Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION. Collected By JAMES BURNETT, LORD MONBODDO.

Tailors of Potterrow
v.
Tailors of Edinburgh

Date: 22 June 1763

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The Potterrow and Bristow is part of the barony of Inverleith, the baron of which, in the year 1594, erects the tailors of Potterrow into a corporation. In the year 1648 the town of Edinburgh purchased from the baron the superiority of the barony, and the tailors of Edinburgh took this opportunity to bring under subjection to them the tailors of Potterrow, upon pretence of the Act of Parliament, 156 anno 1592; and, in the year 1649, they persuaded a number of the tailors, indwellers of the Potterrow, to enter into contract with them, whereby they subjected their corporation to the tailors of Edinburgh, and bound themselves and their successors in office to take their admission from them, to pay admission dues, &c.; and this contract was signed upon the back by every man that was admitted into the trade, and by many of the pursuers; and, by virtue of this contract, the tailors have been admitted and the dues paid ever since. The present tailors having raised a reduction of this contract, and a declarator of their rights and privileges, the contract was unanimously reduced by the Lords, and with it a bill which had been granted for the admission-money of eight tailors; and it was found that such a contract could not be the ground even of prescription.

N. B. It was pleaded, that a corporation, by the most regular and formal act, could not give up its privileges in prejudice of its successors in office; and, to prove this, several decisions were quoted, particularly a case decided a few years ago betwixt the Weavers in Glasgow and the Weavers in Calton, in the neighbourhood of Glasgow; and likewise the case of the Barbers of Edinburgh against the Barbers of the Canongate.