Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 PRESCRIPTION.
Subject_2 DIVISION II.

Positive Prescription of forty years.
Subject_3 SECT. II.

What Subjects may be carried by the Positive Prescription.

Magistrates of Hamilton
v.
Duke of Hamilton

Date: 4 February 1726
Case No. No 74.

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The town of Hamilton was crected into a royal burgh, by a charter from Queen Mary, 1548, giving them power to chuse their own Magistrates, &c.— This charter, as it would seem, having been neglected, the town afterwards, in the year 1670, accepted of a charter from the family of Hamilton, erecting it into a burgh of regality, with a power to the Duke of Hamilton to create Magistrates, admit burgesses, &c. as in other such burghs. In consequence of this charter, the family of Hamilton continued to exercise the privileges and powers of Lords of Regality upwards of 40 years, till a declarator of their privileges, as a royal burgh, was raised, and insisted in by the town; and they pleaded, That the privileges of a royal burgh, as being juris publici, can neither be lost by the negative or positive prescription; the Lords sustained the prescription in favour of the Duck, as to the way and manner of the election of the Magistrates and Town Council of the burgh. See Appendix.

Fol. Dic. v. 2. p. 102.