Parliament of Scotland

This article is about the pre-1707 parliament. For the devolved legislative body established in 1999, see Scottish Parliament.
Parliament House in Edinburgh, the home of the Estates of Parliament between its completion in 1639 and the Union of 1707.

The Parliament of Scotland, officially the Estates of Parliament, was the legislature of the independent Kingdom of Scotland.

The parliament of Scotland had only one house (cf. House of Commons, House of Lords) and was mentioned for the first time during the early thirteenth century, and the first meeting one knows of was in 1235, during the reign of Alexander II of Scotland.[1]

The parliament, which is also referred to as the Estates of Scotland, the Three Estates the Scots Parliament or the auld Scots Parliament (English: old), merged with the Parliament of England in the Acts of Union in 1707. This formed the Kingdom of Great Britain, which later became the United Kingdom.

Notes

  1. ↑ K. Brown and R. Tanner, History of the Scottish Parliament, i, 'introduction'.

Further reading

  • K. M. Brown and R. J. Tanner, The History of the Scottish Parliament volume 1: Parliament and Politics, 1235-1560 (Edinburgh, 2004)

Other websites

  • The Records of the Scottish Parliament, The complete acts and proceedings of the Scottish Parliament, General Council and much other parliamentary material from 1235 to 1707. The publication arose from the work of The Scottish Parliament Project
  • The First Scottish Parliament: the Middle Ages – 1707, Scottish Parliament
  • The Scottish Parliamentary Tradition, Scottish Parliament
  • The Scottish Parliament Project - The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707, University of St Andrews
  • Scottish Parliament records Archived 2008-04-09 at the Wayback Machine, National Archives of Scotland
  • Scotland's powerful parliament Archived 2002-05-18 at the Wayback Machine, abstract of The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: Politics and the Three Estates, Dr Roland Tanner, Tuckwell Press, ISBN 1-86232-174-4
  • Original Scottish Parliament, The Scotsman