Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL Subject_2 SUMMER SESSION.
William Livingston v. Betty Whiteford
Date: 1 March 1684
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There is a letter from the King, procured by Mr William Livingston, brother to the Viscount of Kilsyth, to the Lords of Session, desiring them to forbear the deciding of that advocation raised by him against Mrs Betty Whiteford, daughter to umquhile Sir John Whiteford of Milntown, from the Commissaries of Edinburgh, of a process of adherence; and for declaring that he had owned her for his lawful wife, (for she had borne him a child,) and to lay it over till the 1st November; in regard he was at London sick and unable to attend it: and the King had caused his own physicians visit him, and they had attested and declared that he could not travel at this season, without hazard of his life: so it was no simulated sickness. Yet some can procure a fever to themselves for an hour or two.
This letter being intimated to her advocates, they objected that this was a private writing, not to be regarded by the 92d Act of Parliament 1679 and the 47th Act 1587; and was mali exempli, to stop justice, especially against her who was seeking to have the stain lying on her honour cleared, by proving that he owned her as his wife when she was in child-bed. Some did contend, that, by the 18th Act of Parl. 1681, anent the King's cumulative jurisdiction, he might stop any process depending before the Lords. But that was not meant by the Parliament, at the making of that Act.
