State Paper Office: Transcripts and Documents relating to Scotland

SP 58

1497-17th century

Copies made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of documents dating between 1065 and 1503. All are illustrative of relations between Scotland and England, and particularly the English kings' claim to dominion over Scotland. The series includes one original document, the secret instructions of Henry VII to Richard Fox, Bishop of Durham, sent to treat with James IV of Scotland over the Perkin Warbeck affair, in 1497.

The series appears to have been created in the later nineteenth century, possibly during the calendaring of the State Papers Scotland and the State Papers Borders, by the physical removal from bound volumes of sixteenth and seventeenth century transcripts of earlier documents relating to Scotland. The context from which these papers were taken is unknown.

The main topics covered by the transcripts are the sovereignty of Scotland, homage done by the Scottish kings and others to the kings of England, treaties and ratifications, commissions of full powers to ambassadors, notes relating to Scottish affairs, several indentures of abstinence of war, marriage treaties, and a full and lengthy description of the ceremonies at the betrothal and marriage of James IV of Scotland and Princess Margaret of England in 1503.

Some of the transcripts are in the same hand. Only two bear details of the transcribers, both seventeenth-century record officials. Most of the transcripts appear to come from the English records, then kept in various repositories.

Many transcripts relate to originals in E 39

Public Record(s)

English, French and Latin

1 bundle(s)

Topics

Marriage and divorce

Treaties and alliances