Armorial

The volume contains the arms of the one hundred and four barons who signed the letter to the Pope in the 29th year of Edward I's reign, denying papal lordship over Scotland.

In around 1298, the Baronial Council of Regency in Scotland sent envoys to Pope Boniface VIII to protest against the attempts of Edward I of England to subjugate Scotland. They claimed that not only was the Papacy the only judge that could arbitrate over the dispute but also that Scotland belonged by feudal right to the Papacy and to none other. Accordingly Boniface wrote to Edward I in 1299 reminding him that Scotland had belonged from ancient times and did still belong to the Papacy and that the king was to cease all hostilities against the kingdom and pursue his claims at the Papal court in Rome within six months. This letter reached the king after much delay in 1300, through the hands of Robert of Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, and was laid by Edward before a parliament summoned to meet at Lincoln. A reply to Boniface's letter was drafted and authorised by Parliament in September 1300 that denied papal lordship over Scotland and asserted that a king of England had never pleaded before any judge, ecclesiastical or secular, respecting his rights in Scotland or any other temporal rights, nor would Parliament permit him to do so, were he thus inclined. The letter was signed with the names of the one hundred and four secular lords that had attended the Lincoln parliament.

The manuscript is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Purchased by Mrs Enriqueta Rylands, on behalf of the John Rylands Library, in 1901 from James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford.

Description compiled by Henry Sullivan, project archivist.

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1928 (English MS 27).

Formerly part of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, the Library of the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres, from Haigh Hall, Wigan, Lancashire.