Maritime Law and Practice in Late Medieval Aberdeen

Abstract

This article examines maritime law and its use in legal practice in late medieval Aberdeen. It is argued that, although several copies of a Scottish translation of the ‘Rôles d'Oléron’, a French sea law, were available in Scotland, written law collections were rarely used in court proceedings. Rather, judgments were ‘concluded’ or ‘found’ based on common sense. Some of these judgments did, nonetheless, correspond to regulations laid down in the ‘Rôles d'Oléron’, or to verdicts from legal practice recorded elsewhere in northern Europe. Although no common tradition of maritime law and practice existed in northern Europe, Aberdeen practice appears to have been significantly different from that of other northern European towns, suggesting that Aberdeen may have been part of a separate north-western European tradition instead.