At the heart of so many Scottish towns and cities stands a mercat cross. First recorded in the late twelfth century, mercat crosses signaled a Royal Burgh’s unique trading privileges and its direct relationship with the crown. These crosses also became focal points for legal and political practises: sites for enacting justice; platforms for promulgating official proclamations; meeting spaces for burgh magistrates in lieu of a tolbooth or town house.
Category: News
Dancing on the Seal-ing
When I first began my research on the royal seals of Scotland, I had to repeatedly convince friends and family that I wasn’t studying semi-aquatic marine mammals. Instead, my work focused on wax impressions that might have been attached to documents such as charters. Less cute but, to my mind, incredibly interesting. So, why did I want to study seals? What fascinated me was the way in which a seal was both a practical object, used almost as an alternative to a written signature, and a symbolic object, which could embody the presence of the sealer and assert something about how they wished to be perceived.