Alexander Gibson, Lord Durie

In 1640 he was elected a member of the committee of estates, and on 13 November 1641 his appointment as judge was continued under a new commission to the court.

[2] William Forbes, in the preface to his Journal of the Session (1714), praised Durie as "a man of a penetrating wit and clear judgment, polished and improved by much study and exercise".

They are the earliest digested collection of decisions in Scottish law, and are often referred to as "Lord Durie's Practicks".

[1] There is a story of Gibson being kidnapped by the Earl of Traquair, who thought him unfavourable in a cause before the court, and kept him for three months in a dark room in the country.

It forms the subject of Walter Scott's ballad of Christie's Will (see William Armstrong) in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

Patrick Fraser Tytler, in the appendix to his Life of Sir Thomas Craig, mentioned another version of the kidnapping of Durie in 1604, when he was a clerk of session.