Community of the Realm: the Middle Ages

Abstract

THis chapter begins by dealing with the place in Scotland which lacked the formal, regularised architectural characteristics of the governmental and assembly settings of Mediterranean antiquity, which have today mostly vanished. It looks at the use of royal halls and the large spaces provided by the major monasteries - churches, chapter-houses and refectories - in the 13th and earlier 14th centuries, before focusing on the emergence of first Blackfriars in Perth and subsequent to 1437 of the tolbooth of Edinburgh as the principal meeting-places of the Three Estates of Scotland