Makers, mistakes, and miscellaneous matter: materiality and the Scottish Privy Council records, c.1688-1708

This article uses the concept of materiality to reconsider the Scottish Privy Council Register compiled between 1692 and 1708. Written as part of the Scottish Privy Council Project, it investigates signs within the Register’s textual codices that provide insights into its clerical manufacture and the all-important role makers had in representing the institution’s actions to posterity. Three main strands of inquiry are pursued: personnel within the ‘Council Office’; mistakes made by members of this office during the compilation of Register volumes; the relationship between these final volumes and miscellaneous surviving materials. Creation of the Register involved the dematerialization and loss of original council paperwork, with the official codex produced functioning as both muniments of a projected ‘truth’ and monuments to Privy Council authority. A materiality-minded approach to institutional records is shown here as essential for their full interpretation, with Scotland's Privy Council Register offered as a comparative case study for scholars working with government records of all periods and places.