Convention of Royal Burghs

The Convention of Royal Burghs, more fully termed the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, was a representative assembly which protected the privileges and pursued the interests of Scotland’s principal trading towns, the royal burghs, from the middle of the 16th century to the second half of the 20th century. It evolved as a forum in which burgh delegates, termed "commissioners", could "consult together and take common action in matters concerning their common welfare" before and during the sittings of parliament. An exclusively merchant body, it was essentially a parliament which "declared the law of the burghs" just as the Scottish Parliament "declared the law of the land". The Convention expanded over time by admitting lesser burghs to its membership; and by the 16th century had grown in influence to the extent that "it was listened to rather than directed by the government". Though still known as the "convention of royal burghs", it referred to itself from the late 17th century onwards as simply the "convention of burghs", as by then membership was no longer restricted exclusively to royal burghs and commissioners from all types of burgh were represented in parliament.

The mediaeval roots of the Convention lay in the 13th-century Court of the Four Burghs which comprised delegates from Berwick, Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Stirling. (In 1369 Lanark and Linlithgow replaced Berwick and Roxburgh after these came under English occupation.) Representatives of these burghs met in advance of parliamentary sittings and communicated with the sovereign through the Court or through the Chamberlain who presided over its meetings in his function as the Crown’s chief fiscal officer. The Court, described in a charter from the reign of James II (1430-60) as the Parliament of the Four Burghs, determined burghal law (leges burgorum), settled inter-burghal disputes and heard appeals from burgh courts. The earliest record of its deliberations dates from 1292 when "the four burghs" were asked to interpret the law on a question of debt. The Court applied a single set of rules and its decisions were binding on all royal burghs.

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