Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL Subject_2 SUMMER SESSION.
Anent the Lords of Session, and the Advocates
Date: 1 June 1677
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I. This day, the Lords resolved to have tafFety purple gowns for the two months of summer, their cloth ones lined with velvet being too heavy. Yet this did take no effect then. And they of themselves cannot alter the habit, since the King, by the eighth act in 1609, and Charles I. by the third act in 1633, are empowered solely to determine the habits of judges and magistrates; yet these acts seem to have been merely personal and temporal.
II. The Lords ordained the advocates to attend at nine hours the month of June, and half nine all July; which does not agree with the 49th act of the Parliament in 1537, by which three hours attendance is all can be required of the advocates. See this enlarged out of Mænagius, &c. alibi.
III. One day at a meeting for examination, the advocates convening very thin, it was inquired how many advocates went to a quorum. Sir Andrew Birny, Dean of Faculty, thought ten made a quorum, because that was the original number of the advocates at the first erection and institution of the College of Justice. But in this he failed, for the 64th act Parliament 1537, names but eight advocates; and eight is a quorum of the Session, being the major part of the fifteen Ordinaries. Yet act 57th dic to Parliamento requires ten Lords besides the President or Chancellor; but this is not observed: yea in the Saturday or in the afternoons, or when there have been four Lords at the side-bar, and one on the bench of the Outer-House, I have seen the Lords within not six, with the President. Only they pretend, that concluded causes may be advised, and deliverances on bills given, by a number under the quorum; yet I see no warrant for this, and concluded causes require a great deal of attention and skill; and the Lords present are not only written in the sederunt-books, but were always inserted in the beginning of all decreets, even for some years after the King's Restoration in 1661, (though now disused I know not why,) that it may appear how many were present at the pronouncing the decreet. Yet I know not how the Lords would take it, if one of their sentences were offered to be reduced upon that reason, that it can be proven there were not a quorum of the Lords at the advising it, whether it be an interlocutory point or definitive. Vide 3d June, 1679.
