Series 5 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, Volume 12

A QUESTION ABOUT THE SUCCESSION, 1364
edited by A.A.M. Duncan
INTRODUCTION
The manuscript.
In 1958 the late E.W.M. Balfour-Melville contributed greatly to our knowl¬
edge of a controversial episode in Anglo-Scottish relations in 1363 by publish¬
ing a most careful literal transcription of an ill-to-read manuscript treatise in
the British Library.1 This text in MS Cotton Vespasian C.XVI (a miscellaneous
cohection of Scottish historical materials written in different hands), folios
34-40, was written on paper whose watermark is of the 1470s or 1480s in a
small ‘pre-secretary’ hand of that period. It is a copy, possibly several times
removed from the last author’s autograph, and certainly with many copyists’
errors which add to the difficulty of understanding the original Latin. In
seeking to make a full translation I was made aware of the need for a critical
edition; I had prepared this and it had been seen by Professor D.E.R. Watt,
who offered me many valuable corrections and suggestions, before writing my
paper on the negotiations of 1346-52 in the Scottish Historical Review, in which
a new edition of the text was promised.2
But I put this text aside and might never have fulfilled my promise had not
Mr A.B. Webster jogged my conscience and also greatly helped me by sending
me a typescript edition of the text from §7, with some notes, prepared before
1982 by the late Professor H.S. Offler of Durham, who was aware of the
1 Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, ix (1958), 36-50, with a summary in English on 51-6.
Balfour-Melville seems to have thought that the whole text had one author; he saw that it related not
to the events of 1351 but to those of1363-4, but preserved the near-contemporary error of Commensal
(discussed below) in his title, ‘Debate in Council-General’ (p. 6).
2 A.A.M. Duncan, ‘Honi soil qui mal y pense: David II and Edward III, 1346-52’, Scottish Historical Revietv
ISHR], Ixvii (1988), 113-41.