Writing the Law in Late Medieval and Early Modern Scotland: An Introduction to Robert Ewyn, Edinburgh scribe, chaplain, and notary

Description

This paper focuses on sixteenth-century Scottish textual production by exploring the range of writing activities undertaken by Robert Ewyn, scribe, chaplain, and notary. Ewyn made a manuscript copy of the legal text Regiam maiestatem in Scots in 1548. This manuscript was bought by St Andrews in 2016 having been formerly held in a private collection, so its interesting codicological features and early history are little known. This paper offers a biographical profile of Robert Ewyn constructed from references in wills and other public records, revealing his family connections, his links to the Edinburgh crafts community and his career as a notary, pre- and post-Reformation. Ewyn's scribal hand can be traced across three very different writing contexts (literary book production, legal documentation, and secretarial note-taking), which provides important evidence of the different kinds of handwriting a professional scribe could produce, and of the multiple forms of employment that pre-modern notaries might undertake.

Period	13 Mar 2024
Held at	UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	National