Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION reported by SIR ROBERT SPOTISWOODE OF PENTLAND.
Subject_2 Such of the following Decision as are of a Date prior to about the year 1620, must have been taken by Spotiswoode from some of the more early Reporters. The Cases which immediately follow have no Date affixed to them by Spotiswoode.

Robert Keith
v.
William Murray

Date: 9 March 1636

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Robert Keith, merchant in Edinburgh, charged William Murray in Longherdmeston to infeft him in certain lands holding of him by James Whitehead, from whom the charger had comprised the same. He suspended upon this reason, That he was content to enter him, he paying a year's duty to the suspender. Answered for the charger, That the compriser should not be prejudged of brooking the lands comprised, by the said James Whitehead's being year and day at the horn: For, if the superior should possess himself of the rebel's lands, as having right to his liferent by virtue of his rebellion, and so seclude the compriser from the said lands during the rebel's lifetime, it were against all equity and reason, that the superior should both brook the lands and get a year's rent of the same compriser; but at least the payment of the year's rent should be suspended till the decease of the rebel. Replied, The superior cannot be obliged to receive a vassal, except he pay him a year's rent, conform to the Act of Parliament; neither ought he to renounce any right competent to him upon any other ground. But, if the compriser will force him to enter him, it must be with reservation of any right the superior hath acquired, either by liferent or otherwise. Many of the Lords were of opinion, that, if the superior had been in possession of his vassal's lands, by virtue of his liferent falling to him, it had been a hard thing to make the compriser pay a year's duty, and be debarred in the meantime, by the superior himself, from the possession of the lands. But, in respect this was not alleged, save only that the superior might hereafter exclude the charger from the lands, if it were not here declared, that he should not do it;—they thought it not reasonable to compel the superior to make any such declaration.

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