The Scottish Studies Collection

The University of Guelph's Scottish Studies Collection holds thousands of items and is the largest collection of Scottish historical materials in the world outside the UK.

Our Scottish Studies Collections have everything, from romantic travel guides to scandalous witchcraft pamphlets and treatises on medieval law. The oldest documents in the collection are nearly 700 years old!

The collection's oldest items are medieval land charters, legal documents that were written in Latin on animal hide. These documents were at the heart of medieval Scottish society and were often used to record important land transfers between Scottish kings, nobles, and their servitors. One such charter in our archives dates from either 1343 or 1344, meaning it was created in the tumultuous midst of the Second War of Scottish Independence. It records a land grant from Donchaddh, the powerful Earl of Fife, to Robert Erskine, a Scottish war hero. The Earl of Fife was a controversial figure during the Second War of Independence, having swapped his allegiance between the English and the Scots before finally aligning his cause with the Scottish side. This document, therefore, has significant implications for our understanding of Donchaddh's attempt to prove his trustworthiness by granting lands to Erskine, a Scot of unquestionable loyalty.

Another original charter in the collection was issued in the name of James II (r. 1437-1460), King of Scots. Dating from 1440, the charter records the king’s grant of the lands of Weym to John Menzies, son of David Menzies. Gifts of land were a common reward in the Middle Ages for stout service to the monarch and part of the political strategies of Scottish rulers and aristocrats.

Access to these prized charters allows Guelph researchers to learn about ancient ways of ordering society. Charters existed alongside pre-literate customs of exchange, and evidence of these enigmatic rituals is preserved within the charter text. The charters can also be used to explore the significance of kinship and familial bonds in medieval Scottish landholding society. Additionally, as legal documents, they shed light on the rights and wrongs enshrined in medieval law and the royal decrees handed down by various kings of Scots. This information would be lost to us without the presence of these treasured manuscripts in our collections, and students and visitors to the archives have the rare opportunity to personally engage with these documents that are often hidden away in protective storage.

The land charters are but one area of strength in the University's diverse collection of historical materials related to Scottish and Canadian-Scottish history. Other types of historical items in the collection include:

• Rare books
• Manuscripts
• Atlases
• Travel guides
• Diaries
• Letters
• Chapbooks
• Newspapers and magazines
• Pamphlets and burgh records

The collection has particular strengths in social and economic history, the covenanting period, the Darien Disaster, the Treaty of Union, the Jacobites, the Presbyterian Church schisms of the late-18th and 19th centuries, Scottish topography, genealogy and family history, Scottish chapbooks and ballad literature, Scottish poetry and prose of the 19th and 20th centuries, and Scottish agriculture. 

Explore the Scottish Studies Collection here!