ad bene placitum to dispose them to compliance with arbitary sourses, and turning them out of their offices when they did not comply.’  Thus in 1681, when the Test Act was passed, five judges were dismissed, four ordinary, including the President, Stair, and one extraordinary, Argyll, and a new commission issued.  When the Court was so constituted, it could hardly inspire implicit confidence, and the instances are numerous in which Lauder complains that injustice has been done, and the principles of the law perverted through the influence of political and private motives.  Even the most eminent of the judges were not in his opinion clear from this blot.  I have quoted one passage in which Lauder hints at Stair’s partiality for Argyll.  In another case in which Argyll was concerned he observes, ’Every on saw that would be the fate of that action, considering the pershewar’s probable intres in the President.’[24] In 1672 when, as he considered, a well-established rule of law had been unsettled, he writes, ’This is a miserable and pittiful way of wenting our wit, by shaking the very foundations of law, and leaving nothing certain.  The true sourse of it all is from the wofull divisions in the House, especially between the President and the Advocat [Mackenzie], each of them raking, tho from hell, all that may any way conduce to carry the causes that they head, Flectere si neque superos,’ etc.  One decision which excited his warm indignation was given in a suit by Lord Abbotshall against Francis Kinloch, who held a wadset over the estate of Gilmerton, which Abbotshall maintained was redeemable.  He lost the case.  After an extraordinary account of the way in which the decision was arrived at Lauder proceeds, ’the Chancelor’s [Rothes] faint trinqueting and tergiversation for fear of displeasing Halton (who agented passionately for Francis) has abated much of his reputation.  The 2d rub in Abbotshall’s way was a largesse and donation of L5000 sterling to be given to Halton and other persons forth of the town’s revenue for their many good services done to the toune.  By this they outshot Sir Androw in his oune bow, turned the canon upon him, and justo Dei judicio defait him by the toune’s public interest, with which weapone he was want to do miracles and had taught them the way[25]....  This decision for its strangeness surprised all that heard of it; for scarce even any who once heard the case doubted but it would be found a clear wodsett, and it opened the mouths of all to cry out upon it as a direct and dounright subversion of all our rights and properties.’

    [24] Lauder was a very young man at the bar when he wrote these
        strictures on Stair.  They may be compared with and in part
        corrected by a passage in Sir G. Mackenzie’s Memoirs, p. 240,
        which also bears on the appointment of incompetent judges. 
        ’Lauderdale by promoting four ignorant persons, who had not been