Manuscripta juridica

Decisiones curiae supremae Scotiae - Practicks 1540-1549 .

Fol. 1-10 are lost. Fol. 11r (= the first extant sheet) is blackened by dust. I thus assume that it lay open without a front cover for a long time, and maybe even until the volume was rebound in the 19th century.

Item numbers in the present MS ascend to 411 because lines taken from the provisional edition's items 503-509 are repeated at the end of the text and are given the numbers '410' and '411' (see below). All items bear headings. In addition, abstracts have been added to most of them, in the outer margin. Their colour of ink shows that they were not written together with the main text, but the character of handwriting still resembles the one of the main text. The scribe shortened the text, leaving out much reasoning and many quotations. For instance the provisional edition's item 507 is heavily shortened here. Furthermore, some of the original's text-passages in Latin are found in the present MS in a translation into vernacular.

The text is heavily anglicised, but it obviously derives from an ancestor MS with original Scots spelling, because at times the text lapses into Scots, and this happens ever more often towards the end. Whoever may have done the anglicising, he grew ever more tired and careless in this task as his work progressed.

At the end of the text, an obvious error of copying suggests that in the ancestor MS a part of the beginning of item 505 was only added on the lower margin of the last page, and was therefore marked with the words '{i}Haec inmediate supra{/i}' = 'These lines belong to the text immediately above'. The scribes of Adv.MS.24.1.11 and of the present MS did not pay due attention. They had actually inserted the text in question at the correct place in item 505, but when they then reached the final end of the text they nevertheless wrote the lines in question a second time, appending them to the correct end of Sinclair's text. And therefore the text of the present MS ends with a surprising appendix - see below.

[{i}First extant item:{/i}] authoritatem disponendi de rebus [{i}= middle of item nr. 114 = nr. 122 in the provisional edition = 1542/2/11{/i}].

[{i}Last words, erroneous, see the explanation above:{/i}] 411 Decreit of non-entres necessair or the king ratione non-introitus put his hand to the lands. But or the king put his hand to the lands, ratione non-introitus, he most first get the land decernit be decreit of the Lords of Sessione to be in non-entres.

Sed ad rem revertatur. The donatour wold not suffer the said Robert to bruik the (... ...) quhilk he pleast them finallie. He did the same. And sua be the donatours of the wards richt he bruikit the land, and not be vertew of his taks forsaid, and dureing the forsaid 18 ye(a)rs. The forsaid Robert in 1549 obtainit ane decreit of the Lords. Haec inmediate supra.

Finis coronat opus. Finis

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Author(s):

• John Sinclair later Bishop of Brechin

No. of pages: Fol. 11r-59r