In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholarship on the Scottish parliament was heavily informed by a narrative of ‘failure’, directed at explaining why its members voted it out of existence in 1707. Part of the problem was the tendency to see any deviation from the practices of the Westminster parliament as weakness. By reappraising parliament in terms of its utility to those who comprised its membership, notably the titled peerage and the monarch, historians have revealed its adaptability and inventiveness, especially in times of crisis. This essay considers how fresh approaches both to what constituted the parliamentary record and what can – and cannot – be found within it have exerted a transformative influence on our understanding of parliament's evolving role in Scottish political life. Although the Reformation crisis of 1560 and the accession of the ruling house of Stewart to the English throne in 1603 effected profound changes on parliamentary culture, this essay emphasises how parliament sustained its legitimacy and relevance, in part, by drawing on past practices and ideas. Historians have become more attentive in recent years to the means by which social groupings ordinarily excluded from formal parliamentary activity were nonetheless able to engage with, and influence, its proceedings. Gaps remain in our knowledge, however. Some periods have been more intensively studied than others, while certain aspects of parliamentary culture are understudied. The writing of Scottish parliamentary history will continue to offer rich possibilities in future.

中文翻译：

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撰写苏格兰国会历史，约1500年至1707年

在19世纪和20世纪，有关“失败”的叙述在很大程度上为苏格兰议会提供了奖学金，该叙述旨在解释其成员为何在1707年将其投票反对存在。威斯敏斯特议会的做法很薄弱。通过对议会的效用进行重新评估，使之成为组成其成员的人民，特别是有名的贵族和君主，历史学家揭示了议会的适应性和创造力，特别是在危机时期。本文考虑了如何对构成议会记录的内容以及其中可以找到和不能找到的东西采取新方法，这对我们对议会在苏格兰政治生活中不断演变的作用的理解产生了变革性的影响。尽管1560年的改革危机和1603年斯图尔特统治时期的加入使英国议会文化发生了深刻变化，但本文还是强调了议会如何通过借鉴过去的做法和思想来维持其合法性和相关性。近年来，历史学家对通常被排除在正式议会活动之外的社会团体仍能够参与并影响其程序的方式变得更加专心。但是，差距仍然存在。有些时期比其他时期更深入地研究了，而对议会文化的某些方面却没有进行充分的研究。苏格兰议会历史的写作将在未来继续提供丰富的可能性。