Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL.
Election of Collectors and Clerks for the County of Fife
Date: 27 November 1696
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The Lords decided the double elections of two collectors and clerks in the shire of Fife; the one by the Countess of Rothes's party, and the other by the Earl of Melvil's, sent down to the Lords by a remit of Privy Council. The Lords found the commissioners named by the Privy Council in 1695, not being renewed by the Act of the Cess in 1696, had no right to vote in choosing the clerk and collector; and that the Earl of Melvil and his party's separating and removing to another room in the same tolbooth was just and reasonable, and no ground of nullity of his election, he having the major part of the Commissioners; though all judicial acts should be done in loco solito et consueto; and therefore they annulled the election of Douglas of Strendry and Bayne; and declared the other election of Captain Crawford of Morquhannie, and John Orrock, legal and warrantable. It was urged, that lately the Privy Council rejected an election of a president of the College of Physicians, because it was made in a separate clandestine meeting; (but there the court was constituted before the secession, with sundry other specialties; besides, Council decisions are no practicks nor rules to the Session;) Dr Trotter's election being found more orderly and regular than Dr Stevenson's; because the Presbyterian doctors adhered to Dr Trotter, and for other state reasons.
