The Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) Glossary defines archaic words and phrases, mostly Scots law terminology, commonly found in documents and records in Scotland's archives. If you think a word or phrase should be added to the glossary, or an existing entry could be defined better, please contact us. Since the SCAN project ended, the Dictionary of the Scots Language has gone online at http://www.dsl.ac.uk/, and this should be consulted for Scots words and phrases (including legal terms).
a lease; in Scotland it had to be a formal
written contract between landlord and tenant
laying down the period of the lease and the
payments to be made for it
the Scottish equivalent of the English tithes,
they were the tenth part of the annual produce
of a united of land, which was payable to the
Church, though "vicarage teinds",
the lesser teinds due from a parish and paid
in kind, were due not by law, but by custom.
The Teind Court grew out of the fact that, after
the Reformation, a great deal of the property
of the medieval church fell into the hands of
laymen so that the ministers of the reformed
church were rarely adequately provided for;
in 1617 a committee of Parliament called the
Commissioners of Teinds was appointed to settle
suitable stipends for ministers and after 1707
its powers passed to the judges of the Court
of Session who formed the Teind Court, with
power to decide on such matters as the valuation
and sales of teinds, the augmentation of stipends
and the building of new churches, which had
the advantage that the authority of the Court
of Session could be annexed to their decisions
one who holds lands (generally for a fixed
term) by a lease or tack
tenement
in legal terms, a landholding, usually (but not always) a piece of land which is build upon. A more modern, architectural meaning of 'tenement' is a type of domestic building, divided into separate dwellings (flats), each of which is separately rented or owned. This type of building became very common in industrial towns of Scotland in the late nineteenth century.
a widow's legal entitlement to a
liferent of one-third of her husband's heritable
property, (her entitlement in respect of his
moveable property being the jus relictae).
If a special, alternative provision had
been made for her in her marriage contract (the
jointure), she would, after 1681, have lost
her right to a terce, unless it had been specified
in the contract that she should have that as
well.
terms
when rents and feu-duties fell due to be paid,
usually half at Pentecost or Whitsun, and half
at Martinmas or "the feast of St Martin
in winter" (11 November)
a written deed appointing an executor to adminster
a person's moveable property after his death.
That is all it has to do; it needn't contain
any bequests or instructions on disposal of
the property, and the two possible types depended
on how the executor has been appointed.
If this is done by the person making the testament
during his life-time, it is called a testament
testamentar, if the person died without
making a testament the Commissary
Court would appoint the executor, and the
deed by which this was done was a testament
dative. One of the deceased's
creditors could be appointed as his executor,
so that he could recover the debt due him, and
he was called an "executor creditor"
or "qua creditor". Testaments
were not really wills; they had no bearing on
the disposal or administration of any heritable
property the deceased might have had, and
for that reason they were gradually replaced
by the trust disposition and settlement
or "thirds of benefices".
When the property of the medieval Church was
available to acquisitive laymen after the Reformation,
the king took over one-third of the revenues
of all church benefices to make sure that something
would still be left for the ministers of the
reformed church ; appropriate parts of these
revenues were assigned to the ministers, and
any surplus was retained by the Crown.
This was not really sufficient, which is why
the Teind Court came into
being.
really another name for astriction;
it was the servitude whereby the proprietors
and tenants of lands were bound to take their
grain to one particular mill only for grinding,
for which they would have to pay multures
and sequels;
the lands they held which were bound to the
mill, were the mill's sucken, and those bound
to use the mill were termed its "in-sucken
multurers".
threav, threave, thrave
measure of cut grain, straw, reeds or other
thatching material, consisting of two stooks,
usually with twelve sheaves each but varying
locally
tinsel of the feu
the name for forfeiture of landed property
caused no just by failure to pay feu-duty or
render service to the superior, but by the commission
of penal offence
a deed enabling someone to dispose of their
whole property, both heritable and moveable,
for example, in the event of death; it replace
the testament which could effect the disposal
of moveables only
a person who is legal representative, guardian
or adminstrator of the estate of a pupil, a
child under 12 if female or 14 if male. (Older
children who were still under 21 were minors,
and had curators instead of tutors to do these
things for them).
