The Scottish Parliament and its early modern ‘rivals’

Abstract

SUMMARY The Scottish state became sovereign in the sixteenth century, with parliament the sovereign body entitled to legislate. However, a long and influential historiographical tradition states that parliament alone was not sovereign in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that legislative power was also possessed by several ‘rivals’ of parliament. These were the Convention of Estates, the General Assembly of the Church, the Convention of Royal Burghs, and especially the Privy Council. Numerous examples of supposed legislation by the Privy Council have been produced. This article examines such claims in detail, and finds them unsustainable. Conventions of Estates, which were effectively parliaments in all but name, could impose taxation but not make permanent legislation. None of the other bodies could legislate at all; they were important but had specialist areas of competence that were subordinate to the sovereign parliament. The Scottish parliament did not have ‘rivals’.