The Bannatyne Club and the Publication of Scottish Ecclesiastical Cartularies

Investigative research on Scottish cartularies has been grossly neglected in comparison to other European countries. In fact, over 90% of the printed Scottish cartularies were published by antiquarian groups like the Bannatyne, Maitland and Spalding Clubs between 1832 and 1893 and no substantive work on these editions has occurred since that time. They are now both commonly treated and used as primary sources in their own right. To date, nobody has delved too deeply into the methodologies employed to convert the manuscripts into printed material in the first instance. This has placed a huge burden of trust upon the accuracy and editorial skills of the men who were employed as editors by the various clubs. The focus of this investigation is the Bannatyne Club and its most prolific editor of ecclesiastical manuscripts, Cosmo Innes. It is suggested that these editions can be divided into different categories, depending on the number of source manuscripts available to Innes and his editing teams. As a rule of thumb, the greater the number of sources Innes and his scribes used, the greater the latitude for error. Using the Moray register as a stark example, it is argued that the editorial team involved in its production radically re-ordered and re-worked much of the source material to fit the editorial conventions of that time.