Decreet of Ranking of 1606

The Decreet of Ranking of 5 March 1606 determined the relative precedence of members of the peerage of Scotland.

Background

The increasing number of disputes between peers as to the order in which they ranked and voted in Parliament and in councils caused King James VI and his Privy Council to appoint Lords Commissioners to determine each peer's rank and place. The peers or their representatives were invited to provide evidence to support their claims. The resultant "decreet" was registered in the books of the Privy Council and passed to the Lord Clerk Register and the Lord Lyon, to be used to determine precedence on all future occasions. Peers who felt themselves disadvantaged had the right to present new evidence before the Lords of Council and Session for a "reduction" to the Decreet of Ranking, but were otherwise bound by it.

List of the peers of Scotland on 5 March 1606, by rank

Robert Seton, 2nd Earl of Winton appears to have been omitted.

Subsequent reductions to the decreet of 1606

In 1606 the Countess of Buchan (then a minor) had been ranked according to a regrant of the Earldom in 1547. In 1628, on an action of the Countess, the Earldom of Buchan was placed according to its original creation in 1469, ahead of the Earls of Eglinton, Montrose, Cassillis, Caithness and Glencairn.^[1]
In 1606 the Earl of Glencairn did not appear, and his precedency was assigned on the earliest evidence then available, from 1503. In 1609 the original charter of 1488 was discovered and in 1610 the Earl brought a successful action which resulted in his being placed above the Earls of Eglinton, Montrose, Cassillis and Caithness. In 1617 the Earl of Eglinton had this judgement overturned on a technicality, but Glencairn's successor brought another action in 1637 and his Earldom's precedence according to the decreet of 1610 was reinstated in 1648.^[2]

References

Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, "Observations upon the Laws and Customs of Nations as to Precedency", pp. 27-9, included in the sixth edition of John Guillim's A Display of Heraldry (London, 1724).

^ The Earl of Crawford, The Earldom of Mar in Sunshine and in Shade, vol. ii (Edinburgh, 1882) pp. 34–35.
^ Crawford, pp. 36–37.

[1] The Earl of Crawford, The Earldom of Mar in Sunshine and in Shade, vol. ii (Edinburgh, 1882) pp. 34–35.

[2] Crawford, pp. 36–37.

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