“We do not pretend to be amongft the Great and Rich Kingdoms of the Earth, yet we know not who can claim preference in Antiquity and Integrity,,”
2026 will mark the 110th anniversary of the 1916 donation of the manuscript of Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel Bride of Lammermoor which was displayed to guests at our Annual Dinner 2025.
Lammermoor tells the story of the madness that descends upon a young woman forced into marriage and separated from the man she loves on political grounds. It’s an extraordinary narrative — and one, incredibly, based on fact, rooted in real events in the life of the great pioneer of Scots Law, James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount Stair.
Stair’s Institutions of the Law of Scotland is indisputably the most important text in Scots Law. First written in 1659-62, it circulated in handwritten copies from twenty years before being printed. The Signet Library owns four of the early pre-1681 handwritten copies, and a 1667 copy was displayed at the Annual Dinner.
Stair wrote his institutions in the aftermath of the conquest of Scotland by Lord Protector Cromwell, the only successful invasion in the nation’s history. Stair’s remarkable, enduring celebrations of the “Antiquity and Integrity” of Scots Law helped see it through the 1707 Union negotiations and into its current day status as one of the great European jurisdictions. The book remains the greatest of the institutional writings of Scots Law and remains a core authority in court pleadings today.