Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... enforced though it was by a decree of the Court of Session; and it required another rebellion, followed by prosecutions for treason in which the plea of constraint was frequently tendered, and sometimes accepted, on behalf of the accused,1 to bring home to Parliament --under some misapprehension, it is true--the necessity of sweeping away the whole system by which coercive powers could be exercised by individuals to the detriment of the public peace. This was accomplished by two statutes, the first of which transferred to the Crown the jurisdictions incident to feudalism which in England had been reduced to insignificance by the Great Charter of 1215, and the second put an end to the holding of land in ward, or, in other words, on condition of military service, which, under the designation of knight service, had been abolished in England by a resolution of the Long Parliament in 1645, and by statute at the Restoration. In return for a pecuniary equivalent, to be fixed by the Court of Session,2 the office of sheriff was taken away from all who held it in hereditary right, and its judicial functions, the exercise of which had been delegated, more or less, to a sheriff-depute, were assigned to the latter, who in future was to be appointed by the Crown, and was to receive a fixed salary, instead of making what he could out of fines and fees. With some slight exceptions, and the same claim to compensation, the jurisdiction 1A Captain Forbes was acquitted on the ground "that he was forced from his family and frequently, while at Carlisle, attempted to escape over the walls in women's clothes, but was prevented by the guard." --History of the Rebellion from the Scots Magazine, p. 341. There were other cases of this kind. 9 A volume in the...
