south-east Scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

Talk by Dr Linsey Hunter (UHI)

Dornoch Room, Ross House, Dornoch (UHI Centre for History)

This paper assesses the reality and existence of a national border through the close examination of legal documents during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By assessing the language of charters, the legal document by which land or rights were transferred between parties, issued between the Humber and Forth, I will demonstrate a timeline for change within the border region. Such an task requires close analysis of the language of the law, and I will relate key changes in vocabulary to wider issues such as royal reform of the legal system, the emergence of jurists and lawyers, the role of monastic foundations and their networks and cross-border landholding arrangements. I will present some short case studies which demonstrate the uptake of new language within the charters of southern Scotland, including the maintenance clause, pro anima language and female landholding rights, e.g. dower and dowry. This paper will conclude by demonstrating that the charter evidence does demonstrate key lines of demarcation, chronological and geographical, which provide a different perspective on the conceptualisation and reality of the Scottish border.

Further details, and intention to attend : Kristy Reid Kirsty.Reid@uhi.ac.uk