Proceedings at the Court of Session in Edinburgh finally reached a conclusion on Wednesday afternoon - an extra half-day having been found in the court's schedule after proceedings were adjourned on Friday without being completed.

And there were one or two interesting developments in that final afternoon's proceedings - not the least of which was the indication that if the Crown Estate Commissioners lose the case, and are not granted permission to remove unlicensed mooring equipment from the bay, they will immediately appeal.

Should that happen, the whole case will be argued again, this time before a panel of three appeal judges.

Wednesday afternoon's final exchanges also included the admission that if the Commissioners' petition is granted, there will be a 'cooling off' period, expected to last for around two months, when the owners of unlicensed moorings will be given time to remove their equipment or to obtain a licence, either individually or by joining the Port Bannatyne Moorings Association.

Mooring owner Harry Ellis, whose determined opposition to the petition resulted in the court's decision to hold a hearing into the case, also told us the Crown Estate had conceded that they could not seek to recover the costs of removing unlicensed equipment, because it was not always possible to find out who the owner was.

"The judge said it would be next year before he announces his findings," Mr Ellis told us after the hearing closed, "but he did ask when a typical sailing season began, so my supposition is that he will attempt to come to a conclusion before that starts.

"As far as possible we do seem to have had a fair crack of the whip. The Crown Estate really does seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel in their attempt to dig up every last piece of case law they can to support their case."

Mr Ellis is one of many owners of mooring equipment in Kames Bay who have long argued that the terms of Rothesay's royal charters of 1400 and 1584 give the inhabitants of the island the right to lay a mooring in the waters around Bute without paying a fee to the Crown Estate, who manage the sea bed around Britain on behalf of the monarch.

The hearing itself featured an often fascinating, occasionally confusing mix of historical precedent and contemporary reality - here's our run-down of proceedings on the four full days of the case.

Day 1 - Tuesday

The first day of the hearing made for a fascinating history lesson as Dr Susan Rose, an associate lecturer with the Open University and an expert in aspects of Britain's maritime history, and retired Rothesay solicitor Ian Maclagan gave evidence.

Dr Rose, who retired as a senior lecturer at the Roehampton Institute - now Roehampton University - in south-west London in 2006, told the court of her extensive work on the subject of anchoring and mooring in English maritime history.

That work, she said, led to her being approached by the Crown Estate Commissioners to research the subject - research which resulted in a paper published in 2003.

Dr Rose told Roddy Thomson QC, acting for the Commissioners, that the modern usage of the term 'mooring' - i.e. a facility permanently attached to the sea bed to which vessels can be attached - had only emerged towards the end of the 18th century; prior to then, boats had either been hauled on to the shore when not in use, tied up at a quay or anchored to the sea floor.

Advocate Kenny McBrearty, acting as an amicus curiae or 'friend of the court' for those contesting the Commissioners' motion, compared a maritime harbour to the sea-going equivalent of a car park, to which Dr Rose said she would draw a comparison with a mixture of long-stay and short-stay car parking at an airport, with some vessels tying up for long periods of time and others perhaps stopping for only a few hours or less.

"The advantages of having a quay or a harbour wall are so obvious that while I'm sure there might be instances of a vessel tying up at a permanent mooring instead, they would be extremely rare," she said.

Dr Rose also agreed that it was unlikely there would be permanent mooring facilities established in a bay where there was no settlement, such as a village, prior to the early 18th century, and that anyone seeking shelter in such a bay would have used their vessel's anchor to secure it to the sea bed.

Much of Ian Maclagan's evidence related to the contents of his 1997 book, The Piers and Ferries of Bute; Mr Thomson asked for details of the development of the piers at Kilchattan Bay, Craigmore and Rothesay as well as Port Bannatyne, and the arrangements for use of the sea bed to build such facilities.

Mr Maclagan said he had found no evidence of a pier or quay at Port Bannatyne prior to the late 18th century, when the village itself was first developed - although he said it was likely that if there was a hamlet there in earlier times, the people living there would probably have had boats of their own because of the difficulties in travelling and communicating by land.

He also confirmed that the only evidence of major repair work at the pier had been in 1962 by Bute County Council, and that he had found no evidence that the Burgh - Rothesay Town Council - had a direct interest in the maintenance of the quay, "because it was outwith the burgh boundaries."

Mr Maclagan touched on the use of the old Port Bannatyne steamer pier, on Shore Road, by the Royal Navy during and immediately after the Second World War, and the requirement by the owners of the piers at both Port Bannatyne and Rothesay to obtain title from the Crown for the right to build and extend on to the sea bed to make them accessible to ships at all states of the tide.

Mr Maclagan also produced a copy of the Rothesay Harbour Regulations of 1784, which contained both a table of 'anchorage dues' and reference to the installation of a permanent buoy at the entrance to the harbour to help sailing vessels leave for the open sea in difficult wind conditions.

Day 2 - Wednesday

After a day of historical background on Tuesday, the second day of the hearing, to consider a request from the Crown Estate Commissioners to allow them to take action against the holders of unlicensed moorings off Port Bannatyne, began with the evidence of Dr Darren Hurst from Bidwells LLP, who act as management agents for the Crown Estate for the foreshore and sea bed in Scotland.

Dr Hurst, the company's Crown Estate west coast manager, said he had been involved in the Kames Bay mooring situation since 2005 and had noticed a high level of local opposition to the Commissioners' attempts to regulate the mooring of leisure craft in the area.

Roddy Thomson QC, for the Commissioners, asked: "There is a significant number of people there who have obtained licences, primarily through the Port Bannatyne Moorings Association (PBMA], so while there is opposition in some quarters, is it universal?"

Dr Hurst replied in the negative, saying: "I think many association members have taken a pragmatic approach, and are working within the system as we know it at this time."

Dr Hurst told the court he had carried out inspections of moorings in Kames Bay in September 2007 and March 2008, affixing notices to unlicensed moorings on both occasions asking their owners to contact Bidwells to arrange a licence.

"It is very difficult to find out who owns the vessels themselves," he admitted, "because there's no registration system for leisure craft."

The next witness was chartered surveyor Andrew Wood, a partner in Bidwells, who gave brief details of a case involving the Fairlie Yacht Company in 1979, which had resulted in yacht owners there entering into a licence agreement with the Crown Estate.

Explaining that his involvement with the Kames Bay case dated back around five years, Mr Wood said his initial attempts to contact yacht owners in the area "didn't go anywhere meaningful".

"The broad nub of the issue was in relation to the (royal] charter," he said. "Many believed the charter gave them the right not to enter into an agreement.

"People's views were that they had been there quite a long time, and they felt they had a right to be there, whether that was in relation to the charter or not."

Asked whether there was anything more his firm could or should have done to publicise the Commissioners' intentions, Mr Wood said: "I think we've gone through a fair process in terms of public advertisements and stickers applied to mooring buoys, which are highly visible and not things you wouldn't notice.

"It's a small community with a local newspaper which has covered the issue widely. Even if people aren't there all year round, they would still be aware of the issues and of us seeking to regulate."

Kenny McBrearty QC, the amicus curiae leading the opposition to the Commissioners' bid to be allowed to take action against unlicensed moorings in the bay, asked Mr Wood why no attempt had been made to introduce a system of regulation prior to the beginning of the decade.

"I can't say directly," Mr Wood replied, "because I wasn't involved, but there are a number of areas where people haven't voluntarily come forward to enter into licensing agreements.

"There may have been a resource issue at that time - there were two or three places where there was dialogue and negotiation going on, but things don't happen quickly."

The day's third witness, Peter Korbel, a marine consultant who acts for Bidwells and regularly travels around the west coast trying to persuade moorings owners of the benefits of Crown Estate regulation, said he had been involved with the Kames Bay case since the late 1990s.

"The situation at that time was difficult," he said. "Kames Bay was identified as a difficult place to try to convince mooring owners to join a system of regulation. It was, and is, one of the last problem areas.

"Every time I went into the bay I would look to see if there were licensed mooring tags, and I would see people on boats and try to convince them of the benefits of joining a system of regulation.

"The Crown Estate has always been fair, open and honest; I treat licensed mooring holders as my customers and they know that if they have a problem they can come to me."

Mr Korbel compared the Crown Estate's charge of £35 a year to mooring association members with the likelihood that a local authority might charge three or four hundred pounds for the privilege."

Asked by Mr McBrearty whether Kames Bay's mooring owners were opposed to the idea of regulation or were merely against charging, Mr Korbel said: "People who have used the area for mooring for many years for free don't want to pay full stop; the Rothesay charter, they claim, gave them the right to moor where and when they pleased, and for free.

"People become very protective of their own little space. The idea of regulation as a whole isn't a pleasant one. But we have proved again ang again that once people have regulation, they like it.

"I don't think the cost of £35 a year is here nor there. I don't think it's the money - it's the principle."

Mr Thomson's next witness was Paul Bancks, the Crown Estate's coastal manager in Scotland, who said his organisation did not regard moorings as a great source of revenue, but as a means of fulfilling its duty to manage the Crown's estate, enhance its value and ensure a good return from it, while "having due regard to good management".

Mr McBrearty's first witness, Glasgow University GIS cartographer Michael Shand, was asked about his work in defining the land and sea boundaries of the burgh of Rothesay as stated in the charters of 1400 and 1584.

Mr Shand stated that although the land boundaries of the burgh did not stretch much beyond Rothesay, the sea boundaries, according to the charter, covered most of the Firth of Clyde, including Pladda in the south and the Cloch in the north.

Harry Ellis, whose efforts in opposing the Commissioners resulted in the fixing of the court hearing to consider the case, was the next to give evidence, and told Mr McBrearty he had moored a boat in Kames Bay since buying a holiday home in Port Bannatyne 16 years previously.

Mr Ellis, who told the court he was not a member of the PBMA, said he had seen photographic evidence of boats using permanent moorings in the bay in the late 1800s, and confirmed that he was "very much aware" of the dispute surrounding the Rothesay royal charters.

"Anybody involved with a mooring in the bay would certainly be aware of it," he said. "I was largely instrumental in these proceedings taking place, but some 16 people pledged their support to get us to the place we are in today."

Mr Ellis mentioned the work of Malcolm McMillan, who went to the expense of having the charters examined and seeking opinion on whether the mooring holders had a case for not making payments to the Crown - and when questioned by Mr Thomson, he confirmed that he still believed the charters gave those rights to mooring owners in the bay.

George McKenzie, a long-time sailor and retired corporate services manager with Argyll and Bute Council, told the court that moorings in Kames Bay had been used by laid-up liners in the 1930s and by redundant oil tankers in the 1970s.

Mr McKenzie confirmed that he was a member of the PBMA, having inherited his motor yacht upon a fellow member's death, but he also said he subscribed to the view that he should not have to pay to put down a mooring.

Mr McBrearty's final witness was John McMillan, the chairman of the PBMA and vice-captain of St Brendan's Cruising Club, who said his family had moored vessels in Kames Bay for more than two hundred years, stretching all the way back to his great-great-grandfather, who owned a boat-building business in Port Bannatyne.

"I believe there's merit in the Royal Burgh charters," he said, "but the Crown Estate was leaning pretty heavily on us to form an association, and we were concerned that someone outside might come in and start an association over which we would have no control."

Day 3 - Thursday

Rothesay's royal charters granted only the right to free and safe passage through the waters around Bute - and they have little or nothing to do with permanent moorings.

That was the view expressed by Roddy Thomson QC on the third day of a hearing at the Court of Session in Edinburgh into the rights or wrongs of attempts to charge a fee for laying down a mooring in Kames Bay.

Mr Thomson spent the whole of the hearing's third day giving his closing submission in the case, citing several pieces of case law down the years in support of the Commissioners' position.

"On the matter of title (to the sea bed]," he said, "it is plain on any view that the Crown has title to the sea bed unless that has been alienated, and the Crown's position is that it has not been.

"The alternative is that somehow the grant of part of the harbour has given rise to some sort of right which has filtered down to the local inhabitants; or, in some other way in relation to the grant of the burgh, a right to lay moorings has been granted and has filtered down to the individual inhabitants, or people who might be there from time to time.

"The Crown's position is that all of those propositions are ill-founded.

"My primary position is that the reference to the sea area is properly read as no more than a grant of, in effect, safe passage and usage, which would be non-exclusive but nonetheless valuable in the context of the times in which the 1400 and 1584 charters were granted.

"The suggestion appears to be that somehow inhabitants, and perhaps not even inhabitants but people who live elsewhere, putting down moorings is somehow evidence of possession or assertion of title to the sea bed.

"I say that that is plainly incorrect, because whatever was done was not done by the burgh or the officers of the burgh; therefore it can't be an assertion of title by the burgh or its successors.

"Furthermore, even if one leaves that point to one side, there is no evidence that the laying of moorings by anybody, private individual or whomever, was ever done as an assertion of title or as an assertion of right under the charter.

"For a long time it was thought that the placing of permanent moorings on the sea bed was an incident of ordinary navigation, and there is no evidence to suggest that anyone putting moorings down in Kames Bay, or anywhere else that is relevant, was an assertion of a right under the charter, rather than either a mistaken belief of the right to do so or was simply done as a pragmatic, opportunist activity."

Mr Thomson said there had never been any claim by the burgh of Rothesay to the sea bed in the town's bay, and cited several examples from Scottish legal history, including cases relating to Campbeltown, St Monans and Trinity in the north of Edinburgh, in support of his overall position.

He also made brief mention of a case brought by the Crown Estate Commissioners against the Fairlie Yacht Company in 1979, in which it was argued - unsuccessfully - by the company that the act of laying down a mooring was "an incident of the right of public navigation".

Returning to the Kames Bay issue, Mr Thomson continued: "The idea is that there is some other right, whatever the right is, to the wide sea area. On a proper construction of the charter, that is simply a right to free passage, and has nothing to do with putting down permanent moorings.

"We have heard evidence that permanent moorings did not exist until the late 18th century, two hundred years or so after the second charter, and therefore could not be in contemplation at the time of the grant of either of the charters.

"There is no authority at all to suggest that the right of port or harbour carried with it any right to lay, licence or do anything in relation to permanent moorings, and there is no basis for thinking that the grant of burgh itself somehow incorporated any such right."

Mr Thomson will continue his closing submisson on Friday, the final day of the hearing.

Day 4 - Friday

The fourth day of the hearing began with Roddy Thomson QC continuing his final submission to Lord Uist, asking him to grant permission for the Commissioners to begin taking action against holders of unlicensed moorings off Port Bannatyne.

Mr Thomson said that on any reading of Rothesay's Charter of Confirmation and Novodamus of 1584, the granting of a "free port and harbour" was to the Royal Burgh - and so any right today would have passed to the burgh's successors, Argyll and Bute Council, and not to the ordinary people.

"The grant of the charter was not to the people, in any sense which assists the argument against the petitioners," he said.

"My hypothesis is that with the harbour being at Rothesay, there are some incorporeal pier rights, but they relate to the bay of Rothesay or the seaboard of the burgh, and there is a general right of free passage in the wider sea area.

"The idea put against the petitioners seems to be that the grant of 'free port' somehow means the freedom of the population to do what it wants.

"In essence my position comes to the idea that 'free' in its proper context and understanding, means that the burgh and burgesses had certain relaxations and rights. The idea that there was a broader freedom is a misconception."

Mr Thomson went on to cite further examples of case law and of past judgements in relation to Scotland's royal burghs and their maritime rights, and said that in his view the right to lay permanent moorings without charge was not part of the charter's right of port and harbour.

"There is a jump being made by those opposing this petition which simply cannot be ignored," he continued.

"Any rights under the charter are rights granted to the burgh and its successors, and have never been the rights of private individuals - and there is some evidence to show that some of these moorings have been laid by people who don't even live on Bute."

The 1584 Rothesay charter refers to the granting of "free port and harbour" for ships in the bay at Rothesay and in 'stations' - or places of shelter - in the surrounding sea area, including the Kyles of Bute, Cumbrae, Fairlie and Holy Isle, though Kames Bay itself is not mentioned.

"There is only speculative evidence on whether Kames Bay was a 'station' in an earlier time," Mr Thomson said, "but the evidence that there is is scant and not persuasive.

"If it were (a station], it would have been mentioned in the charter. It would be unlikely to be a station, because ships wanting to make shelter would simply have gone to Rothesay - I think the prospect of a pub, or some sort of settlement, might be thought of as being more attractive to the crew."

Mr Thomson, arguing that the idea of permanent moorings - unknown in the 16th century - could not have been foreseen by those who drew up the charter, also attempted to play down the significance of the evidence given by the three Kames Bay boat-owning witnesses, Harry Ellis, George McKenzie and John McMillan, during the hearing, particularly in relation to old photographs of vessels apparently moored in the bay.

"The witnesses tended to see what they wanted to see," Mr Thomson suggested.

"I don't suggest that there was anything incredible about their evidence, but it was unreliable as to their interpretation that it supported the idea of early moorings.

"I'm not suggesting there was any wilful dishonesty there, but feelings obviously run high in some circles about this, and perhaps objectivity is not all it might be."

Lord Uist then turned to Kenny McBrearty, the advocate appointed as an amicus curiae, or 'friend of the court', to make the case against the petition, to begin his closing submission.

Mr McBrearty agreed with the view that the grant of a free port and harbour was given to the burgh in 1584 rather than to the ordinary people, and that should the Crown Estate's petition be defeated it would be a matter for Argyll and Bute Council to decide whether and how to take action on the matter.

"The issue has plainly been rumbling on in the locality for many years now," he acknowledged, "but the fact that the council chose, perhaps for reasons of expense, not to enter the process does not necessarily mean that they don't hold the right."

Mr McBrearty took issue with Mr Thomson's assertion that Kames Bay might not have been a station in the maritime sense, and warned against too much being read into the charter not mentioning the bay directly.

He said that in order for the Commissioners' petition to be defeated, four hurdles would have to be overcome: the notion that the grant of port and harbour was an 'incorporeal' one, that the original grant of the charter could indeed have comprehended the concept of permanent moorings, that the right to charge extended over the whole of the sea area mentioned in the charter rather than just in Rothesay Bay, and the question of 'positive possession' of the Kames Bay area.

Time ran out before Mr McBrearty could complete his submission; a new date on which the hearing should be completed will be announced once the court has considered the availability of the judge and the two advocates.