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 Owners of the Katharine of Rotterdam v. Captain Gordon and the Officers of State
Date: 1 June 1709
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[See the Report of this Case, Dictionary 11,936. The following procedure was the consequence of it.]
The President produced a writ of subpoena served against him and the clerks, directed from a court of delegates of the Admiralty of England, in pursuance of a treaty of commerce betwixt them and the States of Holland, narrating, that the ship called the Katharine of Rotterdam was condemned by the Scots Admiralty, and then, in a reduction, by the Lords, as a lawful prize; whereof the States having complained, they now served inhibition by a certiorari against the Scots judicatories, not to raise horning, or use other execution thereon, till it be reviewed.
The Lords thought this an encroachment and invasion upon their supreme power and jurisdiction, and contrary to the nineteenth article of the Union, confirming the privileges of the Session. And, however their sentences may be cognosced by the Parliament and House of Peers, yet they owned none others above them. Some were for slighting it, as expecting no satisfactory reparation. Others thought, the Lords being guardians and keepers of the liberties and privileges of the Session, they could not pass it unnoticed: and so the generality inclined to send up a memorial to the Secretaries of State, complaining of it, that they might do their duty, whatever should be the event. This affair gave rise to sundry discourses upon the Union.
