This thesis takes the form of an examination of the office of
ecclesiastical bailie in Scotland in the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries. The office, in origin and in essence, was
legal and judicial, but in the fifteenth century the principal role
of the bailie came increasingly to be one of defence of
ecclesiastical land and privilege. The office existed at all
levels in the Church, from large monastery to small chapel, and
normally came to be held by men of noble class. As with most
medieval offices it tended to become hereditary in a particular
family. It was a source of considerable economic gain to the
nobility, to judge by the rush all over Scotland to secure its
possession. Indeed possession of an ecclesiastical bailiary could
be one step on the road to the secularisation of Church lands in
the post- Reformation period and may have acted as a social catalyst
which allowed many of Scotland's middling noble families to reach
the highest echelons of the nobility. The office was not purely
Scottish and was to be found throughout Europe at this time. As
far as may be determined, no extensive research has been done on
the equivalents for any other European country, and it is hoped
that this may be the first of many studies into the significance
of the office in late medieval ecclesiastical history
