Abstract
Scotland had coroners, but their roles were quite different from their English namesakes. This chapter finds their origins in a mix of Celtic or Gaelic, English, British and Scottish institutions of government, justice and peace-keeping, which gelled into a coherent system for the administration of justice during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Where English coroners were independent judicial office holders, Scottish coroners were judicial agents or executive law court officers: men of action who arrested suspects and seized goods on behalf of the king’s judges. They dealt with the living rather than with the wrongfully dead. They also had quasi-military functions and some powers of summary justice when maintaining law and order. The chapter deals with the location of coroners within Scotland, their social status, remuneration and functions, making extensive use of historical documentation.
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Notes
J. Eaton, ‘The coroner’s court from the medical standpoint. Part II’, The Provincial Medical Journal 7 (1888), 345. This is a direct lift from Chambers Encyclopaedia. An article on the Scottish coroner in The Scotsman (18 September 1893), p. 9, is in turn cribbed from Eaton.
A. A. M. Duncan (ed.), The acts of Robert I, king of Scots, 1306–1329 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1988), 30–1, 437–8.
A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: the making of the kingdom (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1975), 496, clarifies the charter, pointing out that the aim was to exclude the sheriff from the town.
See H. L. MacQueen, Common law and feudal society in medieval Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1993), 62–4, on the elevated standing of justiciars.
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A. A. M. Duncan, ‘Regiam Majestatem: a reconsideration’, Juridical Review 73 (1961), 199–217.
J. D. Ford, Law and opinion in Scotland during the seventeenth century (Oxford: Hart, 2007), 57. We might note that the law of rape required penetration and emission in England, but not in Scotland.
Ibid., 117–18. In the fourteenth century, the serjeant’s helpers were two under-serjeants. A. M. Tonkinson, Macclesfield in the later fourteenth century: communities of town and forest (Manchester: Carnegie, 1999), 44–5, 144.
Stewart-Brown, Serjeants of the peace, 5–8, 73–86. W. Rees, ‘Survivals of ancient Celtic custom in medieval England’, in H. Lewis (ed.), Angles and Britons: O’Donnell lectures (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1963), 155–7.
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A. C. Lawrie (ed.), Early Scottish charters prior to A.D. 1153 (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1905). 220, 347, speculated that toíseach, in the notes to the Book of Deer, was a term applied, by someone of Irish origin, to a native office actually called something else.
An exhaustive historiographical survey of understandings of the word can be found in D. Broun, ‘The property records in the Book of Deer as a source for early Scottish society’, in K. Forsyth (ed.), Studies on the Book of Deer (Dublin: Four Courts, 2008), 315–56.
See also A. O. Anderson, Early sources of Scottish history, A.D. 500 to 1286 2 vols. (1922. Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1990), vol. 2, 174–81.
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Dickinson, Scotland from the earliest times, 51, 53–5. W. F. Skene (ed.), John of Fordun’s Chronicle of the Scottish nation 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1872), vol. 2, 459, suggests that ‘dior’ is ‘an old word, signifying “of or belonging to law”’. I am grateful to my colleague Alex Woolf for guiding me through the terms.
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Skene (ed.), Fordun’s chronicle, vol. 2, 459. APS I, 58, 380, 599, 633. Dodgshon, Land and society, 65. Serjeants had the right to pursue, attach and indict criminals. W. C. Dickinson (ed.), The court book of the barony of Carnwath, 1523–1542 Scottish History Society 3rd series 29 (Edinburgh, 1937), lxxxv–vi.
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A. B. Calderwood (ed.), Acts of the lords of council vol. 3 (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1993), 138, 227. The term serjeant was mostly used in Galloway — and in Wales and the north of England.
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A. Grant, ‘The construction of the early Scottish state’, in J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser (eds), The medieval state (London: Hambledon, 2000), 55, sees the officer being in charge of a holy object used in court for oath-swearing. Mârkus, ‘Dewars and relics’, 98–102, questions this association, saying the keeper of relics is a different official.
Balfour’s Practicks, 566. MacQueen, ‘Laws of Galloway’, 133–4. M. R. Gunn, History of the clan Gunn (Glasgow: A. MacLaren, 1969), 44. Grant, ‘Franchises north of the border’, 179–80. The acts of the lords auditors of causes and complaints, 1466–1494 (London: House of Commons, 1839), 100. Innes, Scotch legal antiquities, 69–72. Early modern Shetland had ‘ranselmen’ who were responsible for investigating theft and keeping the peace.
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Commissions in any lawless zone allowed independent action by a number of officials. R. B. Armstrong, The history of Liddesdale, Eskdale, Ewesdale, Wauchopedale and the debateable land (Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1883), 10.
MacQueen, ‘Laws of Galloway’, 136. Grant, ‘Franchises north of the border’, 172. K. Stringer, ‘States, liberties and communities in medieval Britain and Ireland (c.1100–1400)’, in M. Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and identities in the medieval British Isles (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 31.
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D. Campbell, Reminiscences and reflections of an octogenarian highlander (Inverness: Northern Counties Newspaper, 1910), 9, 84.
Campbell believed the office was hereditary at Glenlyon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I. F. Grant, The social and economic development of Scotland before 1603 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1930). 44. MacQueen, ‘Laws of Galloway’, 137. Some see late medieval toíseachs in the same light. Stuart (ed.), Book of Deer, lxxxi.
D. E. R. Watt (ed.), Scotichronicon 9 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen UP, 1987–98), vol. 7, 58–9. Coroners could arrest all indicted people throughout the year, not only after the proclamation of an ayre. Balfour’s Practicks, 566. Eilean Donan is an iconic castle in Loch Duich in the western Highlands of Scotland.
See Murray, ‘Administrators of church Iands’, 32, on the military functions of bailies. In thirteenth-century Wales the words steward (distain), seneschal (synysgal) and constable (cwnstabl) were all used to describe an honourable office, sometimes hereditary, whose primary function was military. J. B. Smith (ed.), Medieval Welsh society: selected essays by T. Jones Pierce (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1972), 33–4.
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Houston, R.A. (2014). Scottish Coroners: Origins and Development of the Office to c.1500. In: The Coroners of Northern Britain c. 1300–1700. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137381071_4
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