[1592/4/78]¹

Against unlawful conditions in contracts or obligations

²As it is not permissible to use and commit usury, so it is not permissible to any private man by his own invention and authority to astrict or burden any of our sovereign lord's lieges with unlawful and impossible conditions against all law, equity, reason and good form, albeit their necessity for the time constrain them to yield thereto, as where some persons give out their money upon profit, upon contracts or obligations they provide that the receivers thereof, wheresoever they dwell in the furthest parts of the realm, shall be charged to make payment only by open proclamation at the market cross of Edinburgh upon so short and sudden warning as probably and possibly it cannot come to the knowledge of the persons so charged, and that the denunciation of the horning shall be at the same market cross and the horning registered in the sheriffs' books of Edinburgh, making the same as lawful as if the persons were charged personally or at his dwelling place, and the execution of horning used at the market cross of the head burgh of the shire where the parties dwell, and the hornings registered in the sheriffs' books thereof, to the great hurt and prejudice not only of the parties so denounced, but of our sovereign lord and his lieges to whose knowledge probably the said denunciations of hornings cannot come; therefore his highness, with advice of his estates in parliament, statutes, ordains and declares that no such unlawful and impossible conditions be made in contracts or obligations amongst any of his highness's subjects in time coming; and in case any denunciations of hornings shall happen to be made at the said market cross of Edinburgh only upon charges used thereat proceeding upon the unlawful and impossible conditions above-specified, the same charges and denunciation of horning shall not be reputed lawful, but the users thereof shall be charged to cause charge and denounce of new according to the form used and observed by the common law and customs of the realm.