Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE, LORD HAILES.
Subject_2 GLEBE.
Subject_3 Right to the sea-ware on the shore of one.

Hugh, Lord Reay,
v.
Mr Alexander Falconer

Date: 14 November 1781

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[ Fac. Coll. IX. 2; Dict. 5151.]

Gardenston. A glebe is for furnishing grass and corn, and not for the purpose of manufacturing kelp. The kelp is not produced on the glebe, but in the sea adjacent to the glebe.

Monboddo. I have always understood that a minister's glebe was given for grass and corn, not that every thing de cælo ad centrum was given. Would the minister have had right to a mine discovered within the limits of his glebe? Had he found in it a marie pit, or a limestone quarry, he might have used it for the benefit of his glebe, but not for sale.

Braxfield. A decreet of designation of a glebe is a bounding charter: the kelp lies without those bounds, in the sea. Lord Reay, by his charters, is entitled to the universitas, and he is not denuded by the designation of a glebe. Adventitious benefits may possibly accrue to the minister in consequence of the designation.

President. Add to all this, that the manufacture of kelp was not practised till after the designation of this glebe: mines do not belong to the minister, but only a right to the surface of the ground. The application of a different rule might be fatal. If, by chance, you should design a glebe to the dip of a coal, the consequences would be to prevent the coal from being wrought.

On the 14th November 1781, “The Lords found that the minister had no right in the kelp, and decerned in the declarator;” adhering to the interlocutor of Lord Hailes.

Act. W. Honeyman. Alt. W. Robertson.