"
So that the existence of a correspondence betwixt the Marquis and his
distressed kinsman, which Sir William Ashton had sometimes treated as a
bugbear, was proved beyond the possibility of further doubt.
The alarm of the Lord Keeper became very serious; since the Claim of
Right, the power of appealing from the decisions of the civil court to
the Estates of Parliament, which had formerly been held incompetent, had
in many instances been claimed, and in some allowed, and he had no small
reason to apprehend the issue, if the English House of Lords should be
disposed to act upon an appeal from the Master of Ravenswood "for remeid
in law." It would resolve into an equitable claim, and be decided,
perhaps, upon the broad principles of justice, which were not quite so
favourable to the Lord Keeper as those of strict law. Besides, judging,
though most inaccurately, from courts which he had himself known in the
unhappy times preceding the Scottish Union, the Keeper might have too
much right to think that, in the House to which his lawsuits were to be
transferred, the old maxim might prevail which was too well recognised
in Scotland in former times: "Show me the man, and I'll show you the
law.
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