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The Douglas Cause is,
most likely, the greatest civil trial affecting status that Scotland has
ever seen. The conflicting decisions of the Court of Session and the
House of Lords alone made it momentous, and the rank of the parties and
the extent of the estates which were dependent upon the final decision
made it preeminently interesting to the public in its own time, and the
complexity of the evidence and the conflicting statements of the
witnesses, both Scottish and French, as well as the old and irregular
methods by which the evidence was procured, make the whole trial a very
delicate and intricate study even at this distance of time. The Cause
endured, through its varying stages, eight years in all, and the mass of
legal pleadings connected with it is enormous.
The Douglas Cause
Edited bY A. Francis Steuart, Advocate (1909) (pdf) |
