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The Lords advised that tedious plea between the coble and cruive fishers upon Don, and they had found before, that this contract was of the nature of a real servitude that bound the singular successors, and was only a regulation of the modus pereipiendi fructus in-re communi, and what proportion each should have; yet, in regard there were two non-subscribers who were declared free, the Lords now found the contract thereby dissolved, and that the whole other ten subscribers were loosed and free. The Lords were equally divided, and the President's vote carried it for breaking the contract, in regard the division of the fishes seemed impracticable where two were freed as not contractors, and that it would make great confusion how the expenses should be carried on with common charge. Then it fell to be considered, if the cruive dam-dike ought to be demolished, and removed from Balgonie's mill of Keithick; but the plurality of the Lords inclined that it should not, in regard that the cruive heritors had express privileges to set them in any part of the water they pleased; and in cognoscing his damage through the alluvion and the washing away of his banks, by the force of the water occasioned by the height of their dam, the Lords modified for each acre £100 Scots, as the price of it, at £6 yearly, making it 18 years purchase, and that this should be the rate proportionally of any skaith he should sustain that way in time coming; but decerned the coble and cruive fishers to pay the bygone loss equally amongst them, but found only the cruive-men liable for what damage he should sustain in time coming, seeing the contract of society betwixt them is now dissolved, and which communication exposed the coble fishers to perpetual fines before the privy-council for the cruise heritors, their irregular fishing; whereby the Earl of Kintore, Master of Forbes, and many of the upper Barons on Don water, did pursue them, and got them deeply fined as wronging and intercepting their fishings: And the Lords farther discharged either party to make use of a stent-net as that which had been the origo mali and bone of contention betwixt them.
