Kirkliston - First of the Many

What do the following 3 locations have in common?

Hopefully you may recognise our very own Kirkliston (Parish Church pictured). The second location is Parliament Hall, Parliament Square, Edinburgh whilst the third building is the Church of Scotland Assembly Hall, Edinburgh. None the wiser? Well, they have all served as the venue for the Scottish Parliament at some stage in the last 700 years or so. In fact, Kirkliston was FIRST to do so back in 1235 during the reign of King Alexander II.

How on earth, you may wonder, did our wee village come to join the exalted ranks of such iconic locations? Well, it was largely down to the way royalty conducted its affairs and kept the realm under close control back in antiquity. A monarch needed to be seen out and about from time to time and this necessitated the royal court touring the kingdom and pausing at key locations to deal with various legal matters such as disputes and clarification of the laws of the land, rather like a court of law today. At the same time, it offered an opportunity to bestow favours on the most loyal and influential supporters of whose accommodation (a free Airbnb?) they would make fulsome use. Expensive for the host perhaps, but just think of all the brownie points scored when the king, no less, stays at your castle for the night! 

Throughout the ages, numerous locations across Scotland were employed for the parliament, ranging from Aberdeen in the north to Berwick-upon-Tweed in the south, although the vast majority were held – unsurprisingly - in Edinburgh. Some were even conducted outdoors if no suitable building was available at the time and one wonders how they coped with the unpredictable Scottish weather when all four seasons can be experienced on the same day!

Over the centuries, the ‘Parliaments’ did not necessarily conform to our modern day image of what constitutes a parliament. The meetings were variously described as Councils, General Councils, Assemblies, Parliamentary Committees, Parliamentary Commissions, Meetings of the Estates, Conventions and Colloquiums. However, before we take a look at what actually happened all those years ago in Kirkliston, let us hear a little more about King Alexander II and his major contributions to Scotland.

When William I (the Lion) died on 4^th December 1214, his only son Alexander became king, the coronation taking place at Scone a mere two days later. Alexander was only 16 at the time, yet by all accounts he made a good initial impression on his nobility who helped him to subdue an early revolt in 1215 by the clans MacWilliam and MacHeth who had long been enemies of the Scottish crown. The retribution served on the MacWilliams was total and savage, they being hunted down and exterminated to the very last few individuals - notably one of whom was a baby girl who had her brains cruelly dashed out against the Mercat Cross in Forfar. Brutal times indeed, but deemed necessary to secure the monarch from further challenges to his succession. Later that year, perhaps heartened by this early success, Alexander then joined the English barons who were on bad terms with King John of England. Long before The Proclaimers he marched an army 500 miles south to Dover in 1216 (further even than Bonnie Prince Charlie, who only ever got as far as Derby) and paid homage to Prince Louis of France who the English barons wanted to replace the unpopular King John. Unfortunately, John then died and the barons’ plans were scuppered as the Pope and the English aristocracy switched their allegiance to John’s son Henry, later to be crowned Henry III. Would a French prince on the English throne have averted much of the centuries of Anglo-Scottish strife? Sadly, we will never know.

Alexander’s other achievements had more far-reaching implications and benefits for Scotland and helped to expand and delineate the borders of the realm. In 1216 he brought Argyll under control of the Scottish crown and suppressed the revolting folk in Galloway. In 1222 he asserted his claims to Caithness, hitherto the mainland part of Orkney which belonged to the Kingdom of Norway, but not before hanging and mutilating some farmers there who were implicated in the murder by burning of Bishop Adam of those parts. (Apparently their punishment was met with the hearty approval of Pope Honorius III who was clearly one of the ‘hanging and mutilating lobby’!) However, these notable achievements pale into insignificance compared to the Treaty of York in 1237. Alexander and his brother-in-law Henry III of England (oh – did I forget to mention that Alexander married Henry’s 11-year-old sister Joan back in 1221? Before you ask, Alexander was 23 at the time!) The treaty defined the boundary between England and Scotland as running between the Solway Firth in the west and the mouth of the River Tweed in the east. This demarcation line, with the exception of Berwick-upon-Tweed, (and thereby hangs a tale far too complicated for this little article) has endured more or less in its original form to the present day - no mean achievement!

Having had a cursory glance at Alexander’s CV as a king, let us now discover what he was up to in Kirkliston all those years ago. In 1235, King Alexander II held a Colloquium in Kirkliston. To save you dashing off to consult your dictionary, a Colloquium is defined as ‘an academic conference or seminar’. This was effectively a parliament where the king, nobility and clergy met together to hear and give judgement on matters brought before them.

A contemporary record shows that Alexander’s Kirkliston Colloquium (a bit of a tongue twister, that!) was asked to give judgement on a dispute between the abbot and monks of Melrose and a chappie named Roger Avenel. Apparently, Roger had been a bit of a chancer by grazing his horses and livestock on the abbot’s land and causing a fair bit of argy-bargy and damage to buildings and ditches. The Colloquium ruled in the abbot’s favour, but made it clear that the abbot and his folk also had to abide by the law and allow Roger to hunt the wild game on the abbot’s land.

What else transpired on that fateful day in 1235 is not recorded, but the Colloquium Record from that very first ‘parliament’ gives Kirkliston a unique position in Scottish history. Why was this the one and only time Kirkliston hosted the parliament? Despite it being a useful staging point between Edinburgh and Stirling, the village clearly hadn’t established itself as a parliamentary venue. Perhaps the catering wasn’t up to scratch - maybe the roast swan was a bit too dry and the larks’ tongues overspiced? Or was it the first instance of the infamous Kirkliston cheese pieces, for which the village may have gained its nickname Cheesetown, that displeased His Grace?

As we now know, Alexander II’s reign was one of significant achievements and he was on the threshold of adding even more land to his realm in the west, but fell ill and died on the island of Kerrera in 1249. He was succeeded by his seven-year-old son, Alexander III, the only (legitimate) child from his marriage to Marie de Coucy in 1239, poor Joan having died childless the year before.

As for the Scottish Parliament, it continued in its many locations and forms until 1639 when it settled at last in Parliament Hall in Edinburgh until 1707 and the union of the Scottish and English parliaments. It remains the oldest existing purpose-built parliamentary building in the British Isles.

What of the Church of Scotland Assembly Hall? When devolution resulted in Scotland re-establishing its own parliament in 1999 the new parliament building sited at the bottom of the Royal Mile was unfinished. The Kirk came to the rescue and sanctioned the use of its premises until the completion of Holyrood in 2004. Ironically, this was another example of the cart coming before the horse, in that Parliament Hall too was incomplete in 1239, the members having to endure another two years of noisy builders about the place.

A P George
Kirkliston Heritage Society

SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

National Galleries Scotland
National Library of Scotland
undiscoveredscotland.co.uk
University of St Andrews