OLD ARRANGEMENTS OF THE HOUSE—JUSTICE IN BYGONE TIMES—COURT
OF SESSION GARLAND—PARLIAMENT HOUSE WORTHIES.
The Parliament House, a spacious hall with an oaken arched roof,
finished in 1639 for the meetings of the Estates or native parliament,
and used for that purpose till the Union, has since then, as is
well known, served exclusively as a material portion of the suite
of buildings required for the supreme civil judicatory—the Court
of Session. This hall, usually styled the _Outer House_, is now a
nearly empty space, but it was in a very different state within the
recollection of aged practitioners. So lately as 1779, it retained
the divisions, furnishings, and other features which it had borne in
the days when we had a national legislature—excepting only that the
portraits of sovereigns which then adorned the walls had been removed
by the Earl of Mar, to whom Queen Anne had given them as a present when
the Union was accomplished.
The divisions and furniture, it may be remarked, were understood to
be precisely those which had been used for the Court of Session from
an early time; but it appears that such changes were made when the
parliament was to sit as left the room one free vacant space. The
southern portion, separated from the rest by a screen, accommodated
the Court of Session. The northern portion, comprising a sub-section
used for the Sheriff-court, was chiefly a kind of lobby of irregular
form, surrounded by little booths, which were occupied as taverns,
booksellers’ shops, and toy-shops, all of very flimsy materials.[90]
These _krames_, or boxes, seem to have been established at an early
period, the idea being no doubt taken from the former condition of
Westminster Hall. John Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode, who, in 1718,
published the _Forms of Process before the Court of Session_, mentions
that there were ‘two keepers of the session-house, who had small
salaries to do all the menial offices in the house, and that no small
part of their annual perquisites came from the _kramers_ in the outer
hall.’