[1585/12/19]*[print] [email] [cite] [preceding] [following]
†Forasmuch as there was an act made in the last parliament held at Edinburgh in August 1584 concerning decreets given upon double poindings and hornings, the one part being lawfully summoned compears not in that instant and thereafter desires to be heard by way of reduction, they shall not be heard to retreat and reduce the said decreet, nor yet shall be restored again to the same, neither yet have any action for the bygone profits intromitted with by the obtainer of the decreet, as at more length is contained in the said act, which act is not only extended to all such questions as may occur hereafter, but also in all such matters of the like sort bygone, intended or to be intended, depending and undecided, before the lords of session and other judges ordinary, to a great hurt and prejudice of a great number of our sovereign's subjects, secluding them from their actions of reductions of decreets, of double poindings and hornings and from the profits resulting thereupon already intended and depending long before the making of the said act, who, of law and equity, ought not to be restricted to observe any statutes or ordinances before the making of the same, seeing laws should be extended in the future and not to the past; therefore our sovereign lord, with advice of the three estates of his present parliament, decrees and declares the aforesaid act of parliament only to be extended to the reduction of decreets, of double poindings and hornings as have, or shall be, obtained since the making of the same, and not to such as were intended and depending long of before; and that in respect our sovereign lord's subjects could not observe the said act before the making hereof; and ordains letters to be directed hereupon in the appropriate form.