Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER, LORD FOUNTAINHALL.
Date: 15 June 1670
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Referente Domino Gosfuird, the Lords found a declarator of bastardy needed not to be continued, ob favorem fisci; but the pursuer behoved to take a day to prove his summons, viz. that such a person, the gift of whose bastardy he craves may be declared, was gotten on a woman who was never married to the said person's father, and this by witnesses: Notwithstanding, it was alleged, that bastardy was a negative, and so could not be proven, but proved the self; 2do, That it was impossible to prove it now by witnesses, since the bastard was sixty years old ere he died, and so no witnesses can be adduced for proving that point but such as must be past eighty.
