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The Duke's Chamberlain having pursued William Dice, schoolmaster at Selkirk, before the Commissary of Peebles, for certain sums due by him as the teinds of some lands belonging to him in and about Selkirk, payable to the Duke as titular; Dice proponed compensation upon the proportion of the salaries due to him as schoolmaster forth of the said teinds.
Which the Commissary having sustained, the Duke presented a bill of advocation on this ground, That, by law, schoolmasters' salaries do not affect teinds, as the burdens affecting teinds are known and defined in law, whereof schoolmasters' salaries are none. So, by act 5. Parl. 1. Charles I. entitled, “Ratification of the act of council anent plantation of schools,” these salaries are to be laid on the plough or husband-land, and a titular of teinds as such has neither; and by King William's act “For settling schools,” the burden of the schoolmaster's salary is laid on the heritors, that is, heritors of land in contradistinction to those who have right to teinds, who are called titulars, tacksmen, or teind-masters, but are no where called heritors. And in the same act the heritors are allowed relief from their tenants, which will never apply to titulars who have no tenants. Nor was it of any importance, that the Duke's teinds are valued in the cess-books, as the acts of convention and acts of Parliament appoint the land-tax to be levied out of titulars' teinds as well as lands.
The Lords would have remitted with an instruction to repel the defence, and it was only in respect the point merited a judgment of the Court that the bill was passed.
