Resumen de Petitioning the Justiciary Court in Restoration Scotland, 1660-88

Allan Kennedy

• Scholars have long recognized that petitioning played a central rolein early modern political systems. Analysis of the practice,particularly in a British context, has tended to emphasize itsfunction in developing the concept of the ‘public sphere’, andthus, by extension, in laying the groundwork for the emergenceof modern nation-states. Yet this perspective risks overlookingthe importance of petitioning as a prosaic, everyday feature ofearly modern governance. Building upon recent research intobanal forms of petitioning in Scotland, this article uses hithertooverlooked evidence from the central criminal jurisdiction, theJusticiary Court, to explore the practice of everyday petitioningduring the Restoration period (1660–88). It begins by assessingbasic patterns around the identity of petitioners and the aims oftheir petitions, before moving on to explore the range ofrhetorical and presentational strategies used to press individualcases. The article argues that petitioning should not be seenreductively as either a relic of ‘feudalism’ or a harbinger of themodern state. Instead, it was one of the most vital mechanisms ofinteraction between ruler and ruled, as well as a means of testingand renegotiating the relationship of one to the other.