Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER, LORD FOUNTAINHALL.
Anent Letting of Debtors' Lands
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Where a creditor (whether he be compriser or infefter,) is in possession of the debtor's lands, and finds the same so racked that if the tenants get not an ease in the rent they pay, they will forsake the ground and leave it waste, and none will take it on those terms they had it; for his own security that he be not made countable, either by the debtor or co-creditors, for the rental the land was at when he entered, and lest it be obtruded he had not power to give the tenants any thing down of what they paid, or set the land cheaper than he found, his safest course will be to cause intimate, by the space of three sundays, at the kirk doors of four or five of the most adjacent parish churches, that he is about to set such and such lands lying in such a parish, &c. for payment of the yearly duty of, and if there be any person who will be willing to pay more than what he is to set it for to the present tenants, let them come and they shall have it. Which solemnity being done, and none appearing to offer, he may then without hazard set it as he can best agree, with the least diminution and prejudice to the heritor that he can. And this was used by Sir William Dick's creditors in the lands of North Berwick.
I think this course should be taken by all who have not plenum dominium, but may be drawn to an account, as tutors and the like; or they may crave this by a bill given in to the Session. See 27th of January, 1680, Cleilland and Laminton; item 15th February, 1681, Littlejohns.
