Historic Scottish government records published online for first time

Researchers have published historic Scottish government records online for the first time after a four-year long project.

Historians from the University of Stirling and the University of Dundee collaborated on the Scottish Privy Council Project, undertaking the major task of transcribing and editing surviving records of the Scottish Privy Council between 1692 and 1708 and publishing them on a new website.

One of the manuscript registers of the Scottish Privy Council held by the National Records of Scotland from which the new website was compiled.

The online database introduces for the first time, in easily accessible form, a record of the Scottish government from the late 17th Century to early 18th century, making it readily available to researchers, scholars and the general public.

Dr Alastair Mann, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Stirling and Principal Investigator for the project, said: “The Scottish Privy Council was one of the most important institutional branches of Scottish government in the early modern period, focusing on the period from the Revolution of 1689 to the Union of 1707.

“This record is the nearest we have to ‘cabinet papers’ of the time and provides key insights into executive government during a dynamic period of revolution, Jacobitism, famine, economic struggle and parliamentary Union with England.”

Members of the Scottish Privy Council Project team, left to right, back row, Laura Doak (University of Dundee), Clare Loughlin (formerly University of Stirling); front row, Alan MacDonald (University of Dundee), Alastair Mann (University of Stirling), Robbie Tree (University of Stirling), and Allan Kennedy (University of Dundee). Also part of the team is Susanne Weston (University of Dundee - not pictured).

Launched in 2020, the Scottish Privy Council Project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Researchers, with the help of PhD students, studied, edited and translated more than three million words contained in the historic records.

Dr Alan MacDonald, Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee, said: “Privy Council records were edited and published in a series of printed volumes – nearly 50 in total – covering the period 1545 to 1691.  Given the importance of the Privy Council in early modern Scotland, these volumes quickly became central to Scottish historical scholarship, sustaining countless books, articles, and doctoral theses with the breadth and richness of material they contained.

“However, the withdrawal of public funding in the 1970s meant that the final tranche of Privy Council records, covering the years up to the Council’s abolition in 1708, has always remained unpublished. 

“While most of the Privy Council’s registers were written in something very close to the English of the period, they presented some linguistic difficulties, especially around the use of specifically Scots terms, chaotic punctuation, and a wholly unstandardised approach to spelling”.

Dr Mann added “It is our hope that this website and its records are a foundation for research into government and policy in a dramatic period of flux and transition in the economic, political and social life of the people of Scotland.”