Our contribution to the "War, Destruction and Reform" exhibition now on at the Wardlaw Museum, University of St. Andrews
Guest blog by Dr. Amy Blakeway, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St. Andrews May 1548 was not a good month for the burgh clock in Aberdeen. A group of angry townsfolk had broken out into riot, protesting against the burgh council and, in the process, damaging the burgh clock. What provoked these men to such violence? The Aberdeen Burgh C ouncil R egister (reference CA/1/1/20) recorded that not only had these men been the ringleaders of an ‘ insurrecktion ’ but that they were convicted ‘ for the saying of impertunat language on the men of gud of the town and of thair feit men of weir [mercenaries] and capitane … ’ Extract from Spalding Club Miscellany with transcription from Council Register CA/1/1/20 This detail that the men had been protesting about the ‘ feit men of war’ – mercenaries – in the town, is hugely revealing of the tensions bubbling in Aberdeen by this time. Since 1544 Scotland had been intermittently at war with England, a...
