Acceso usuarios
Laura Doak
This article uses the concept of materiality to reconsider theScottish Privy Council Register compiled between 1692 and 1708.Written as part of the Scottish Privy Council Project, itinvestigates signs within the Register’s textual codices thatprovide insights into its clerical manufacture and the all-important role makers had in representing the institution’sactions to posterity. Three main strands of inquiry are pursued:personnel within the ‘Council Office’; mistakes made by membersof this office during the compilation of Register volumes; therelationship between these final volumes and miscellaneoussurviving materials. Creation of the Register involved thedematerialization and loss of original council paperwork, with theofficial codex produced functioning as both muniments of aprojected ‘truth’ and monuments to Privy Council authority. Amateriality-minded approach to institutional records is shownhere as essential for their full interpretation, with Scotland’s PrivyCouncil Register offered as a comparative case study for scholarsworking with government records of all periods and places
