Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 PRIVILEGE.

Young, Constable,
v.
Brigadier Moyl

1736, Feb. 5.
Case No. No. 1.

Click here to view a pdf copy of this documet : PDF Copy

The Lords adhered to the Ordinary's interlocutor, repelling the declinatory defence, that the Officers of State and inhabitants of Calton were not called, but remitted to the Ordinary to hear the petitioner in causa, me et quibusdam aliis renitentibus, who thought that this not being a complaint for any particular rout or quartering, but a general declarator of the pursuer's exemption from quartering, the Officers of State ought to be called,—22d July 1785.

The Lords seemed generally of opinion, that the act confining quartering of soldiers to burghs royal or regality, or market towns, included suburbs as well as burghs properly so called, and therefore would include Calton, Potterrow, Portsburgh, &c. But the question was, If Abbeyhill was to be deemed a suburb, at least of Canongate? Some thought that that was in the property of private persons, and not of the burgh, and could not be called suburbs (of this opinion was Dun,) but then none of the above places would have been suburbs till they were purchased of the town of Edinburgh. Others thought it no suburb because of the distance, which the law has not defined, and is arbitrary; and it carried that soldiers could not be quartered in Abbeyhill, renit. Royston, Justice-Clerk, me, et aliis,—5th February 1736.

The like question was stirred (10th February 1744) as we determined 5th February 1736, with respect to the Abbeyhill's being free from local quartering of soldiers; and because of the Calton's contiguity to Canongate and Edinburgh, we unanimously found the Calton not exeemed, and assoilzied from that part of the declarator. 7th June 1745, Adhered.