United Kingdom House of Lords Decisions

This case was connected with the preceding one, being one of the leases of the validity of which the Executors of William late Duke of Queensberry had brought a declarator. In 1787, his Grace had let to the late John Hislop, the father of the appellant, a lease for 19 years, at the previous rent of £30, and a grassum of £26. In 1797 Hislop renounced that lease, and obtained a new one for 19 years, at the same rent, and a grassum of £28; the Duke at the same time binding himself to renew the lease for 19 years, in every year of his own life, if required. On the 30th of December 1803, the lease of 1797 was renounced, and a new lease for 19 years was granted at the former rent, without any grassum. Of this lease, among others, the Duke of Buccleuch, the succeeding heir of entail, brought a reduction, on the ground, inter alia, that it was let “evidently in diminution of the rental, no regard being had to the repeated grassums that had been received by the said Duke, which being in fact additional rents during the whole periods of the previous leases, the rate of annual value of these grassums ought of course to have been added to the old rent.” The Court, on the 7th of March 1816, ^* having assoilzied from the reduction, the Duke of Buccleuch entered an appeal, and a remit was thereupon made by the House of Lords, similar to that noticed in the preceding case. The Court, on the 5th of February 1818, again assoilzied, and the Duke thereupon entered another appeal; on advising which, the House of Lords, on the 12th of July 1819, “Ordered and adjudged that the said interlocutor complained of in the said appeal be, and the same is, hereby reversed: And the Lords find that the late Duke of Queensberry had not power, by the deed of entail founded upon by the parties in this cause, to grant the tack in question in this cause, the same having been granted upon the surrender or renunciation of a

_________________ Footnote _________________

* See Fac. Coll. Vol. 1815–1819, No. 44. where it is stated, “that the Court were unanimously of opinion that the leases could not be set aside on any of the grounds of reduction.”

Page: 65↓