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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.
William Stirling v. John Macreoch
Date: 7 June 1705
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Mr William Stirling, writer to the signet, as donatar to the escheat and bastardy of one John Macreoch, a traveller-chapman, pursues a declarator of his being holden and reputed a bastard. Compearance being made for his nearest of kin, it was offered to be proven, That his father and mother cohabited together in Ireland as married persons; and that the said John was holden and reputed by all the neighbourhood their lawful son. And, in respect he was a very old man when he died, they craved a commission to Ireland; which being reported, and advised by the Lords this day, it was found proven, by many concurring witnesses, some of them a hundred years old, that the said John's father and mother were killed in the rebellion and massacre of Ireland in Kill, with all their children, except only this John, who was hid and saved in a wood from the native Irish by some neighbour, being then nine or ten years old, and afterwards came over to Scotland, and by carrying a pack gained some means; and that his father and mother were reputed, by all the country, married folk, and he also esteemed their lawful son.
The Lords found his legitimacy proven, and assoilyied from the declarator of bastardy; and finding it was both invidious and groundless to have taken out any such gift, therefore they inclined to modify large expenses to the defenders, to be paid them by this calumnious pursuer, who seems to have relied mainly on the impossibility of proving marriage in re tarn antiqua, post tanti temporis intervallum as seventy or eighty years back; and many later marriages could hardly be so well adminiculated as this was, if they came to be drawn in question.
