Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT.

Elections of Nairn - Brodie
v.
Brodie, &c

1747, June 12.
Case No. No. 46.

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At an election that happened in 1735, in the shire of Nairn, there was a secession of the minority of the heritors, who went to the Sheriff's house, and made an election by themselves, and made a roll of the freeholders, which they ordered to be recorded, leaving out several that were on the other side, and who had voted at former elections, and the Sheriff being on their side, the person chosen by them, viz. Lethem, was returned, and their roll recorded. From that time, there was neither Michaelmas court nor election in Nairn, till the Michaelmas court 1743, after the act 16th Geo. II. regulating these enrolments. There was a petition lodged in Parliament against Lethem's election, but it was allowed to drop, and Lethem sat the whole Parliament. At Michaelmas 1743, Brodie of Spynie, and others, who had been left out of the roll 1735, but had been before enrolled, and never regularly turned out, craved to be admitted to the roll, and it was objected that they could not, in respect they had not produced any titles in the clerk's hands two months before, as the act 16th Geo. directs. However, it carried to enrol them; and Lethem complained to us in November 1743, as he also did of the qualifications of some of them. And this day we found only those who were in the election roll 1735, were constituent members of the Michaelmas meeting 1743, and that therefore the persons complained of could not agreeably to the act be added, without producing their titles as that act directs. Renit. multum Arniston, Tinwald, &c. who insisted that the roll 1735 was not a roll made up at an election, though in the minutes it was expressed in the usual form, because of the secession, and that it was made only from memory.