How documents were created

Learning to read and write
How parchment and vellum were made
Pens and ink
Latin
Seals

Learning to read and write
Monks and scribes produced the earliest documents, religious books and manuscripts. The early kings of Scotland recognized the church as the centre of learning and appointed their personal chaplains to run the administration of the government on behalf of the Crown.

The church trained secular scribes or clerks to read and write and from the late 12th century, clerks took over responsibility as official scribes which allowed the chaplains to return to their spiritual duties in the royal household.

A century later, notaries public [lawyers] grew in importance as they were required by law to record and authorise legal transactions. They copied down all the details in their own registers or protocol books, many of which survive today.

How parchment and vellum were made
Early documents were produced on parchment or vellum. Parchment came from the skin of sheep or goats, and vellum, a finer type of parchment, came from the skins of calves, kids or lambs. The skins were very hardwearing but took a long time to prepare.

Stage 1 - Cleaning and preparing the skins The animal skins were first washed in cold water for 24 hours and then soaked in a solution of lime and water for 3-10 days to get rid of the hair. The skins were then scraped to remove the loosened hair on one side and any residue of flesh on the other. They were rinsed for two more days in fresh water to get rid of the lime. The flesh side of the skin became smooth and white. The grain side of the parchment, where the hair once was, was usually darker in colour - creamy or yellow for sheep skin or brownish grey for goat skin. The more suede-like the grain surface, the better the quality of vellum.

Stage 2 - Turning the skin into parchment The cleaned skin was attached to a wooden frame by strings and pegs to prevent the edges from tearing. The skin was ready to be stretched and dried. As it dried, it was scraped and shaved again, paring off layers one by one to the required thickness. The pegs were then removed to release thin, opaque layers of parchment that were rolled up and stored until they were sold or used for writing. Stage 3 - Final preparation The parchment was finally cut to sheet size, folded and sometimes ruled ready for the scribe to begin his work.

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Pens and Ink

Pens
Medieval clerics and clerks used reed or quill pens to write with. Feathers were removed from a variety of birds - goose, crow or raven - and left for months to dry leaving a tough and almost transparent tube. The tip was pared away on either side, then a slit was cut up the centre of the nib and finally, the tip was given a clean square cut across the top to make it ready for use.

Inks
Early pens were dip-pens that required pots of ink. Over the centuries there have been many different recipes for making ink. The most commonly used inks in medieval times were black and red.

Recipes for black ink

• Iron gall ink was made from mixing a solution of tannic acids with ferrous sulphate and gum. It soaked well into the parchment giving a shinier more translucent finish. It was used until Victorian times when new ink recipes replaced it.
• Carbon ink was made from charcoal or lamp-black mixed with gum. It was grittier and blacker than iron gall ink and faded more easily.

Recipes for red ink

• vermillion (mercuric sulphide) was ground up and mixed with egg white and gum arabic
• brazil woodchips were infused with vinegar or urine mixed with gum arabic.

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Latin
Latin was the language of the church, literature and learning. It was also the formal and official language of government and the law. All charters issued by the crown were written in Latin until 1847 when the Crown Charters Act allowed the use of English. Scots or English was introduced in private charters from the 14th century.

Seals
The study of seals is called sigillography. In medieval Scotland seals were used mainly by kings, clergy, landowners and merchants as their form of official signature on a document. A seal was the personal property of the user. Each design was unique to its owner, was difficult to forge and provided physical proof that a document was legal and genuine.

Designs on seals include monarchs seated on thrones, bishops surrounded by saints, castles, ships or coats of arms. The earliest surviving seal of a king of Scotland is that of Duncan II, 1093-94, who is shown sitting on a horse.

After the death of Alexander III, six Guardians governed Scotland until a new monarch took the throne. A seal was produced to mark their authority but as there was no reigning king or queen, a representation of the monarch could not be used. An image of Saint Andrew on his saltire cross with the inscription Saint Andrew be leader of the compatriot Scots was used instead.

The design for a seal was usually carved in lead, and is called a matrix. More elaborate matrices were sometimes engraved in ivory, jet or soapstone. A wax impression of the seal was made from the matrix. The wax was warmed to soften it and then pressed carefully into the engraved design. The back of the wax was then moulded to shape. If a two-sided seal was made, each matrix was smoothed down so that the two sides of the seal matched exactly and could be pressed together either by hand or by a seal-press.

Seals were generally impressed in beeswax to which some resin was added to make it stronger. Early wax seals were uncoloured but later, verdigris [the green coating that formed in the atmosphere on copper, brass or bronze] was added to make green wax and vermilion [a pigment dye] to make red. Some seals on charters issued by the royal chancery in Scotland were also varnished.

There were three ways to attach a seal to a document

• suspend it from the bottom of the document. Holes or slits were cut at the bottom of the document through which a cord or strip of parchment called a tag was threaded with the seal attached to the end.

• attach the seal to a strip of parchment called a tongue that was cut away from the bottom of the document and left to hang.

• the wax seal was fixed to the document itself.

Find out how the Lübeck Letter, Ayr Manuscript and Declaration of Arbroath survived until the present day.

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