Definition
Lords of Regality were private individuals or institutions in Scots law to whom the Crown granted extensive rights of civil and criminal jurisdiction over a defined territory known as a regality. A lord of regality exercised, within his territory, powers nearly equivalent to those of the Crown itself — including the power to try serious criminal offenses that would otherwise fall within royal courts. The grant effectively carved out a semi-sovereign enclave from the general jurisdiction of the Crown's judges, placing the administration of justice in private hands for as long as the grant subsisted.
The jurisdiction of a lord of regality was among the most expansive forms of heritable jurisdiction recognized in Scots law, distinguished from lesser grants (such as baronies) by its scope: lords of regality could hear the "four pleas of the Crown" — typically murder, robbery, rape, and fire-raising — which in England and elsewhere were jealously reserved to the sovereign. The lord held his jurisdiction as a heritable right, meaning it passed with the land to successors unless forfeited or abolished.
Common Confusion
Lords of Regality should not be confused with Lords of Barony, who held heritable jurisdiction of a more limited character. Baronial jurisdiction did not extend to the four pleas of the Crown and was inferior in both scope and status. The regality was a higher grant, closer in analogy to a palatinate jurisdiction in English law. Researchers examining Scots legal records should take care not to treat these terms interchangeably; the nature and extent of jurisdiction differed substantially, and the distinction matters for understanding which court would have had competence over a given matter.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is historically bounded. Lords of Regality ceased to exist as a legal institution following the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746, enacted in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. The British Parliament abolished heritable jurisdictions in Scotland — including regalities — as a deliberate measure to consolidate Crown authority and dismantle the quasi-feudal power bases of Highland and Lowland magnates. Compensation was paid to affected rights-holders. Any source referencing lords of regality is therefore describing a pre-1746 institution; the term has no operative legal meaning after that date.
Researchers working in Scottish legal history, feudal land law, or the history of criminal jurisdiction will encounter this term in records from the medieval period through the early eighteenth century. It appears frequently in charters of erection (the Crown documents creating regalities), in court records of regality courts themselves, and in accounts of the 1746 abolition. Understanding the term is essential for interpreting the jurisdictional framework of pre-Union and early post-Union Scotland.
A secondary research trap: the term "regality" alone appears in both the grant documents and in geographic descriptions of the territory subject to the jurisdiction. Researchers should distinguish between references to the lord (the grantee) and references to the regality (the territory or the right itself).
The corpus connection to English law runs through the analogy to palatinate jurisdictions — the County Palatine of Durham or Lancaster, where similarly expansive jurisdictions were held by subjects — though the two systems developed independently and should not be conflated in argument or analysis.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier's are in full agreement on the core definition, and all three trace their authority to Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland — a reliable source for Scots legal terminology. The entries are brief and consistent: lords of regality were those to whom the Crown granted civil and criminal jurisdiction.
None of the three historical dictionaries provides substantive detail on the scope of the jurisdiction, the mechanism of grant, the four pleas of the Crown, or the 1746 abolition — omissions that limit their usefulness for anyone doing more than identifying the term. Rapalje & Lawrence follows its entry with a separate entry on Lords Ordainers (English, 1312), which is an unrelated institution; researchers should not conflate the two.
The brevity of these entries reflects the term's status as a Scots law specialist term with no English common law equivalent. For fuller treatment, researchers should look beyond the standard American legal dictionaries to Bell's Dictionary directly and to institutional writers on Scots law, particularly Stair and Erskine.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to Scots law and has no direct counterpart in English common law or the law of any American jurisdiction. The closest English analogy is the palatinate jurisdiction, but the two institutions developed under different legal systems and should not be equated. Post-1746, the term is purely historical in any jurisdiction.