[1584/5/74]*[print] [email] [cite] [preceding] [following]
The which day the king's majesty and his three estates of parliament, upon great and weighty considerations moving them tending to the repressing of treasonable attempts and punishment of committers of treason, and upon consideration how rigorously the same has been punished in time past, as by diverse acts and constitutions made in his own time and in the days of his most noble progenitors more largely may appear, which acts and constitutions his majesty, with advice of his said three estates, has ratified and approved and, by the tenor hereof, ratifies and approves all clauses, points and articles of the same concerning the persons standing under the sentences of forfeiture specified in the said acts, especially the act made in his highness's last parliament for disinheriting of the posterity of [William Ruthven], earl of Gowrie, and further decrees and ordains the said acts to have full execution and force against the bairns whatsoever, natural or lawful, engendered and begotten of the persons convicted and forfeited in this present parliament as culpable of art and part of the said treasonable rebellion and insurrection attempted at Stirling in the month of April 1584, and that they, nor none of them, shall be able in any time coming to possess, enjoy or claim any lands, heritages, benefices, rooms, possessions, honours, dignities or offices within this realm, howsoever or whensoever the same were conquest and provided to them before the date hereof, and that they are, and shall be, unable to succeed to others in any lands, heritages or possessions in whatsoever manner of way, and that all and sundry lands, heritages, benefices, rooms and possessions whatsoever, to the which the bairns of the said posterity presently have or may pretend right to the which they or any of them may succeed hereafter, do† and shall appertain to our said sovereign lord and his successors by full right, and that his highness may freely convey thereupon in the same manner and by all things as if the said persons presently forfeited the time they were convicted of the said crimes of treason had themselves been in title thereof, and that the benefices, if any be possessed by the said bairns of the said posterity, are presently vacant in his highness's hands by their inability, and that his highness has full right and power to convey thereupon by the same manner and condition in all respects as if the persons of the said posterity, present possessors thereof, were naturally dead.