Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION. collected by JAMES BURNETT, LORD MONBODDO.

Andrew Steuart
v.
The Freeholders of Lanarkshire

Date: 25 November 1755

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[Kaimes, No. 110.]

The question here was, Whether the office of coroner and Serjeant, with its perquisites and emoluments, of the bailiary of the regality of Kilbride, retoured to forty shillings of old extent in the 1649, gave a title to vote?

The Lords were of opinion, that though the regality was taken away by act of Parliament, yet the office of coroner and serjeant within that territory still remained, and that the coroner and serjeant might still officiate, as officers to the jurisdiction still in being, such as the sheriff and justiciary. They were also of opinion, that, as there were certain rents still paid in corn out of certain lands to this office, that was possession sufficient, though there was no exercise of the office. The general question, whether such a subject entitled to vote, they did not determine, though several of the Lords gave their opinion,—some that it did not, as Kaimes and Prestongrange; others that it did, as the President; but they rejected the vote upon this ground, that a part of the casualties of this office, particularly the serjeant corn, as it was called, appeared to them to have been given away from the office since the 1649; and as they thought the office, with its whole casualties, was extended to forty shillings, they did not think that the claimant was in the possession of all the subject which made the forty shillings of old extent. See the papers on the subject, which are very learned.