The Innes Review

As with any review of a multi-authored volume like this one, which covers such a wide time-span, the reviewer's interests will be fairly obvious. I would like to make it clear at the outset that the amount of space I devote to each chapter reflects as much my own interests and areas of expertise as the intrinsic quality or worth of that chapter.

This is a very well-illustrated book with a star-studded list of contributors which usefully brings together the latest thinking about medieval Dunfermline, especially as regards the church and the palace. As David Breeze points out in his foreword, Dunfermline's early history is closely bound up with that of the Scottish royal dynasty established by Malcolm III and Margaret, and with the twelfth-century Church reform movement.

Five of the book's twelve chapters are expanded versions of papers delivered at the Royal Dunfermline 1093–1603 conference held in Dunfermline on 15 November 2003 (the day before the feast of St Margaret), under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and Historic Scotland.

The emphasis, as the title indicates, is very much on Dunfermline's royal connections, which in chapters 10 and 11 take on an international dimension, with Thomas Riis's exploration of the wider world of James VI's Danish queen, Anne (ch.10), and Jenny Wormald's excellent piece on the cultural, political and social changes brought about by the union of the crowns in 1603, especially as they affected the royal household (ch.11). This is an especially important chapter not only in itself but also because more than any other it addresses a theme identified by Lisbeth Thoms, president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, in her foreword. Here (p. xxi) she writes that the conference was an opportunity 'to mark an important anniversary [400 years] in the history of both Scotland and Great Britain . . . and so recognise the important royal position Dunfermline had, not only in the reign of James VI and I, but also throughout the previous 600 years'. It is, however, overwhelmingly 'the previous 600 years' with which the book is concerned.

The tone is well set by the opening chapter, 'Living in medieval Dunfermline'. No one knows medieval burgh life in Dunfermline better than E. Patricia Dennison, who in 1986, under the name Elizabeth P. D. Torrie, edited the recently discovered Gild Court Book of Dunfermline 1433–1597 for the Scottish Record Society. In this chapter she vividly describes the harshness and richness of life in the medieval burgh, as well as the burgh's complex role in the local economy; and because of the relative wealth of late medieval sources for Dunfermline itself she is [End Page 118] able to use specifically Dunfermline examples to illustrate many aspects of medieval burgh life. The chapter is full of fascinating detail, including contemporary descriptions of furniture (such as 'a faldin burde with trestis and furmis', i.e. a folding table with trestles and forms), and the fact that the main function of the town walls was to prevent the spread of disease.

I had hoped that this chapter might tackle head on a question which has loomed large in any discussion of the development of medieval Dunfermline since 1953. In that year J. M. Webster and A. A. M. Duncan argued at some length (in their edition of the Regality of Dunfermline Court Book) that the royal burgh of Dunfermline, first mentioned in the 1120s, lay on the west side of the Tower Burn, where Pittencreiff Park is today; that the abbey was founded in an outlying part of this burgh, on the east side of the burn, and that round it grew an important trading community, which was formally granted separate status as the abbot's burgh by Robert I (1306–29), and which is the core of the modern town of Dunfermline (Dunf. Reg. Ct. Bk., 14–17). As Webster and Duncan put it: 'The suburb swallowed up the burgh' (ibid., 16). This...