Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL. Subject_2 This week I sat in the Outer-House, and so the observes are the fewer.
William Stirling, Petitioner
1699.
February.
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Mr William Stirling, writer to the signet, in a petition presented to the Lords, addressed them thus:—” To my Lord Chancellor, and the Lords Extra ordinary and Ordinary.” This was noticed by the Lords as an alteration and inversion of the style observed ever since the institution of the College of Justice; and so much the more that it happened in a writer; and the reason why our law and custom has ranked the Extraordinaries (though commonly taken from the nobility,) after the Ordinaries, is, because the Ordinary Lords only make the body of the Court of Judicatory; so that nine of them can proceed without any of the Extraordinary. But, though the Chancellor and all the four Extraordinary were present, with eight Ordinary Lords, they can do nothing, though thirteen in number; because they go not to the making up of the quorum. Nor are they essential to the Court; but accidens a subjecto separabile, and at first designed to breed up some of the Peers in the knowledge of our municipal laws; and so, being only an accessory in this case, the rank due to them by their birth or patents, of creation, is not here considered.
Mr William, finding his mistake, and borrowing up his bill and cancelling it, gave in a new one, reformed conform to the perpetual style used in these cases.
