WILLIAM COLQUHOUN STIRLING of Law, and his Commissioners, v WILLIAM DUNN (Court of Session)

The Cockney Loch, situate in Dumbartonshire, is surrounded partly by the entailed estate of Law, and principally by the lands of Barns belonging to Mr Hamilton. A stream issues from this loch, which, passing through the lands of various proprietors in its course to the Clyde, is used for driving the machinery of numerous and extensive works.

A reduction of this lease was brought in 1811 by the granter's successor in the estate of Law, Mrs Agnes Hamilton, and the two next substitutes of entail, the latter being Mr Colquhoun Stirling, against several individuals who, as a company, had purchased the works of the original lessees, together with their right under the lease.

The cause was reported to the Court by Lord Glenlee, Ordinary, ‘upon that part of the second reason of reduction which alleges, that the lease in question, granted by the late Mr Stirling of Law, for such an unusual length of time, was contrary to the limitations and conditions under which he possessed the estate, and, in fact, a permanent alienation of the subjects set.’

This, and a reduction of another lease, granted by the same party, of the mains and ground near the mansion-house, for the same endurance, having been argued together, the Court, in both cases, ‘repelled the reasons of reduction so far as founded on the prohibitions in the entail;’ vide Hamilton and others v. Macdowal and others, 3d March 1815, Fac. Coll.

The Lord Ordinary, to whom the cause was remitted by the Court, carried the judgment of the House of Lords into effect, by ‘appointing the pursuer to bring William Dunn regularly into the field by a supplementary process of reduction.’