Orkney and Shetland Act 1669
Scottish parliamentary act
The Orkney and Shetland Act 1669 (c. 19) was an act of Parliament passed by the Parliament of Scotland to establish Orkney and Shetland's status as Crown Dependencies following a legal dispute with William Douglas, 9th Earl of Morton, who held the estates of Orkney and Shetland.
Titled "Act for Annexation of Orknay and Zetland to the Crown", the legislation was passed on 27 December 1669 (17 December old style) and was the last law passed by the Parliament before its adjournment six days later.
The act made Orkney and Shetland exempt from any "dissolution of His Majesty's lands". In 1742 a further act of Parliament, the Orkney and Shetland Act 1741 (15 Geo. 2. c. 4 Pr.), returned the estates to a later Earl of Morton, James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton, despite the original act of Parliament specifically stating that any such change was to be "considered null, void and of no effect".
“Orkney and Shetland Act 1669” enters the record as scottish parliamentary act. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Orkney, Shetland and Scottish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Orkney and Shetland Act 1669” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.