Series 1 > Records of a Scottish cloth manufactory at New Mills, Haddingtonshire, 1681-1703

xlii THE NEW MILLS CLOTH MANUFACTORY
Similarly, the company called in a document it issued1 the
‘ Society of the White Writing and Printing Paper Manu¬
factory of Scotland,1 was designated the ‘ Scots White Paper
Manufacture1 in an Act passed on behalf of the partnership
on July 4, 1695.2 Such examples prove that the corporate
character was both more readily granted and less strictly
interpreted in Scotland than it was in England at the same
period.
The mechanism for the creation of companies and the
endowing them with the statutory privileges of the Acts of
1661 and 1681, presents a remarkable anticipation of the
procedure at the present day to obtain a Private Act before
a Parliamentary Committee. Both the Scottish Privy Council
and the Estates appointed a Committee of Trade; and all
applications for statutory privileges or for further powers
came before these bodies, and those who wished to oppose
the grant of a special Act were heard. If the Committee
decided in favour of the application, the Privy Council or
Parliament, as the case might be, issued an Act in most cases.
The following are some instances in which a record of the
proceedings has survived. The New Mills Company, having
discovered that the prohibition of foreign cloth enacted in
1681 was evaded, presented a petition to the Privy Council
in 1685, which was referred to the Committee of Trade, and
on a report from the latter body favourable to the Company
an Act was granted.3 In 1698 the White Paper Company
already mentioned petitioned Parliament for a restraint on
the consumption of rags by the candlemakers of Edinburgh,
and the candlemakers made urgent representations against
1 Articles concluded and agreed upon by the Society of the White Writing and
Printing Paper Manufactory at Edinburgh the 19th of August 1695, etc.
[Edinburgh 1695].—British Museum, 1391, c. 21.
8 Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vol. ix. p. 429.
8 Acts of the Privy Council of Scotland (General Register House, Edinburgh),
1685, f. 137.