Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION. reported by Alexander Tait, Clerk Of Session, One Of The Reporters For The Faculty.
Subject_2 POOR.

Poor Jane Gray
v.
The Heritors of Lassuden

Date: 22 January 1777

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The point again occurred in the case of Poor Jane Gray against the Heritors of Lassuden. In this case a process having been brought at the pauper's instance, against the Heritors, before the Sheriff, and they having suspended,—the Heritors, of consent, agreed, before the Ordinary, that the poor woman should have, of charity, a shilling a-week; for which the Ordinary decerned. But she having applied to the Ordinary for an enlargement of this allowance, and for expenses, the Lord Ordinary refused the application; and, upon bill and answers, the Lords adhered, 22d January 1777.

The Heritors insisted that this point behoved to come before them prima instantia, as in the case of Adamson; and that though they had agreed to the allowance of a shilling a-week, yet they would go no higher; at least if they did so, they would do it without compulsion, and that the Sheriff nor any other Judge had power to force it. The Lords were of this opinion: they thought it a matter of great delicacy, and that although, where heritors were capricious and inhumane, they might interpose and correct them, yet in ordinary cases they never would.