Of people, land and bonds : contributions to lordship and administration in North-East Scotland in the Later Middle Ages

Abstract

Via three exemplary chapters the authors present the results of the DFG-funded research project entitled ‚Man Rent or Land Rent? Significance and function of land transfer for the practice of lordship of kings, lay lords and ecclesiastics in north-east Scotland in the later Middle Ages‘. This volume tried to offer a modified perspective on the organisation of the political society in late Medieval Scotland, formed through the bottom-up view of regional lordship and its respective sources. Scottish history should not only be told from the perspective of crown, magnates and the sources produced by and for them but bottom-up: There are large enough quantities of mostly underused sources stemming from clerical institutions, nobility and the burghs, which can further enhance our knowledge of the political structure and the socio-economic composition of the kingdom.