Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL Subject_2 SUMMER SESSION.
Date: 29 November 1682
Sir Andrew Dick v. Robert Deans
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This was an advocation from the Commissaries of Edinburgh, where Sir Andrew pursued Mr Robert Deans for slandering him, and stealing away and murdering his good name and reputation, by calling him a belted, i. e. in one Bense, a whipped knight, for stealing some Scots records out of the Tower of London, the time of Oliver Cromwell's usurpation. Mr Robert's reasons of advocation were: 1mo, He was a member of the Session; 2do, the Commissaries had committed iniquity in sustaining process, after he had debarred Sir Andrew Dick with horning.
Answered,—The first was a declinator; and was not competent now, after be had proponed peremptors. Item, The privilege of advocates was only in civil cases, but not in slanders, where the Commissaries, as judices Christianitatis, were only competent in prima instantia privative of the Lords aye till they had pronounced sentence, by imposing a fine, and the usual censure of standing at the church door and recanting. To the second, The Commissaries did no wrong; for though they repelled Sir Andrew ab agendo, yet, ne delicta maneant impunita, they sustained process ad interesse publicum at their procurator fiscal's instance.
The Lords heard the two parties scold a while upon one another, in their own presence, for their diversion.
