The Convention of Royal Burghs, more fully termed the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, was a representative assembly which protected the privileges and pursued the interests of Scotland’s principal trading towns, the royal burghs, from the middle of the 16th century to the second half of the 20th century. It evolved as a forum in which burgh delegates, termed "commissioners", could "consult together and take common action in matters concerning their common welfare" before and during the sittings of parliament. An exclusively merchant body, it was essentially a parliament which "declared the law of the burghs" just as the Scottish Parliament "declared the law of the land". The Convention expanded over time by admitting lesser burghs to its membership; and by the 16th century had grown in influence to the extent that "it was listened to rather than directed by the government". Though still known as the "convention of royal burghs", it referred to itself from the late 17th century onwards as simply the "convention of burghs", as by then membership was no longer restricted exclusively to royal burghs and commissioners from all types of burgh were represented in parliament.
Origin
The mediaeval roots of the Convention lay in the 13th-century Court of the Four Burghs which comprised delegates from Berwick, Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Stirling. (In 1369 Lanark and Linlithgow replaced Berwick and Roxburgh after these came under English occupation.) Representatives of these burghs met in advance of parliamentary sittings and communicated with the sovereign through the Court or through the Chamberlain who presided over its meetings in his function as the Crown’s chief fiscal officer. The Court, described in a charter from the reign of James II (1430-60) as the Parliament of the Four Burghs, determined burghal law (leges burgorum), settled inter-burghal disputes and heard appeals from burgh courts. The earliest record of its deliberations dates from 1292 when "the four burghs" were asked to interpret the law on a question of debt. The Court applied a single set of rules and its decisions were binding on all royal burghs.
The evolution of burgh representation in relation to the history of the Scottish Parliament was a long and gradual process, the record of which has been to a large extent obscured by the loss of Scotland's national records at various times in the country's history. The fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence makes it difficult to give a precise chronology of the development.
As the main source of specie in the kingdom the burghs were specially summoned by royal letters to convene at the sittings of parliament. The traditionally accepted date for the first occasion of their being present is 1326, when they were summoned to appear at the parliament of Robert I held at Cambuskenneth. The reason appears to have been the King's need to restore damage done to the royal demesnes during the Wars of Independence, It is not, however, clear whether the burgesses sat alongside the bishops and barons as a separate estate within the parliament itself.
When taxation had to be raised to pay the ransom for the release of David II from English captivity, the burghs were consulted again at Scone in 1357 and empowered to negotiate the release. Thus, 1357 has been seen as the date for burgh commissioners establishing themselves as a political class within the parliament, indicated by the first use of the term "three estates (tres communitates) of the realm" to describe the parliament's composition.
The burghs were consulted again at the parliament held in Stirling in 1405 when 50,000 merks had to be raised for "the King's fynance", to meet Henry VI's demand for "expenses incurred" by James I during his long imprisonment in England. For this session it was decided that two or three commissioners from every burgh south of the Spey should attend to "treat, ordain and determine upon all things concerning the utility of the common weal of all the King’s burghs". Historians have therefore judged 1405 as the true date for the start of the Convention, which met at every session of parliament from that time onwards.
The "Court of Four" continued to function until 1529, "the provost of the burgh where the meeting was held acting as president", though the Chamberlain still attended (his involvement ended formally in 1532).