Communal Authority, Counsel and Resistance in the Reign of James I: A Conceptual Approach

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between counsel and resistance, as well as the interplay between royal and communal authority, in the kingdom of the Scots during the reign of James I. It does so through an analysis of the language and ideas used in political tracts and literary texts—particularly ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’—and also in the records of parliaments and councils. The aim of this article is to suggest that counsel is usefully viewed not simply as a tool which contemporaries might deploy as a passive response to the exercise of royal (or quasi-regal) authority, but as a means by which medieval actors could proactively shape the governance they experienced in late medieval Scotland.