Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On social reforms needed in Scotland / by David Milne Home. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![represent the said matter to his Majesty, that he may be duly in- formed anent tlie foresaid person found guilty or contumacious as said is, as a jyerson not Jit to be emjjloyed or continued in any place of public trust, civil or military. The forfeiture of royal favour, and exclusion from all public offices, was not the only consequence of excommunication by the church courts. By older statutes, excommunicated persons were not sufiered to draw the rents of their lands, these being escheated to the Crown. They were denounced as rebels, and put to the horn. Of course, they were also debarred from church privileges. The statutes annexing civil penalties and forfeitures of pro- perty to sentences of excommunication were abrogated (Act 1690, caix 28). But there was no repeal, I think, of the Act 1701, or of the older Act passed in 1661, which aj)points justices of peace to direct their constables to apprehend any person who shall be found contemptuously to have disobeyed the censures of the church, they being lawfully required to do the same. I have said that these laws passed by the old Scottish Par- liaments were no dead letter. The men who had the wisdom to frame them took care also to ensure their observance. Ac- cordingly, the records of both our criminal and our church courts, from the year 1600 downwards, are replete with accounts of the prosecutions of persons of all degrees, for the various offences against morality, decency, and religion to which I have been adverting. Extracts from some of the church court registers will be found in the Appendix.^ Now, any one who reads the laws to which I have adverted, and looks into the proceedings of the courts, must be satisfied of the immense influence, legal, social, and ecclesiastical, which two centuries ago prevailed in Scotland on the side of public morality. It was not merely that the penalties affixed by law were severe, and that the persons authorized and appointed to carry them into execution were numerous, but that these per- sons were men of ]30sition and influence in the country, and were armed with both temporal and spiritual power. When we look into the memoirs of the times, to ascertain the social and moral condition of the Scottish people, we see ^ Appendix F, p. 104.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21952486_0028.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
