The Many Lives of Regiam Maiestatem: Compilation, Circulation and the Scottish Legal Tradition

It has become almost axiomatic to begin an article on Regiam maiestatem – not only Scotland’s earliest surviving procedural and jurisprudential tractate but also, supposedly, an authority of its law for over half a millennium – with an oft-cited quotation from the prologue to the first printed edition of the text produced in 1609 by Sir John Skene of Curriehill, Lord Advocate.