Baronies in Scotland

“The most authoritative account of the formation and functions of Baronies in Scotland is to be found in the late Professor Croft William Dickinson’s introduction to the Scottish History Society publication The Court Book of the Barony of Carnwath (1937).”

“The origin of the Baronage of Scotland can be traced to the 12th century, and at the present time there is significant legislation regarding the Barony being considered by the Scottish Parliament. ”

“The legislation I have mentioned is The Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Bill.

This legislation is going to transform completely the way in which land is held in Scotland”

Barons in Parliament

The Barons of Scotland continued to have the right to sit in the Scottish Parliament until 1694 .

It is the case that in respect of the right to sit in Parliament such Barons were entitled to hereditary supporters in their armorial bearings.

The right to such supporters was indivisible and descended with the caput of the barony. It is open to any person at the present time who can establish that he is the representative of a Baron who had the right to sit in the Scottish Parliament prior to 1594 to petition for a grant of supporters. Nowadays this happens very rarely.

By the Heritable Jurisdictions Act 1747 the powers of life and death were removed from the BAron Court and indeed the criminal jurisdiction was very significantly reduced but not entirely abolished.
The hereditary jurisdictions of Regality Courts and of the Sheriff Courts were abolished.

There is little doubt that the Government would have liked to have abolished the barony. It will be recalled that the holders of abolished Hereditary Sheriffdoms and Regalities were in 1748 compensated. To compensate the Barons for their lands would have given rise to claims for several million pounds and clearly the Government was anxious to avoid paying any such compensation.

Thus a barony will no longer be an honourable title to land but will become an incorporeal right and dignity which may be inherited or transferred at will but no longer by the type of documentation used for the ownership and transfer of land. It will not be protected by a public register of titles to land. On intestacy the succession will proceed as it did prior to the passing of the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 like a peerage or a coat of arms, both of which were excepted from the provisions of the 1964 Act. The barony will be transferable or assignable on a simple Deed of Transfer but as there is no register in which such deeds can be recorded, the scope for fraud and deception will be very great. If a person offers to sell one a barony, one has no means of knowing whether he executed a Deed of Transfer relative to that barony the week before. It will really be rather like buying a second hand motor car without the records of the DVLC being in existence.

To conclude, it is probably appropriate that we should very briefly consider the position of the Scottish Baron in the European context. This was superbly summarised by the late Sir Iain Moncrieffe of that Ilk when he observed “the Scoto-Norman Bosvilles or Boswells were a baronial family from the twelfth century. David Boswell, the then Baron of Balmuto (living 1492), married secondly Lady Margaret Sinclair, daughter of William, last Jarl of Orkney and first Earl of Caithness, Lord High Chancellor of Scotland, and by her was father of Thomas Boswell, who was granted the Barony of Auchinleck by his kinsman, King James IV, on 20 November 1504 and who fell with his King at Flodden. James Boswell himself (the writer) was son and heir of Lord Auchinleck (the judge), who was 8th Baron of Auchinleck and whose wife was an Erskine of the great comital house of Mar. James Boswell’s grandfather, James Boswell, 7th Baron of Auchinleck, had powers of life and death in his barony until 1747 (whether he exercised them or not) and was married to Lady Elizabeth Bruce, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Kincardine. The Boswells of Auchinleck, as barons whose ancestors had sat in Parliament by hereditary right until 1594, were entitled to supporters (an honour only accorded heritably in England to peers). In Scotland, the “old laird” and the “young laird”, or the “old baron” and the “young baron”, were recognised characters vested in the baronial parent and heir. It is improbable that many, if any, of the German barons whom young Auchinleck met were of so high a lineage or so ancient a baronial status (nor with so recent a jurisdiction of life and death). Yet the surprising belief is often to be met with in the South, that a great Scottish baron like Lochiel is in some way less of a baron than the cadet of a cadet of some paper baron created by the sovereign of some nineteenth century German dutchy.”

http://www.scotsgenealogy.com/online/baronage_of_scotland.htm

The Scottish Genealogist, June 2000.