The formalities requisite in ascertaining and imposing stent.
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Forbes of Culloden, and other feuers of Inverness, pursue the town for imposing unwarrantable stents, not authorised by Parliament, and that upon them who were not inhabitants, but feuers of the town-lands, for their ministers stipends, reparation of the bridge and for processes against the pursuers themselves, and that the stents were most unequal, and that they had proceeded contrary to the Lords sentence formerly pronounced, whereby they declared, that no voluntary stent should be imposed without authority of Parliament, till public intimation were made, and beating of drums, calling the whole inhabitants to show the cause of the imposition, and that it was for the good of the town; and that they might also object against the stent-masters, and that the stent-roll should remain four days in the clerk's hands, that they might see their proportion, and complain if they were unequally stented. In which process, contrary instruments were produced for the parties, for clearing the order prescribed by the Lords; to neither of which the Lords gave credit, but before answer, ordained mutual probation to be anent the manner of the laying on of these stents, and ordain the town to condescend what their town's common-good was, and how it was exhausted; but superceded to give answer to the inequality of the stent, till by this probation it might appear, whether the order prescribed by the Lords was observed by the stent; for if that was, they inclined not to consider the inequality of the stent, being by sworn stent-masters, unless a just objection had been proposed to the town in due time.
