Note 79 — Chapter II

"Apprizing" is a legal process to which Sir Thomas several times refers with great horror, and it may be as well to explain to our readers what it was, for fortunately it is now a thing of the past. It was for long the only method of attaching a debtor's heritable property. By the Act, 1469, c. 36, when payment of a debt could not be obtained out of the debtor's movables (including rent), "the King's letters might be obtained, under which a debtor's land might be sold by the Sheriff to the amount of his debts, and the creditor paid out of the proceeds. If within six months no purchaser could be found, a portion of the land equal to the debt was to be apprised by thirteen men chosen by the sheriff, and the portion apprised by them was to be made over to the creditor." The debtor could redeem within seven years. This procedure at first took place in the head burgh of the shire, where the jury probably knew enough to make a fair valuation of the land. But after a time the proceedings often took place in Edinburgh, where the jury had no special knowledge, and might be packed by the creditor. So that large estates were sometimes carried off in payment of trifling debts. The appriser at once entered into possession, and was not obliged to account for the rents (until 1631, c. 6). It was thus a powerful engine of oppression. If A. wished B.'s land, and B. owned land and nothing else, it was possible for A., if he could only get B. as his debtor even in a small sum, so to work matters that for the debt he might apprise all B's land. Being then in right of B.'s rents, he had B. completely in his power, and B. had no resources for gathering together the amount of the debt which he must pay in order to redeem his lands within the seven years allowed. The law was much relaxed by the Act, 1621, c. 6, but the above will enable us to understand how an unscrupulous creditor might get an easy-going, thriftless man into his clutches, and impoverish him and his family.