Ayrshire, Its History and Historic Families

X AYRSHIRE Its History and Historic Families BY WILLIAM ROBERTSON VOLUME I Kilmarnock Dunlop & Drennan, "Standard" Office Ayr Stephen & Pollock 1908 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I PAGE Introduction - - i I. Early Ayrshire 3 II. In the Days of the Monasteries - 29 III. The Norse Vikings and the Battle of Largs - 45 IV. Sir William Wallace - - -57 V. Robert the Bruce ... 78 VI. Centuries on the Anvil - - - 109 VII. The Ayrshire Vendetta - - - 131 VIII. The Ayrshire Vendetta - 159 IX. The First Reformation - - - 196 X. From First Reformation to Restor- ation 218 XI. From Restoration to Highland Host 256 XII. From Highland Host to Revolution 274 XIII. Social March of the Shire—Three Hundred Years Ago - - - 300 XIV. Social March of the Shire—A Century Back 311 XV. Social March of the Shire—The Coming of the Locomotive Engine 352 XVI. The Secession in the County - - 371 INTRODUCTION A work that purports to be historical may well be left to speak for itself. That the story of the county of Ayr is worth telling there is no occasion to demonstrate ; it is because it is worth telling—and well worth telling— that this book has been written. The author anticipates, with the confidence that some experience has given him, that the History of Ayrshire will be read by many leal sons and daughters of the ancient shire, not only within the bounds, but in other parts of the United Kingdom, and beyond the seas. His hope is that it may have some effect in stimulating their pride of birth, and in the men and women who have made Ayrshire what she is— a worthy mother of her children. The story is one of ups and downs, of fightings for freedom and faith, of local and feudal jarrings and turmoils, of steady persevering through it all on the pathway of progress. Much broken and chequered, it is nevertheless a consistent whole. The second volume is given to the history of the leading families of the shire. In its preparation the author has received much valuable assistance from members of those historic houses ; and he takes this opportunity of gratefulty acknowledging their kindness. He has avoided endless genealogies, his object having been to show the part the families themselves played in the making of the county, in Scottish national life, in the work of the United Kingdom. And in this part of the book the reader will find a multitude of incidents and episodes that cast many an instructive light upon the general procession of events. The History is dedicated to the County herself, with all the loyalty that is due to her, by one of her many sons. HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE CHAPTER I EARLY AYRSHIRE There was a time—there must of necessity have been a time—when Ayrshire, in common with the rest of Scotland, was a No Man's Land. For untold ages the creative forces of Nature, fire and flood, ice and the convulsive heavings of Mother Earth, had been preparing a habitation for the use of man. Giant icebergs had slowly crept down from the north, and, when they had done their share of the work, had as slowly receded to the realms of the Arctic. Earthquakes and volcanoes had wrought in Titanic compact, and when their age-long groaning and travailing together had subsided and given place to the calm that comes from rest, and had ceased from their labour, the waters, widespreading and devastating, had concentrated themselves into lochs and rivers and the solitudes of the marshy lands. The streams had patiently furrowed out their own channels that they might reach the sea, the source and fountain of their being. Cold and bleak and bare the hills stood in their places, giant remains of the heaving and the convulsions that had given them birth. Rank and rugged, the forests had spread themselves abroad over the country, the homes and haunts of a fauna that were after the old-world type. With the slow lapsing of the centuries, with the betterment begotten of less trying weather conditions, with the aid of the suns and the 4 HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE showers, the mists and the frosts, the land gradually formed itself into a fitting habitation for man. And when the fulness of his time had come, man appeared on the scene. When Ayrshire was first peopled none can say. There is room for surmising that the original inhabitants, judged by the scant relics of their presence that the soil has grudgingly yielded, were a small race of people ; but there is absolutely nothing to show whence they came and whither they went, or to lead to the conclusion that they ever attained to any considerable degree of civilisation. There may be a certain latent satisfaction experienced by the man whose home is by the waters of the Nile, or who dwells where once the Euphrates flowed an orderly and well-regulated flood through the plains of Mesopotamia, when he reflects that many centuries ago the people who dwelt in the walled cities, and whose armies marched far and near to conquest, to annexation, to sovereignty, were a great and a mighty race. But such a contemplative reflection must needs be clouded when he contrasts the high estate of the former days with the comparatively low estate of the present. So far as Scotland is concerned there need be no looking back with regret. The march of civilisation, of wealth, of progress has been steadily onward and forward. The years may have known reaction and retrogression, but not the centuries. It is inevitable that in a country such as Scotland that has had consistently and systematically to win its way towards the future by struggle, by war of tribe with tribe, of people with people, of race with race, there should have been occasions when the baneful past was temporarily able to reassert itself ; but if one could from some high vantage ground look backwards and see the evolving centuries, each playing its appointed part, there can be little doubt, if any at all, that he would recognise the systematic and well-ordered character of the forward movement. Even as it is, through Celtic rivalries, and Roman invasion, and reassertion of the Celtic supremacy, EARLY AYRSHIRE 5 and the embittered struggling that preceded the consolidation of the kingdom under one common head, and the long wars with England, and the striving for rights of unfettered faith and free conscience, down to the present time, it is possible to recognise the steadiness and the inevitableness of the development. We have therefore nothing whatever to regret in leaving the past behind us. For in no material respect whatever were the former days better than these. There does not seem to be any reasonable occasion for doubting that at the opening of the Christian era Ayrshire was inhabited by a Celtic race. There is mystery indeed, and room for considerable diversity of opinion as to whether the inhabitants were Picts, or Caledonians, or Britons, and as to when the Scots first appeared upon the scene. There is no such consistency in the nomenclature of the tribes of the period as to warrant any hard and fast conclusion on the matter. Strictly speaking, Ayrshire was not within the definitely Pictish area, which extended southward no further than the Firth of Clyde, but it was near enough to the borderland to have been leavened by the Pictish influence, and to have received many settlers from beyond the frontier. But, however that may have been, it is probably sufficient for any practical purpose to know that the Damnii, who were in occupation of the county when the Romans first visited North Britain in the second century, were a purely Celtic people. The place names of the shire afford indisputable evidence that they were. Even at that early period the Celt was strongly wrought upon by the natural features of the country. The rivers appealed powerfully to him, so too did the hills and the dales and the forests. He did not call his early settlements, save in very exceptional instances, after the men who founded them, or even after the chiefs of the tribes who were the pioneers of these far off years, but after their natural environment. He came to the river that has given its own name to the county, and, finding — ; 6 HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE its stream pellucid and clear, he called it the " Ayr." He journeyed or coasted northwards to where he found another river mingling its waters with those of the Clyde estuary ; its banks were green, and he designated it the " Ir-vin." A little southward from Ayr he looked upon the peat-stained stream that carries to the sea the tribute of the clouds that break upon the hills and the muirlands above Dalmellington, and he named it the " Dun." Southward still he travelled, and. following the rocky course of another river, he bade it bear for all time to come the name " Gerr-avon," or the rough river. So also with many of the parishes. Thus Dundonald owes its derivation to " Dun," a hill, and " Donald," " the name of a man ; Craigie to Craig," a rock ; Mauchline to " Magh," a plain, and " lyn," a pool ; Dalgain, the original name of the parish of Sorn, to "Dal," a plain, and "Gain," sandy; Cumnock to " " Cum," a hollow, and Knock," a hill ; Auchinleck to " Ach-an-leac," the field of the flat stone ; Ochiltree to " Uchil-tre," the high tower, or dwelling place ; Dalmellington to " Dal-mulin." the mill-meadow, with " " " the Saxon ton added at a later date ; Barr to Bar," " a summit, or a height ; Ballantrae to Bail-an-trae," " the house on the shore ; and Ardrossan to Ard," high, and " Rossan," a little promontory.

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