The Signet Library’s Collection of Session Papers

Volumes from the Signet Library Collection of Session Papers

Background

The Signet Library is the Library of the Society of Writers to the Signet in Edinburgh, Scotland’s largest and oldest body of solicitors. The Society takes its origins from a brotherhood of legal clerks working for the king’s secretary in medieval Scotland, and it was incorporated into the College of Justice by James V in 1532. Although the Signet Library is the greatest intellectual achievement of the Society in its long history, it is only one part of a far wider societal life within Scottish and wider society.

The Signet Library Begins to Collect Session Papers

The Signet Library’s acquisition of Session Papers appears to have commenced in 1796, by which time at least one major acquired collection and a collection of papers relating to Scotch Appeals to the House of Lords were already in situ. A manuscript index of Session Papers exists which refers to Session Papers still locatable in the collections today; internal evidence suggests that it was compiled in the late 1770s. A 1793 index lists Scotch Appeals to the House of Lords. Session Papers are mentioned, in simple single-line entries, in the Signet Library catalogues of 1805 and 1820-1833. Collections continued to be acquired from time to time, the most notable of which being the purchase of Lord Eldin’s Session Papers in 1833.

In 1856, William Ivory’s new catalogue of the Signet Library’s legal collections provided the first census of the collection to go into any kind of detail. It lists six acquired collections, including the 180 volumes of Lord Eldin’s. Eldin is the only collector identified by name in Ivory’s catalogue. In 1864, the Library Curators called for the indexing of these older collections, claiming erroneously that the Advocates Library collections had indexes and were far more useful as a result. However, it would not be until 1907 that proper indexing of the older collections by Assistant Librarian Alexander Mill would get underway, and the task would occupy him until 1919. This index remains in use to this day and can be consulted online here. Collection of Scotch Appeals ceased during the Second World War, and the demands of space meant that the final bound volume of Signet Library Session Papers found its way onto the shelves in 1978.

Individual Collectors of Session Papers within the Signet Library Collection

The collection has recently undergone the first complete survey since its indexing, with the intention of uncovering information about provenance and use. There is internal evidence of the rebinding and reordering of acquired collections subsequent to acquisition which obscures their original origins, arrangement, and perhaps even use. Ivory’s 1856 Jurisprudence Catalogue lists the collection in series as follows:

A [Old Series 1713-1767] 24 folio, 18 quarto 42 in total

B 1764-1798 38 quarto

C 1797-1820 198 quarto

D 1731-1789 24 quarto

E 1717-1762 (marked as 1st and 2nd collection) 48 folio

F 1786-1820 (The Session Papers of Lord Eldin “not in a regular series”) 180 quarto

G 1766-1814 (different collections e.g. elections, teinds, misc) 75 volumes

Within these series, there is at least some evidence to the identity of individual collectors:

Collections A and E both show signs in whole or part of having been at some point in the possession of the Advocate Alexander Lockhart, later Lord Covington.
Other volumes in the set bear the ink stamp of “John Hope Advocate” (1794-1858). A large proportion of Hope’s Session Papers were deposited after his death with the Advocates Library, and it may be that the Signet Library portion represent volumes allowed to go to auction with Nisbet in February 1859.
A small number of volumes once belonged to Writer to the Signet and bibliophile John Whitefoord Mackenzie (and other Session Papers belonging to Mackenzie, albeit not a significant number, also reside at the Signet Library in the books of the crime writer William Roughead WS who bequeathed his collection in 1952).
The most significant collector in this series is John Clerk, Lord Eldin, whose Session Papers were acquired by David Laing at the sale of 1833 which is best remembered for the fatal floor collapse that interrupted the bidding. Laing sold the Papers to the Signet Library subsequently.
Collection C represents the beginning of concerted institutional collecting at the Signet Library.

The David Murray Session Papers

The largest single subset within the Signet Library’s overall collection of Session Papers is the donation of papers made in 1930 from the collection of the late Dr. David Murray (1842-1928). Murray was a hugely successful Glasgow lawyer, historian, collector and political radical whose remarkable library now forms one of the key historical collections at the University of Glasgow.

The donation itself was administered by Murray’s law firm, McClay Murray and Spens, of whom the surviving Spens was a Writer to the Signet. The surviving correspondence indicates that Murray’s daughters approached the firm to seek their help in disposing of the volumes, which were then offered to the Signet Library on the proviso that any the Library did not want would be found a suitable home. After a period of storage in offices at 93 Hope Street, the volumes were listed and then loaded into wicker baskets and carted to what was most likely to have been Queen Street Station for transmission to Edinburgh.

The Murray collection, like the rest of the Signet Library’s collections, is an agglomeration of earlier collections.

The earliest of these are the Session Papers once owned by Robert Bruce, Lord Kennet (1718-1785). It is a rare and precious set of papers, unusual in being a collection gathered by a Senator of the Court of Session (it was more often that an Advocate would cease collecting Session Papers when he was elevated to the bench). The papers cover some of the most crucial legal cases of late eighteenth century Scotland. They contain, for instance, Kennet’s handwritten notes on the case of Knight against Wedderburn, which ended slavery in Scotland. The papers in the collecton have been carefully chosen - many of them bear the legend “keep” in Bruce’s handwriting, and each volume is neatly and accurataly indexed.

The Kennet Papers on their own render the Murray Session Papers at the Signet Library an unusual and important survival. However, they are not the only major grouping within Murray’s collection.

A numbered and indexed set, originally of 32 volumes but now with one volume absent, represents the collecting of George Dundas, Lord Manor (1802 – 1869), with hints within them of other, earlier owners.
Many volumes bear signs of the ownership of George Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse (1771-1850) - interesting given the presence of the Corehouse Collection of legal books at the Faculty of Advocates.
Other names occurring in the collection include William Couper, John Orr, David Boyle, William Miller, Writer to the Signet John Cook (whose presence in the collection is hard to untangle but may amount to many volumes) and Andrew MacGeorge 1774-1857 of the Faculty of Procurators, father to Andrew MacGeorge, historian and lawyer of Glasgow (1810-1891). There is evidence here to be drawn out of Session Paper collecting in Glasgow.
Perhaps the most unexpected set amongst the David Murray Session Papers is a sequence collected and bound together by the Advocate William Boswell (1779-1841). He was a relative of, and son-in-law to, the biographer James Boswell, for whose Session Papers this set is a goldmine. Much of this part of the collection consists of cases that William Boswell had been involved with, but the first few volumes of the set display something highly unusual - conscious collecting of Session Papers by James Boswell, Robert Boswell and others, driven not by the desire to control a supply of legal precedent, but by family pride. It is the only set of this kind yet discovered.

Not all of the Session Papers listed as present at 93 Hope Street in 1930 can be accounted for in the Signet Library today, and the unbound “proceedings in processes” cannot be traced as yet at all. These may have been bound into the main Signet Library collection and so many still be recovered.

The David Murray Session Papers are remarkable for reasons that extend far beyond the famous names that lie behind them. The collection of 225 volumes represents the second largest known collection every constructed by a single individual, and by far the largest ever in the hands of anyone not a member of the Faculty of Advocates. It is also by far the largest collection assembled by any individual or institution outside Edinburgh. It is the only collection to exhibit evidence of extensive Session Paper collecting by an individual Writer to the Signet (WS firms - law firms in which a majority of the partners were Writers to the Signet - were known to collect Session Papers, and two such collections have been donated to the Signet Library - the Steuart Bequest, and the Smith & Mason Set).

It is unclear when and how Murray built his Session Papers collection. All of his papers predate his entering into his first professional legal partnership with George Smith at the end of the 1850s, although some date from the period of his apprenticeship. It is open to possibility that a proportion of the later papers were left him for his use by George Smith, or perhaps even by his father (who had been a solicitor in partnership with George Smith until his untimely death in 1847), but no internal evidence for this survives. Most of the volumes in the collection bear annotations by Murray on the endpapers, but his distinctive bookplate, based on the Murray of Atholl clan crest, is only occasionally present. What few dates of acquisition Murray has noted in his volumes refer to dates in the 1860s, during his partnership with George Smith and before his marriage. It is unlikely, but impossible to rule out, that the Session Papers were acquired in a single large transaction.

There is no specific evidence to suggest that his interest in collecting Session Papers was professional or legal in nature. None of his professional legal books or pamphlets reference Session Papers - his own or those in other collections. If he found anything of bibliographical interest about Session Papers, he left it unremarked. In this, he was typical of the nineteenth century. Outwith the collections of decisions published by the Faculty of Advocates, which were intended primarily for use in the vicinity of the Advocates Library where the papers referenced were held, only Ross’s Leading Cases of 1829 makes any extensive use of Session Paper references.

Instead, all evidence points to his acquiring Session Papers for what they might provide him in the way of historical local information about the areas of western Scotland that he loved. The bulk of the volumes carry the same kind of pencilled annotation in Murray’s hand - a short list of locations, chiefly Dumbarton and Glasgow, followed by any references he was able to locate about these places within the volume. It is quite possible that these pencil annotations mark a single one-time operation. If so, it may have been a disappointing one -there are rarely more than a couple of references marked for each volume, and Dumbarton’s entry usually remains blank.

Writing after David Murray’s death, his daughter Sylvia commented that

Of Court of Session Cases he had made a collection, arranging them under the different counties with which the cases were concerned. These he considered of the greatest value as repositories of information throwing light on curious points of law and custom as well as on the social life of other days. [Sylvia Murray: David Murray: a bibliographical memoir. Dumbarton: Bennet and Thomson, 1933 p.12]

This geographical Session Paper collection is now at the University of Glasgow, and, as there is no sign that any papers have been removed from any of the Murray volumes at the Signet Library, it is likely that his geographical Session Paper collection was sourced elsewhere, perhaps as single uncollected Papers.

Nevertheless, if Murray’s Session Papers were indeed acquired for their historical interest, it is an interest that rarely surfaces in his historical writings. Only in one comparatively early Murray paper - York Buildings: A Chapter in Scotch History of 1883 - do Session Papers figure significantly. These were Session Papers from the Arniston and Campbell Collections in the Advocates Library rather than his own. Murray was generally careful only to cite authorities that others could reasonably access, and this may have brought about a reluctance on his part to resort to Session Papers in footnotes.

David Murray’s collection of Session Papers was not only one of the greatest ever brought together by a single individual - it was also one of the last, and one of the last also to enter a major institutional collection. It is one the Signet Library is proud to have in its care.