Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL Subject_2 SUMMER SESSION. 1683.
George Seton of Barns v. The Lady Bearford, &c
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February 7.—Sir Arthur Forbes, Viscount Granard, Lady Margaret Hay, and the Lady Bearford, gave in a bill against George Seton of Barns, complaining he had vitiated a principal agreement, or decreet-arbitral, passed betwixt his father and him in 1658, by making eighteen hundred sixteen hundred, and his estate this estate, and adding the word rents, which corrupted the sense.
Answered,—They were not vitiations, but amendments, inserted in it at the very beginning by the arbiters.
The Lords, having considered the bill and answers, recommend to my Lord Register and Redfoord to hear the parties anent the vitiation of the said decreet-arbitral, and upon the haill points controverted; and, for that effect, grant warrant to the Commissary-clerk of Edinburgh to exhibit and produce the principal decreet-arbitral in question; and to the Clerks of Session, and Keepers of the registers and records, to exhibit and produce, before the said Lords, any grounds or warrants, and books, that can clear the whole matter. And ordain the Lords to make report. Vide 13th March 1683.
Vol. I. Page 216.
March 13.—George Seton of Barns, in the affair between him and the Lady Bearford, &c. (mentioned 7th Feb. 1683,) on a bill gets a deliverance and warrant to examine the Commissary-clerk and his servants on the said minute and its extracts; as also a commission to examine Mr Robert Hodge, the arbiter, and writer of it, &c.—Vide 30th current.
Vol. I. Page 225.
March 30.—The Viscount Granard, Lady Logie, and Lady Bearford, against George Seaton of Barns, (mentioned 13th current,) being advised; the Lords found, by the writs produced, the deposition of Mr Robert Hodge of West-gladsmuir, the arbiter, and writer of the minute of the decreet-arbitral, and the Commissaries their clerks and servants, and particularly by the oaths of Home and Sandy, that the said decreet at the beginning has borne his estate, and is since made this estate, by adding the letter T to his in two places of it, where Sir John Seaton, his father, is empowered to dispose upon the rest of his estate; and that it has no other vitiation in it; and that it appears that Barns, neither by himself nor others, had any accession thereto.
Barns, in this process, to blunt Lady Margaret Hay his stepmother's process, by the popish priests, agreed with her. Yet the enemies he left behind prevailed thus far, as we have seen; which they sought to counterbalance and enervate Barns's suit he had commenced in Ireland, for some lands there belonging to his father, where they made use of the foresaid decreet-arbitral as a renunciation of all he had to crave, save the lands of Barns.
