Talk:Parliament of Scotland

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Bias With regards to 17th Century History, there is an inherrant Jacobite bias about the Glorious Revolution, calling William and Mary traitors is hardly neutral for reference! Saintees1884 15:21, 28 December 2006 (UTC) This seems to have been removed. With a bit of work this could be a GA candidate. Ben MacDui (Talk) 08:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
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Contents

[edit] General Council (Scotland)

I have redirected the link "General Council" to the "General Council (disambiguation)" page, although there is no link to the General Council of the Kingdom of Scotland, because it definitely does not refer to ecclesiastical General Councils, which is where the link led previously. J S Ayer 00:45, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Scots language

A whole lot of anachronistic references to the Scots language have been added in the medieval period. This is not tenable in the period before the 14th century, and probably not before 1424 when Scots began to be used as the official language in which acts of parliament were written. rjt3 3 December 2005

[edit] List of Parliaments of Scotland

We need a new article - List of Parliaments of Scotland - to match:

Anyone got the relevant info? --Mais oui! 08:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree, although it may be a little harder compared to those other articles as a lot of work was done by committee when the Estates were not in session. I still think that we need that article. Benson85 18:29, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever that the list article cannot include meetings of Lords of the Articles, the General Council, the Convention of Estates, and any other committees or related meetings. In fact, the more comprehensive and descriptive the better: better than a bare list of dates. --Mais oui! 19:24, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

The most obvious secondary source (at least to provide a starting point for the enquiry) may be the work on returns of members compiled for Parliament in the Victorian period. I have found the catalogue entry for the copy of the book in the Westminster Reference Library, but it is likely that major reference libraries in Scotland and other parts of the UK would also have a copy.

Westminster Reference library catalogue description - "Members of Parliament : return of the names of every member returned to serve in each Parliament from the year 1696 up to 1876... : also, from so remote a period as it can be obtained up to the year 1696... : Part 2: Parliaments of Great Britain, 1705-1796; Parliaments of the United Kingdom, 1801-1874; Parliaments and Conventions of the Estates of Scotland, 1357-1707; Parliaments of Ireland, 1559-1800" --Gary J 13:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The most up to date list could be compiled with a little effort by using the new Records of the Parliaments of Scotland found online at http://www.rps.ac.uk/ http://www.rps.ac.uk/, which has just gone online. Other Lists are found in Margaret Young's The Parliaments of Scotland (printed, appendix to vol 2) and Roland Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament (1424-1488 only). Any lists should include General Councils from 14th to 16th centuries and Conventions of Estates in the 16th centuries.--Benmoreassynt (talk) 18:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Convention of Estates

The Convention of Estates link is currently a rather unsatisfactory redirect to The States. Is anyone out there in a decent position to start up the article properly? I ask following this:

--Mais oui! 08:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Articles for each constituency

It is high time that we began to think about starting up the articles for the constituencies of the parliament. Perhaps we could start with the redlinks (and replacing the question marks with the relevant info) at the University constituency article:

University Parliament Years No. of Commissioners
Edinburgh Scotland  ?-1707  ?
Glasgow Scotland  ?-1707  ?
King's College (Aberdeen) Scotland  ?-1707  ?
Marischal College (Aberdeen) Scotland  ?-1707  ?
St Andrews Scotland  ?-1707  ?

Does anyone know the appropriate sources? Are lists of Commissioners from the constituencies available online?

In fact, at the moment, we do not even have a list of constituencies, let alone an article on each one. That would be a good start. --Mais oui! 03:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

We do have one list - List of Constituencies in the Parliament of Scotland at the time of the Union - although I note that there are no university constituencies listed on it. Is this an error (the source used to compile the list is a late 19th century English one), or were university constituencies abolished prior to the 18th century? Can anyone source list info for pre-18th century Parliaments? --Mais oui! 04:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I can confirm that I did not notice any university constituencies, in the source I used for the list of pre-Union Scottish constituencies. Possibly they were in a different section of the book which I did not check. I have however seen a comment somewhere that King James VI and I enfranchised Oxford and Cambridge Universities, in the Parliament of England, as he was used to university constituencies in Scotland. --Gary J 13:21, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. --Mais oui! 13:23, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The best information on the 'constituencies' of pre 1707 Scotland can be found in M. Young, The Parliaments of Scotland: Burgh and Shire Commissioners. This includes a list of representatives for the burghs and shires (where available) from the 14th century onwards. As far as I know there were no university constituencies at any point, although I stand to be corrected. Benmoreassynt (talk) 21:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Convention of Estates - poor redirect

Can anyone turn this unsatisfactory redirect into a cited stub article? I would do it myself, but I would be starting from scratch, so if anyone has some prior knowledge they would likely do a better job!

Please see:

--Mais oui! 04:24, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I added a stub a while ago to Convention of Estates of Scotland and also to General Council of Scotland.--Benmoreassynt (talk) 18:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Seventeenth Century

As (I'll admit) a non-expert on the subject, the section on Seventeenth Century - specifically regarding the Glorious Revolution (or, if you prefer, Revolution of 1688) strikes me as fairly seriously POV. I mean references to, for example "illegal usurpation", and the words "illegally", "oust", "rightful", "usurping" and "traitors" in the statement that "the English Parliament illegally gave itself the right to oust the rightful king, James II and VII, and formally granted the Crown to the usurping Dutchman, William of Orange, who, in turn, favoured the traitors with huge financial rewards". I'm not reverting it because I think there's some useful information there - the POV stuff just needs weeding out.

We have what appears to me to be a balanced article at Glorious Revolution, though that seems to be rather English-centred (and so not relevant here). I'm relatively new to this and not sure which template to use, so I'll tag it to be checked and if people feel it needs something stronger then they can put it there. Pfainuk 12:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I have deleted the worst Jacobite language from the last paragraph, striving for simple factual accuracy, but more needs to be done. I will retrieve my copy of Macaulay and do some more work as soon as practical. J S Ayer 16:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Further comment: I can confirm that the section starting "was by now composed almost exclusively of those viscerally opposed, to the death, to both Roman Catholicism and Episcopalianism" to " Those remaining loyal to the dispossessed House of Stuart became known as Jacobites (from "Jacobus", the Latin for James)." is entirely unsatisfactory, biased, unsourced, and reads like a political account of the period, not a history of the Scottish parliament. It should be considered for prompt deletion. Arguably it should be deleted even if a replacement is not found. Unfortunately I'm not qualified to write the replacement, but good modern histories of the period have been publish by Gillian Macintosh, Derek Patrick and in "The History of the Scottish Parliament, volume 3: Parliament and Politics, 1560 to 1707" ed K. M. Brown and A. J. Mann, which would form a good basis for sources for the replacement.Benmoreassynt 19:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC) 11 July 2007

I eventually deleted this because nobody else did. It leaves the 17th century section a bit thin now, but that's better than a really terrible piece of bad polemic.--Benmoreassynt (talk) 18:28, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image of Court of Session, 1532, James V

I've added [[Image:Court.of.Session.1532.James.V.JPG]] to the commons, if it is of interest. It's a photograph from the Great Window in Parliament House. Notuncurious (talk) 20:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC)