usually the administrator of an estate, but can be any agent whose powers depend on some specific authority within which he acts. A judicial factor is one appointed by a court to manage the property of someone unable to manage it for themselves.

default, fail to comply with something, or non-fulfillment of a legal obligation.

a measure of distance and area, from the Old Norse fale, meaning a ‘pole’ or ‘perch’. This was the equivalent of the English measure, the ‘pole’. See the Knowledge Base entry on Distance and Area.

rumour; often encountered in kirk session minutes.

the study of the ancestry and context of families, including the events and circumstances which shaped their lives and relationships. Often regarded as synonymous with genealogy, but may be regarded as more concerned with context and history rather than limited to names, dates and places of vital events.

the right of tenants to take turfs for roofing or other purposes. The equivalent in England was ‘common of turbary.’

Scots term meaning farmer.

a group of cottages. See also cottarton and cottar.

a form of disposition used to create a new feu in the 19th century; note however that the usual distinction between the charter and the disposition was that a charter was used to create a new feu, and a disposition to carry an existing feu forward to a new proprietor.

one of the four conditions, or tenures, in Scots law on which lands could be granted by charter.  In this case, the superior received (usually annually) a return (‘feu duty‘) in agricultural produce or money, rather than military service. The ‘fee’ or ‘feu’ was also the name of the piece of property so conveyed, and the feuar was the vassal who held the property by feu tenure.

annual payment by the feuar to the superior for use of land.

a person to whom land is conveyed to be held by him from the landowner (the superior) for the payment of a yearly rent or feu-duty or the performance of some regular service to the superior; see also feu or fee.

payments made to superiors based on rights associated with land tenure; see casualties.

prices of grain which were fixed for each county by its sheriff and a jury of locals every February; a ‘fiar’ could also be someone who held lands in which someone else possessed a liferent.

a collection of related records stored together; traditionally a paper file contains multiple documents related to the same function or activity, an electronic file similarly contains related items and may be called a folder.

a means of helping users (and staff) to find relevant archival items: typically a finding aid is a compiled document about a fonds or collection which provides contextual information (such as an administrative history and scope and contents note) along with a list of series and/or items (with reference code, date and description) arranged to show their relationship to each other.

letters of.  These were an order to a sheriff by the Privy Council to muster the assistance of the men of his county to dispossess tenants who had illegally retained possession of lands; enforcing decrees of removing.

a measure of capacity which depended on what it was being used to measure; as far as grain was concerned, it was the fourth part of a boll.

used generally to refer to a leaf or page in manuscript documents.

all of the documents created and used by a person, family, corporate body or government body in the course of that creator’s activities or functions.