Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe
Scotland and its Neighbours c.1350–c.1650
Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History Series

Drawing together an international team of historians, lawyers and historical sociolinguists, this volume investigates urban cultures of law in Scotland, with a special focus on Aberdeen and its rich civic archive, the Low Countries, Norway, Germany and Poland from c. 1350 to c. 1650.

In these essays, the contributors seek to understand how law works in its cultural and social contexts by focusing specifically on the urban experience and, to a great extent, on urban records. The contributions are concerned with understanding late medieval and early modern legal experts as well as the users of courts and legal services, the languages and records of law, and legal activities occurring inside and outside of official legal fora. This volume considers what the expectations of people at different status levels were for the use of the law, what perceptions of justice and authority existed among different groups, and what their knowledge was of law and legal procedure. By examining how different aspects of legal culture came to be recorded in writing, the contributors reveal how that writing itself then became part of a culture of law.

Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe: Scotland and its Neighbours c.1350?c.1650 combines the historical study of law, towns, language and politics in a way that will be accessible and compelling for advanced level undergraduates and postgraduate to postdoctoral researchers and academics in medieval and early modern, urban, legal, political and linguistic history.

INTRODUCTION: Investigating cultures of law in urban northern Europe PART I: Telling tales 1.Telling tales: maritime law in Aberdeen in the early sixteenth century PART II: Communication of law 2. Common books in Aberdeen, c. 1398–c. 15113. The language of medieval legal record as a complex multilingual code4.The vernacularisation of the Aberdeen Council Registers (1398–1511) PART III: Jurisdiction and conflict 5. Urban law in Norwegian market towns: legal culture in a long fourteenth century6. The burgh and the forest: burgesses and officers in fifteenth-century Scotland7. Pax urbana. The use of law for the achievement of political goals8.Recalcitrant brides and grooms. jurisdiction, marriage, and conflicts with parents in fifteenth-century GhentPART IV: Law in practice, in and out of court 9. Legal business outside the courts: private and public houses as spaces of law in the fifteenth century10. Conflicts about property: ships and inheritances in Danzig and in the Hanse area (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries)11. ‘Malice’ and motivation for hostility in the burgh courts of late medieval Aberdeen PART V: Men of law in Scotland 12. Bells, clocks and the beginnings of ‘lawyer time’ in late medieval Scotland 13. Andrew Alanson: man of law in the Aberdeen Council Register, c. 1440–c. 1475? 14. Notaries and advocates in early modern Aberdeen

Jackson W. Armstrong is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He is the author of England’s Northern Frontier: Conflict and Local Society in the Fifteenth-Century Scottish Marches (2020).

Edda Frankot is Associate Professor in History at Nord University in Bodø, Norway. She specialises in late medieval urban, maritime and legal history. She is the author of ‘Of Laws of Ships and Shipmen’. Medieval Maritime Law and its Practice in Urban Northern Europe (2012).