86 Earty SuerirF Court Book or DuMmFRIEs. 
but on several occasions spread over a period of six months, 
and that several of the cases heard before it did not arise at 
the instance of persons or in regard to matters belonging to 
that place or the surrounding district, but were concerned 
with questions connected with lands in Annandale and persons 
resident there. There was, so far as I have been able to dis- 
cover, no public event such as a visitation of the plague or the 
occurrence of an English incursion to account for the change 
of venue. At the same time it is not to be forgotten that many 
cases and many jurors came from Glencairn and other parishes 
in the neighbourhood of Penpont, and that the Sheriff-Depute, 
who frequently acted in disposing of the business of the court, 
held the lands of Bellibocht in Glencairn, and may have resided 
in that parish. 
In order to make the contents of our Sheriff Court 
Book intelligible, we propose to give a short account of civil 
procedure in the Scots Sheriff Courts in the early sixteenth 
century, so far as that procedure is referred to in cases which 
the book contains. It is to be kept in view that the authorities 
upon which we rely are concerned with the practice of the 
Baron Courts rather than with that of the Sheriff Courts. But 
as the Sheriff Court was truly the King’s Baron Court,® what 
holds true of the regulations of the Baron Court may be 
regarded as applicable, at least in great measure, to the early 
Sheriff Court. 
As early as the reign of David I. Scotland was divided 
into sheriffdoms, and the Sheriff acted as the King’s minister 
in the execution of Crown writs and in the conduct of legal 
proceedings, civil and criminal. The Sheriff’s was thus a 
delegated jurisdiction, and the Sheriff’s Court was the King’s 
Court. It was, as we have seen, the King’s Baron Court, at 
the head courts of which all freeholders were bound to attend. 
Those who were bound by the terms of their infeftments to 
give suit—i.e., attendance at the King’s Court—only might 
appear by their suitors or proxies; while those who were 
bound to give suit and presence were required to attend in 
5 See my article ‘‘ The Suitors of the Sheriff Court,’ The Scot. 
Hist. Review, xiv., 2; Erskine, Inst., i., 4, 2. 
New 
