Elizabeth I was originally dubbed 'the pirate queen' by Philip II of Spain and acknowledged as such by the pope. Extravagant, whimsical, hot-tempered, sexually enticing and the epitome of power, Elizabeth I has never ceased to amaze, entertain, and educate through the centuries. Yet very little has been written, and no books have been dedicated to, Elizabeth I for the financial magician that she was. She played the helpless woman in a man's world to great effect and beleaguered Protestant queen in a predominantly Catholic Europe, using her wiles to exploit every political and social opportunity at hand.Yet her many accomplishments would have never been possible without her daring merchants, gifted rapscallion adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and stalwart Privy Councilors like William Cecil, Francis Walsingham, and Nicholas Bacon. All these men contributed their vast genius, power, greed, and expertise to the rise of England and the foundations of the British Empire. Her foundation of empire was built on a carefully choreographed strategic plan where privateering - piracy to us today - was the expedient method she and her advisors selected to turn her rogue state into the greatest empire the world has ever seen.

The convention of the royal burghs of Scotland was a national representative assembly of parliamentary towns that was unique in Europe. It met in plenary session at least once every year by the end of the sixteenth century, as well as convening in ad hoc sessions for specific business. It had a wide range of responsibilities, including defence of the burghs' collective and individual trading privileges, lobbying central government, promoting manufactures and trade, arbitrating in disputes between burghs, apportioning national taxes among its members, co-ordinating the raising of money for public building projects within burghs, and maintaining and regulating the Scottish staple port at Veere on what was then the island of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. When much of its records were published in the nineteenth century, minutes from before the 1580s were fragmentary and a whole volume (covering the years 1631-1649) was lost. This volume goes some way to rectifying these deficiencies by making available in print, for the first time, the records of a convention at Perth in 1555, those of most of the conventions between 1631 and 1636, the minutes of a convention from 1647 and some other papers from the 1640s. They are presented here with an introduction and elucidatory notes. Alan MacDonald is senior lecturer in History at the University of Dundee; Mary Verschuur lectured in the department of History at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.