Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL. Subject_2 I sat in the Outer-House this week.
The Duke of Queensberry and the Marquis of Annandale v. David Baillie
Date: 29 February 1704
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David Baillie, son to Mannerhall, being convened before the Privy Council, for alleged defaming and leasing-making on the Duke of Queensberry and Marquis of Annandale, in a letter he wrote to the Duke of Hamilton, on the 22d of December last, wherein he affirmed the said Duke and Marquis had dealt with him to accuse the Duke of Hamilton and others of corresponding with St Germains, and proffered him considerable advancements if he would: And in regard the said David could give no evidences of his slanderous information; therefore the Council, on the 24th of February last, declared him infamous, appointed him to stand on the pillory, and banished him to the West India plantations. David conceiving himself injured,—for if he had concealed it, then he might have been overtaken for misprision and not revealing, and now having discovered it, he is condemned as a defamer and calumniator, which makes his case hard,—he resolved to apply to the Parliament for reviewing and reconsidering the Council's sentence as iniquitous. And finding, that, by the 2d Act of Parliament 1695, citations, during the recess and intervals of Parliament, are to be issued out by warrant from the Lords of Session, he had prepared a bill to be given in to the Lords, for ordering a reduction to be raised, under their signet, of the Council's sentence, for citing the Duke of Queensberry, &c. to appear before the Parliament when it shall meet; but when his lawyers came to consider the clause, they thought it imported a previous cognition and trial before the summons could be granted, by which the Lords were summarily to hear and cognosce if there was ground for issuing out the summons demanded. And in regard the session was now rising, and there was no time for taking such a previous cognition, therefore the giving in of the bill was forborne.
We have several instances supra, in the cases of Mr George Campbell, Mr William Gordon of Balcomy, and others, where warrants were granted by the Lords to cite creditors, in order to giving protections in Parliament; but as to reductions of the Privy Council's decreets, there have been none as yet applied for. Sentences of the Session are tabled in Parliament by protestations for remedy of law; but neither these appeals nor reductions do stop execution; they are only devolutive, and not suspensive.
