Property Records – Sasine Abridgements

By the early 19th century, the Registers of Sasines were very large and the process of legal searching very time-consuming. A particular problem was the General Register, which had to be searched along with the Particular Register for the county or other area in question. Both would be searched for 40 years, or sometimes longer. Consequently in 1821 the Record Office began the process of compiling abridgements, going back to 1781, combining short summaries of all the entries for a particular county or registration area in a single chronological series.

These Abridgements:

• do not cover the burgh Registers of Sasines, for which there may be no finding aids except contemporary manuscript summaries, not indexed;
• are indexed by persons and places, but the indexing of places was abandoned in the period 1831-1871;
• were printed, but are not widely available other than in the National Records of Scotland (for the whole of Scotland) and in local archives (for the local area).

Rights to heritable property might be conveyed in a wide range of circumstances. What follows covers the commonest types of entry in the Abridgements, but the user should remember that the abridgment is perhaps only a 5-10 line summary of a document which may itself take up 20 pages or more in the register. A good deal of what is missing is legal verbiage, of which there was more then than now, but a great deal is essential for the full understanding of the sasine. The reader must expect to have to consult the original document for any especially interesting entry. Commonly occurring words, especially forms of title deeds, are abbreviated. These are printed in italics, below, and are explained. The examples are all taken from Aberdeenshire in 1852. Click on one of these types to see an example.

• Outright sales and gifts
• Family settlements
• Succession
• Rights in security

Contributors: Andrew Jackson, Robin Urquhart, Alan Borthwick (all SCAN 2002).

Sasine abridgements – Outright sales and gifts

The simplest case is where one individual conveys land to another, normally by sale, and the commonest way of doing this was by a document known as a disposition. In the 19th century these were much longer than they are now, but not very different in essentials.

Prince Albert acquires the estate of Balmoral from the Earl of Fife.

• a daugh (or davach) is a traditional Scottish measurement of land
• comp. = comprising
• the land is in the parish of Crathie in Aberdeenshire
• it is conveyed with the tithes (or teinds), that is, there will be no requirement on the landowner to pay teinds
• the original conveyance will be found in volume 2611 of the General Register of Sasines, beginning at folio 253 (P.R. would mean the Particular Register for the county of Aberdeenshire)
• the party first named (in capital letters) is almost always the party acquiring the lands (or the right) which is being conveyed.

Dispositions were used where an existing unit of land, or a separate right, already existed and was being carried forward to a new owner. If a new right, or unit of land, was being created, for example where a part of a field was being sold as a plot of land for house-building, the conveyancing document would be a charter.

The town council of Inverurie (as it is now spelt) are selling off part of a common moor owned by the burgh by a feu charter. This time registration is in the Particular Register for Aberdeenshire.

Sasine abridgements – family settlements

Sometimes the conveyance is part of a family settlement. A merchant or tradesman, for example, wishes to provide for his wife or perhaps his wife and children. He may acquire land, a house or houses, with a provision that if his wife dies before him, they will descend to his heir. If he dies before her, she will hold them for her lifetime, and only thereafter will they descend to the heir. This is a conveyance in fee and liferent, that is, to the wife outright and to the husband for his life only.

Here the property is owned by an incorporation or craft guild. The Shoemakers of Aberdeen would originally have controlled standards of workmanship in the city and played an important part in civic life. By this date the functions of such incorporations were mainly social, but they also acted as friendly societies, with charitable funds for the relief of widows and orphans, or former members of the craft who had fallen on hard times. They would often own landed property for this purpose. In this case the Shoemakers are feuing out a property for development. One building site is feued to Charles Gordon, cooper in Aberdeen and Ann his wife. If Charles died before Ann, she would hold the property for her life only, and it would then descend to their children. The original sasine contains details of the conditions imposed on Gordon by the Shoemakers, as feudal superiors. He would be required to build a dwelling house of a certain value on the site, for example.

Sasine abridgements – Succession/Inheritance

Heritable property descends to the heir, but he or she should obtain a charter from the feudal superior, transferring the title to himself or herself. If the superior is the crown, this will be a precept furth of Chancery. This simply states that A is the heir of B and should be admitted to the lands. If the superior is someone other than the crown, he or she will issue a precept of clare constat, to the same effect (clare constat is a Latin phrase meaning ‘it clearly appears’, from the opening words of these precepts).

In this example, Dr George Paton, who is a surgeon in the employment of the East India Co, is the heir to his deceased father and has obtained a precept from the feudal superior, Lord Lovat, to have himself entered into the property.

Rights in security

Lenders require security from borrowers. If the sum of money borrowed is secured on land or other heritable property, this will be recorded in a conveyance, which must be entered into the Register. The commonest form is a bond by the borrower, undertaking to pay interest and repay the principal, combined in a single document with a disposition of the property, to take effect only if the debt is not repaid. The borrower remains in possession, like a modern mortgager, but must keep up the interest payments. This is a bond and disposition in security.

The lender now has a right, which he can assign to someone else, either wholly or in part, by an assignation, or disposition and assignation.

A waulk mill is a mill for fulling cloth. Here the original lender, Thomas Henderson, is selling out and transferring his rights to a bank.

The borrower may repay the principal sum and any outstanding interest. As with an assignation, the repayment may only be in part. The borrower will require the lender to grant him a discharge.

Here the creditors happen to be trustees, but that is not significant. They acknowledge receipt of part of what they are owed.