Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL Subject_2 SUMMER SESSION.
Sundry Barons, &c v. The Lord Lyon
1673.
June.
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About the same time, in June, 1673, I heard of a process some Barons and Gentlemen had intended against my Lord Lyon, to hear and see it found and declared that he had done wrong in refusing to give them forth their coats of arms with supporters, whereof they and their predecessors had been in possession past all memory, and never quarrelled till now; and, therefore, that he might be decerned to immatriculate them so in his register, and give them forth an extract; conform as is provided by the late act of Parliament in 1672. The Lyon's reason is, because, by an express letter of his Majesty's, none under the dignity of a Lord must use supporters. (He grants them now to some who were in possession of them of old.) But the gentlemen answer, that Lords at the beginning having been only Barons, and in regard of the considerable interest they had in their respective shires, being commissionate from the small barons and freeholders to represent them in Parliament, they, because of that credit, got first the denomination of Lords, without any patent or creation; and, upon the matter, were nothing but Barons: and so what is due to them is also due to the other, they originally not differing from the rest by any essential or superior step of dignity. So Craig, pages 78 and 79.—Replied, whatever was their rise, the other Barons have clearly acknowledged a distinction now; in so far as they have renounced their privilege of coming to Parliaments by the 113 act in 1587; and the distinction being made, and their privileges renounced, by the small Barons in the Parliament 1427. Duplied, that act is introduced in their favours, and nowise debars them; but allenarly dispenses with their absence, and the penalty they incurred thereby, &c. The Gentlemen found on the Interdictum uti possidetis: the Lyon says, it is but vetustas erroris, and an usurpation.
The complainers are the Lairds of Dundas, Halton, Polmais, &c.
