This week’s poser is taken from the court book of Cunninghame bailliary court (National Archives of Scotland, RH11/19/1 page 65) and continues the case from last week’s poser. The case was brought by a carpenter in Irvine, who took two of his clients to court in 1634 over an unpaid debt. The pursuer in the case (Robert Boyd, carpenter in Irvine) had built a ship (a barque) for the defenders (Robert Brown and John Chalmers in Saltcoats) but the defenders had withheld part of the payment (a bonus on completion).

The writing is small but fairly neat. If you are familiar with secretary hand and the jargon of court proceedings, you should have few difficulties. There are two Latin legal terms in the text.

This week’s questions: what was the reason given by the defenders for withholding full payment and what did the judge decide?

Help
For help with reading this poser, the best place to start is with two of our tutorials. The 1-hour basic tutorial introduces you to secretary hand letters and the Glasgow burgh court tutorial covers the legal jargon of court proceedings.


Answer