[1535/11]¹

Against those who sustain the process of cursing by the space of 40 days

²Item, because the damnable persuasions of heretics and their perverse doctrine give occasion to scorn the process of cursing and other censures of the Holy Kirk, for remedy hereof, our sovereign lord in this present parliament has ratified and approved and of new makes, constitutes and ordains the act made of before by his grace, with the advice of the three estates of his realm in his foresaid parliament, against those who sustain contemptuously the process of cursing with a new addition thereto, of which act and addition the tenor follows:

Item, it is statute and ordained that, because many and diverse of the king's lieges of this realm lie under the horrible sentence of cursing, separated from the suffrage and prayer of the kirk and merit of the blood of Christ, to the damnation of their souls, the evil example, peril and danger of the other good subjects of the realm, therefore, when any of our sovereign lord's lieges damnably sustain the said horrible sentence of cursing for the space of 40 days, whereupon caption ought to be given by the law, the party at whose instance the persons are cursed shall have our sovereign lord's letters to poind, seize and distrain their goods, movable and immovable, for payment of the sums for which they lie under the said sentence. And if the said persons lie under cursing by the said space for not doing or fulfilling of any act or deed, in that case the persons, their creditors, shall have letters in the first, second, third and fourth forms according to the ordinary judge's letters of cursing. And this act always to be without prejudice to those who like to take captions. And albeit that a person may be under an appeal, which may stop the giving of such letters in the manner written above, it is declared and ordained that no appeal from sentence of desertion of appeals before interposed shall stop the giving of such letters.