Man Rent or Land Rent? The significance and the impact of property transfer for dominion of clergy and lay nobility in late medieval northeast Scotland

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This project examines the significance and function of property transfer in Scotland, in Aberdeenshire, Perthshire and Fife in the later middle Ages (14th/15th century). We evaluate the source material from the perspective of the most important protagonists in these regions: the Scottish kings, the earls of Fife, important lairds and the bishops of St. Andrews and the bishops of Aberdeen. The practice of property transfer and land distribution is examined by two dissertations, one concerned with the strategies of lay nobility, the other with that of the clerical nobility. We are going to interpret newly discovered and yet unprinted sources from the archives of Hawick, Perth, Aberdeen and St Andrews and relate our findings with the relevant printed sources.Four central questions guide our interpretation. We explore a) how land-distribution and property transfer correlated with political interests; b) the self-organization of the landed nobility; c) whether or not by this self-organization some kind of political order was established; d) whether or not transfer of property was more important to the protagonists than personal loyalty, expressed by the bonds of manrent.