declared by an act of the Scottish
parliament (1621, c. 18) that no debtor after insolvency should
fraudulently diminish the fund belonging to his creditors, and if a deed of
assignment was gratuitously executed after the contracting of debt in
favour of a near relation or a confidential friend, fraudulent dealing was
to be presumed. The act 1696, c. 5, settled the definition of a notour or
notorious bankrupt, a question which had previously engaged the attention
of the judges of the court of session. The statute defines "a notour
bankrupt" to be any debtor who, being under diligence by horning or
caption, at the instance of his creditors, shall be either imprisoned, or
retire to the abbey or any other privileged place, or flee or abscond for
his personal security, or defend his person by force, and who shall
afterwards be found, by sentence of the lords of session, to be insolvent.
Bankruptcy as thus defined was, it is said, intended to afford a remedy
against fraudulent preference by debtors, and not as the ground-work of a
general process of distribution, although by later statutes it became a
necessary requisite of every such process. The exceptions recognized in the
act of 1696, of persons absent from Scotland and therefore not liable to
imprisonment, or of persons exempted therefrom by special privileges, were
removed by later legislation. The old English distinction between traders
and non-traders, it will be observed, is not recognized in Scottish law.
The statute made null and void all voluntary dispositions, assignations and
other deeds made after or within sixty days before bankruptcy.

In 1856 was passed the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act, by which the law of
bankruptcy in Scotland is mainly regulated. By this act, notour (_i.e._
legally declared) bankruptcy was constituted:--

1. By sequestration (or adjudication in England and Ireland); and

2. By insolvency concurring either--(a) with a duly executed charge for
payment or (b) with sale of effects belonging to the debtor under a
poinding or under a sequestration for rent, or making application for the
benefit of _cessio bonorum_.

Notour bankruptcy continues, in cases of sequestration, until the debtor
has obtained his discharge and in other cases until insolvency ceases.
Sequestration may be awarded of the estate of any person in the following
cases:--

1. Living debtor subject to jurisdiction of Scottish courts--(a) on his own
petition with concurrence o