Scottish Court of Session Decisions

At a meeting of the heritors and the agents of the heritors of the Barony Parish of Glasgow, held on the 27th February 1866, for the purpose of naming a person to be suggested to the Lord Ordinary as common agent for conducting the locality of the stipend of the ministers of the first and second charges of the Barony Parish of Glasgow, Mr W. B. Hay, S.S.C., and Mr James M'Knight, W.S., were respectively moved and seconded. A vote having been taken, “the meeting, in consequence of the state and magnitude of the rental, agreed to remit to Mr Logan, the teind clerk, to ascertain which of the two candidates has the majority of votes in the rental, and they further agreed to recommend the said agent to the Lord Ordinary as common agent to conduct the locality.” Mr Logan reported to the Lord Ordinary that the rental of the heritors who voted for Mr Hay was £103,814, 11s. 10 3 4d., and the rental of those who voted for Mr M'Knight was £44,081, 16s. 10d. He therefore came to the conclusion that Mr Hay had a majority of votes over Mr M'Knight of £59,732, 15s. of rental.

Mr Logan further reported as follows:—“It has been pressed upon the clerk that in scrutinising the votes he should have only regarded the teindable rental, and had the general rental been adjusted before the heritors were held as confessed, in the manner Mr Stirling Crawford adjusted his separate rental, this position would have been quite correct, but as the general body of the heritors allowed a prepared state and scheme of the rental to be reported by the Lord Ordinary to the Court, whereon the augmentation was pleaded and granted, and whereon an interim locality of the stipend must be prepared, it is too late to urge the teindable rental as the rule of voting for common agent. Moreover, this question has already been settled not only by express decision but by constant practice since a competition arose in 1821 in the augmentation of the stipend of the parish of St Cuthberts for the common agency, and after minutes of debate, the Court of Teinds pronounced this interlocutor:—

“‘ Edinburgh, 7th March 1821.—The Lords having advised the minute for John Ramsay, and the other minute for John Murray, Find that the proven rental whereupon the augmentation proceeded should regulate the election, and remit to Lord Meadowbank to approve of Mr Ramsay's nomination as common agent, and to do otherwise in the locality as he may think proper, and to report.

(Signed) C. Hope, I.P.D.’