These extracts come from a book, published in 1856 by Fullerton, Edinburgh.

The Topographical, Statistical and Historical Gazetteer of Scotland, Vol 2.

Kirkcudbright Parish

KIRKCUDBRIGHT, a parish at the middle of the southern extremity of Kirkcudbrightshire; bounded on the north by Kelton; on the east by Rerwick; on the south by the Irish sea; and on the west by the Dee, which divides it from Borgue, Twineham, and Tongueland. It is a slender oblong, measuring, in extreme length from the boundary beyond Scar-hill, on the north, to Balmaehead on the south, 8¾ miles ; in extreme breadth from the boundary east of Gribdie on the east, to a bend in the Dee, at the burgh on the west, 3½ miles ; in almost uniform breadth over 4 miles from the southern extremity, 1 mile 7 furlongs; and, in superficial area, about 22½ square miles. The surface is, for the most part, hilly, having but little extended plain. But the hills are neither high nor rocky; they come down in gentle slopes and form very obtuse angles with the plain ; and they are generally arable to the summit, or at worst afford excellent pasture. The soil of the parish is, in some places, wet, upon a hard cold till; but in most, it is a light friable earth, with a sharp gravelly subsoil, exceedingly fructiferous ; and, in some instances, it is deepest at the summit of the hills. Agriculture and the feeding of sheep and black cattle are the chief care. The district, naturally fertile, has been industriously cultivated ; though not in the style of neatness and decoration so delightfully apparent in many parts of Scotland.

Hedges, sylvan belts, and clumps of trees, are infrequent in occurrence; and gave place to the tame and prosaic low stone fence. Yet, in spite of all disadvantages, the country is beautiful in aspect, and rich in its productiveness. On the west side are several hundred acres of forest-trees, including about 18 species. Expensive, tasteful, and almost enthusiastic efforts were made by the Earl of Selkirk, toward the close of last century, to dot the district over with orchards. St. Mary's Isle, a promontory south of the burgh, and the site of the cognominal mansion and demesne, the seat of the Earl of Selkirk, is a charming place: See Mary's Isle, St. No parish in Scotland excels Kirkcudbright in the feeding of cattle,—in the fatness and fine quality of its beef. A chalybeate spring exists near the burgh. Ring-burn traces the eastern boundary for 4 miles, and falls into the sea. Grange-burn rises near the northern extremity, and runs 5 miles south-westward to the estuary of the Dee. Loch-Fergus, an artificial lake, ½ a mile long, and lying ¾ of a mile east of the burgh, has two islets called Palace Isle and Stable Isle, both of which bear decided marks of ancient fortification, and appear to have been the sites of castles or strengths of Fergus, lord of Galloway. A brook, 3 miles in length, comes down to this lake from the northern boundary. The streamlets noticed, and some lesser ones, refresh and cheer the aspect of the country, and afford excellent trouting. The Dee [which see], first running along as a river, and next expanding into an estuary, is of great value for its fishery, but chiefly for its navigation.

The parish has either vestiges or the almost entire forms of no fewer than 11 camps, 8 of them British, and 3 Roman. One of the nearly entire British camps is situated on the highest part of the farm of Drummore, and commands a very extensive prospect of the Solway Frith and the Irish sea. It is large and surrounded with a deep fosse. Judging from its position and extent, the Britons probably assembled at it in considerable force to repel either the Romans, or the plundering Danes and Norwegians. Chalmers, in his Caledonia, supposes this to have been the Caerbant torigum, ' the fort on the conspicuous height,' mentioned by Ptolemy, and to have been the frontier garrison of the Selgovte on the western side of their possessions. Near it is a large circular stone-built well, which seems to have supplied it with water. A little south-west of it, at the entrance of Kirkcudbright bay, or the estuary of the Dee, are vestiges of a strong battery erected by William III., when his fleet was wind-bound in the bay on his passage to raise the siege of Londonderry. A little eastward, in a precipice on the coast, is a cave running 60 feet into the rock, of unequal height, narrow at the mouth, widening and rising as it proceeds till it attains the height of 12 feet or upwards, and then contracting toward the end. It was artificially furnished with a lintelled door, and seems from its sequestered situation, and the difficulty of access to it, to have anciently been an important hiding-place. Not far from this cave is a deep fosse, which marks the site of Raeberry Castle, one of the strongholds of the once powerful family of Maclellan of Bombie. This castle overhung a very dreadful precipice on the coast, and was protected on the north side by a deep fosse, a thick wall, and a strong drawbridge. Sir Patrick Maclellan, its proprietor, near the middle of the 15th century, was forcibly carried out of it by the truculent Earl of Douglas to undergo a tragical fate, which roused the slumbering indignation of the country against the intolerably despotic Douglases. See article Galloway. Nearly 2 miles east from the burgh are utterly dilapidated vestiges of another castle of the Maclellans,—that of Bombie, whence they took their designatire title. Some antiquities of note fall to be noticed in connexion with the burgh. The parish is abundantly segmented by roads. Population, in 1801, 2,381; in 1831, 3,511. Houses 489. Assessed property, in 1815, £14,953.

Kirkcudbright is the seat of a presbytery in the synod of Galloway. Patron, the Crown. Stipend £281 10s. 2d.; glebe £16. Unappropriated teinds £605 5s. 7d. The parish-church was built in 1836. Sittings 1,510; of which 992 are the share belonging to the burgh. A Sabbath school of old standing is attended by 300 scholars, and has a library. There are two dissenting congregations, United Secession and Holy Catholic Apostolic. The latter assemble in a dwelling-house, having about 80 sittings, and rented at £16. Their first angel or minister was ordained in 1834, and has a variable salary. The United Secession congregation was established in 1819. Their meeting-house was completed in 1822, and cost £1,100. Sittings 550. Stipend £85, but variable and increasing. An ecclesiastical survey in 1836 showed the population then to be 3,467; consisting of 3,000 churchmen, 407 dissenters, and 60 not known to belong to any religious denomination. The ' kirk' was dedicated so early as the 8th century to the celebrated Saint Cuthbert,—a name strangely transmuted, in its cognominal place in the appellation of the parish, into " Cudbright," and still more oddly fused, in popular pronunciation, into "Coobry." The site of the ancient church is commemorated by a cemetery ¼ of a mile north of the burgh, still called St. Cuthbert's churchyard, and used as the burying-place of the town's people. In this cemetery are some interesting ancient sepulchral monuments, which the good taste of a burgher of Kirkcudbright has placed in good order and repair; among the rest some, with curious but affecting epitaphs, in memory of worthy covenanters who met a martyrly death in the circumjacent country, famous for its sturdy defences of the covenant. The church was given, in the 12th century, by Uchtred, son of Fergus, lord of Galloway, to the monks of Holyrood, and was a vicarage under them till the Reformation ; in 1633, it was given to the bishop of Edinburgh; and when Episcopacy was abolished, it reverted to the Crown. In the town, previous to the Reformation, stood a church dedicated to St. Andrew; the chaplainries, cemetery, and other pertinents of which were conferred on the corporation of the burgh at the overthrow of Popery. In the northern extremity of the parish was a chapel called Kilbride, dedicated to St. Bridget. When post-Reformation Episcopacy was forced on Scotland, the people of Kirkcudbright tumultuously rose to prevent the settlement of an Episcopalian minister in their church. A judicial commission, appointed by the privy council, made inquiry into their conduct, and adjudged some women, as the ringleaders, to the pillory. " Whether the women or the privy council," sardonically remarks the author of Caledonia, " were, on that occasion, the most actuated by zeal, it is not easy to decide."— To the ancient parish of Kirkcudbright, which was small compared to the present one, were annexed, a little after the middle of the 17th century, the parishes of Dunrod and Galtway. Dunrod forms the southern part of the united parish. Its cemetery continues to be used, and marks the site of the church at the western base of an oblong hill, which »nce may have exhibited a red appearance, — the word Dunrod meaning the reddish hill. The church was given, in 1160, by Fergus, when he assumed the cowl, to the monks of Holyrood ; and it afterwards shared a common fortune with the church of Kirkcudbright. The ancient parish of Galtway forms the middle part of the united parish. The name signifies the bank or ascent on the water. The cemetery, still in use, overlooks one of the streamlets which flow into the estuary of the Dee.

A place near it is called, by a pleonasm not uncommon in the Scottish topographical nomenclature. Galtway-bank. The church, with its pertinents, being given by Fergus to the monks of Holyrood, was appropriated to the prior and canon of St. Mary's Isle, a dependent cell of Holyrood abbey A convent for Franciscans or Grey Friars was founded at Kirkcudbright in the reign of Alexander II.; but, in consequence of the ancient records having been carried off at the Reformation, it is very obscurely known to history. John Carpenter, one of its cowled inmates, in the reign of David II., was distinguished for his mechanical genius; and, by his dexterity in engineering, he so fortified the castle of Dumbarton as to earn from the King an yearly pension of £20 in guerdon of his service. In 1564, the church of the friary was granted by Queen Alary to the magistrates of the town to be used as a parish-church ; and when it became unserviceable, it yielded up its site to a successor for the use of the whole modern united parish. The ground occupied by the convent itself, and the adjacent orchards and gardens, were given, in 1539, to Sir Thomas Maclellan of Bombie In the town is an excellent burgh academy, conducted by three teachers, attended by 200 scholars, and affording tuition in Latin, Greek, French, mathematics, and all the departments of a liberal English education. Two parochial schools are attended by at most 134 scholars. Salary of each of the masters £25 13s. 2d., with fees, and from £2 to £7 other emoluments. Seven private schools, conducted by seven teachers, are attended by 300 scholars.

Kirkcudbright Burgh

Kirkcudbright, a sea-port, a royal burgh, and the county-town of Kirkcudbrightshire, is pleasantly seated on the left bank of the Dee; 6 miles north of the point where the river becomes lost in the sea; 21 miles from New Galloway; 28 from Dumfries ; 33 from Newton-Stewart; 60 from Portpatrick; and 101 from Edinburgh. It is encinctured on the one side by the river, and on the other by the wooded portion of the parish,—sylvan slopes coming umbrageously down from the gentle heights on the back ground, or stretching southward in a broad belt of luxuriance till they become identified, at a mile's distance, with the almost isleted peninsula of St. Mary's Isle, sending out an invasion of forest-scenery on the bosom of the estuary. Seen from a little distance, the town seems gay and almost grand, more resembling a small but proud city, than an inconsiderable and thinly populated town. In the interior, it is regular, neat, clean, and contains a larger proportion of recently built houses than almost any other town in Scotland. A society of rather singular character, consisting of a large number of inhabitants, who build by subscription of all the members a given number of houses annually, and dispose of each among the subscribers by a sort of lottery, has achieved great things, not only in modernizing the town, but in throwing over it an air of taste and pretension which is nearly without a parallel, or even a tolerable imitation among Scottish towns of its size. Capitalists, too, who have enough to live like gentlemen, but not sufficient to purchase estates, and a numerous staff of legal functionaries who possess an easy competency in connexion with the civil business of the county, have adopted the town, either from choice or from convenience, as their place of residence, and contributed not a little to give it features of elegance or polish. So long ago as 1764, it became supplied with excellent spring-water by conveyance through leaden pipes ; it has not failed, of course, to provide itself with the modern luxury of gas-light; and as to other appliances of convenience and comfort, it has them in a style of keeping with these.

The western and southern sides of the town are formed by two streets, at right angles with each other, both of which, very absurdly, bear the name of High-street. From a point on the bank of the Dee, 200 yards west of a sudden debouch of the river from a southerly to a westerly course, High Street runs due south over a distance of 275 yards; and it then, while sending a slight elongation westward, runs due east over a distance of 400 yards. At a distance of about 130 yards from the southward line of High Street, Castle Street runs parallel with it and to the east of it, from nearly the river side to the eastward line of High Street. Union Street connects the parallel thoroughfares nearly at their middle, in the manner of the connecting stroke between the limbs of the letter H. Going off from the north end of Castle Street, at an obtuse angle of about 55 or 60 degrees, Cuthbert Street runs in a direction north-east by east over a distance of 400 yards. Intersecting this street obliquely, about two-thirds way from its commencement at Castle Street, St. Mary's Street stretches a brief space northward, leading the way to Tongueland-bridge, and sends off an unedificed thoroughfare southward to intersect the eastern High Street, and afterwards fork into roads respectively to St. Mary's Isle and to Dundrennan. Somewhat parallel with this line to the east of it, but bending in the form of a small segment of a circle, runs Millburn Street, extending from the eastern termination of High-street, to a point 650 yards to the north, where, near the entrance of a small brook into the Dee, are a mill and a tannery. All the streets, with the exception of the last and of High-street, possess more or less regularity of aspect, and consist simply of continuous lines of edifices. But Millburn Street has a sort of suburban or village character, and is sometimes spoken of, though incorrectly, as if it were not compact with the town. High Street, on the other hand, wants a strictly modern character, and is winged all the way along both sides of both its lines with "closses," or narrow brief alleys. Yet, in front, it has many good houses, some handsome shops, and several public buildings; and in the rear it has little gardens, encompassed with neat walls, and sending occasionally up an ornamental tree; so that, altogether, it produces a pleasing effect.

Sixty or seventy yards south of the angle made by the two lines of High Street stands the burgh academy, a capacious and elegant structure, containing, in addition to its proper accommodations, a large room occupied by a public subscription-library. At the west end of the east and west High Street, looking down the north and south High Street, are the old jail and a spire, - the latter a conspicuous object, and the former both a large and a curious one. In front of the old jail stands the market-cross, purporting, from an inscription on it, to have been erected in 1504. On the opposite side of the same line of High Street, but 70 or 80 yards to the east, are the new jail and the county-hall, edifices erected in 1816, and of very creditable appearance. Directly opposite them is - what becomes noticeable in a place like Kirkcudbright- a brewery.

On the bank of the river, at the north end of Castle Street, and looking along that thoroughfare, stands the neat and capacious parish-church. In High Street is the meeting-house belonging to the United Secession, - a building of agreeable aspect.

A little west of the town, very near the river, are some mounds surrounded by a deep fosse, the remains of a very ancient fortified castle. The tide probably flowed round it in former times, and filled the fosse with water. The castle - now vulgarly called Castledykes, but known in ancient writings as Castlemains - belonged originally to the Lords of Galloway, when they ruled the province as a regality separate from Scotland; and seems to have been built to command the entrance of the harbour. Coming into the possession of John Baliol as successor to the Lords of Galloway, it was, for some time, during the war of 1300, the residence of Edward I. and his queen and court; and passing into the hands of the Douglases, on the forfeiture of Edward Baliol, it remained with them till 1455, when their crimes drew down upon them summary castigation, and in that year was visited by James II. when on his march to crush their malign power. Becoming now the property of the Crown, it offered, in 1461, a retreat to Henry VI. after his defeat at Towton, and was his place of residence while his queen Margaret visited the Scottish queen at Edinburgh. In 1508, it was the temporary residence of James IV., who, while occupying it, was hospitably entertained by the burgh; and, next year, by a charter, dated at Edinburgh, it was gifted, along with some attached lands, to the magistrates for the common good of the inhabitants. The land, though alienated, at some period, by the corporation, and though not within the burgh previous to the grant, continues to be subject to burgage tenure - Not very many paces west of the parish-church, or between the northern terminations of Castle-street and High-street, stands the ruinous but venerable form of the castle of Kirkcudbright, built in the year 1582 by Thomas Maclellan of Bombie, the ancestor of the Lords Kirkcudbright. It is a strong, massive. Gothic building, lifting its upper work so boldly into view as to give, conjointly with the towers of the jail, distinctiveness and markedness of feature to the burghal landscape; and, at the time when it was reared, it must have been a splendid, as it is still a spacious edifice At comparatively very recent date, broad vestiges existed of town fortification. At a time when the town consisted chiefly of a single street running up from the harbour, it appears to have been surrounded by a wall and a deep ditch, the latter filled from the flowing tide ; and it had at its two ends, strong gates, which, little more than 50 years ago, were pulled down to make way for new houses. An English party who marched against the town in 1547, in the stupid warfare about the marriage-treaty between Mary and Edward VI., narrate that as they approached " Kirkobrie, they who saw us coming barred their gates, and kept their dikes, for the town is diked on both sides, with a gate to the waterward, and a gate on the over end to the fell ward," - and that, in consequence, English force was repelled by Scotch precaution.

Kirkcudbright has never been the seat of any considerable manufacture or trade. Hector Boece, indeed, describes it as, in his day, " ane rich town, full of merchandise;" but he seems either to have been totally misinformed, or to have, amid the actionless penury of his age, reckoned that " riches" and " merchandise" which, in the present stirring and productive era, would be esteemed only the snug competency and the village trade of a homely huckster. During the disturbed and semi-anarchical period when the Dick Hatteraiks of the contraband trade infested the coasts of the Solway Frith, the inhabitants had such a connexion with the desperadoes as comported ill with the prosperity of the town, and exerted a malign influence upon the habits of their posterity at the moment when other parts of Scotland were starting in the career of modern productive industry. By a strange infatuation, too, the town, when proposed to be the adopted site of the first and very promising attempt to introduce the cotton manufacture to Galloway, superciliously rejected the offered advantage, and sent away the gentlemen who would have done it a service to build their factories at Gatehouse-of-Fleet. Hardly were the erections on the Fleet completed, when Kirkcudbright saw the suicidal tendency of its conductor, and made a hasty attempt to retrieve its error. Mules and jennies were erected; weavers were brought from a distance to work with the fly-shuttle; and a woollen manufactory was commenced. But so poor has been the result, that, after the lapse of half-a-century, the only monuments of these seemingly promising exertions are 60 looms, all plain, and all for cotton fabrics. A brewery, a tannery, a grinding-mill — all already incidentally noticed — a few stocking-frames, the means in two building yards of occasionally building one or two coasting vessels, even of as large burden as 250 tons, and the appliances of the requisite number of the various classes of artificers for local service, complete the list of the town's establishments and tools of manufacture. Nor is its commerce on a much larger scale. The aggregate tonnage of all the vessels belonging both to the port and to the district within the range of its custom-house establishment—exclusive of a steamer which maintains a communication with Whitehaven and Liverpool—is probably short of 2,000. Considerable quantities of oats, barley, and potatoes are exported to the Clyde, but chiefly to England. The merchants are obliged to make coal their principal import; yet they occasionally send a small vessel across the Atlantic for West Indian produce, and bring wine and other luxuries from England. Yet the harbour is much the best on the south coast of Scotland; though, owing to the almost complete recess of the peculiar tide of the Solway, it is fully suitable for such vessels only as can take the ground. It is naturally safe, has good anchorage, affords shelter from all winds, and extends from the mouth of the river to the town about 6 miles. An islet called the Little Ross lies across its entrance, allowing a channel on the east IJ mile wide, safe and bold on both sides, and having behind it a road, with 16 feet at low water, and 40 feet at high water, where vessels may ride at safety in gales from any point round three-fourths of the compass. Above Little Ross are Balmangan Bay, a considerable inlet on the west, and Manxman's lake, a large bay running up the east side of St. Mary's Isle. On the Isle a bar runs so far across the channel as to impose on vessels the choice of sailing over, in about 20 feet water at ordinary spring tides, or steering along a narrow waterway close in with the rocks. On the shore at the town is a fine shelving beach, offering to vessels the alternative of lying dry on its sands, or of riding at anchor in the channel, with a depth of water 8 feet in the ebb and 28 in the flood. The rise of the tide being 20 feet, vessels of 200 tons have facility for suiting 2 miles beyond the town to Tongueland, where a natural barrier terminates the navigation: See the article Dee. A natural harbour so expansive, so variform, so advantageous, and, amid the impetuous and menacing tides of the south coast of Scotland, so peculiarly sheltered, ought, one would think, to have long ago rendered Kirkcudbright, not only the entrepot for most of Galloway and Dumfries-shire, but the seat of an extensive general commerce maintained by local manufacture. Nature, however, long remained here almost wholly unthanked by art, and even yet has been acknowledged only to the extent of expending about £1,620 in the excavation of the harbour, and the erection of new piers. " The harbour," summarily report the burgh-commissioners, " has great depth of water; but there is no trade or manufacture worth mentioning; and the town appears stationary." Not even the obvious and highly advantageous facility of a bridge across the Dee, with a drawbridge for the transit of vessels, either exists or seems to have been contemplated. A ferry, by means of a curious sort of boat, or Tongueland bridge 2 miles up the river, serve the town's people, and all the country on the south-east, as a succedaneum. Too little intercourse even is maintained with the interior, either for bringing to the domestic market a choice supply of articles of consumpt from the farmer and the grazier, or for prosecuting a retail trade proportioned in magnitude to the advantageousness of the town's position.

Nearly all the importance of Kirkcudbright arises from its being the adopted home of small capitalists, and the county-town of the Stewartry. The seat of the sheriff-court and of the practitioners of the law, it draws from the circumjacent country no in-considerable annual sums as expenses of lawsuits. The genteel or monied inhabitants do not, as in most places, straggle in the outskirts in suburban villas; but they take up their place firmly and unequivocally as citizens, - form proportionately a very large portion of the population, and so decidedly give the place its tone that, among even the lowest classes, an unusually high degree of liberal intelligence prevails. The richer burghers, too, instead of exhibiting those habits which generally characterize the opulent inhabitants of great manufacturing cities, seem rather to take the tone of their manners from the county gentlemen, and—greatly to their credit—are nearly utter strangers to the fashionable follies and vanity and dissipation which are connected with the flaunting promenade, the ball-room, and the theatre. The town - as a whole, displays a relish rather for the calm enjoyments of mind, than for the tumultuous and chiefly animal pleasures elsewhere in vogue.

Kirkcudbright has a branch-office of the Bank of Scotland; some good inns, the principal of which is the Commercial; a news-room; a Masonic-lodge ; a billiard-room ; a regatta-club; and some benevolent and patriotic institutions. Anciently it was a burgh-of-regality, and held of the Douglases, lords of Galloway, as superiors. It was erected into a royal burgh, in 1455, by charter from James II. ; and, in 1633, it received another charter from Charles I. The town is governed by a provost, 2 bailies, a treasurer, and 13 ordinary councillors. The burgh property is very considerable, and yields the whole, except about £26 of a revenue, which, in 1832, amounted to £936 9s. 10d. The expenditure for the same year was £864 14s. 4d.; and the debt then due by the burgh £4,343 2s. The magistrates exercise jurisdiction over only the old royalty, and in 1833 had only 6 civil causes; and they have little patronage, except the appointing of the town officers, and of the teachers of the burgh school. The jail is in a fair condition. Burgess' fees are, for a merchant and trader, £3 6s. 8d.; for a master tradesman, £2; for a labourer, £1. Burgesses, in 1832, 90. The incorporated trades with their respective numbers, and the entry-money which they respectively exact from a stranger, are, squaremen, 36, £3 10s.; tailors, 12, £5; clothiers, 20, 10s.; hammermen and glovers, 13, £3 5s.; shoemakers, 17, £6; weavers, 22, £3. Kirkcudbright unites with Dumfries, Annan, Sanquhar, and Lochmaben in sending a member to parliament. Enrolled constituency, in 1832, 111; but available constituency, 151. A weekly market is held on Friday; and annual fairs are held on the last Friday of March and September, and on the Friday preceding Castle Douglas, or Kelton-hill, mid-summer fair. Population, in 1831, 2,690.

Kirkcudbright gave the title of Baron, in the Scottish peerage, to the family of Maclellan of Bombie. This family, once very powerful, the proprietors of several castles, and wielding not a little influence in Galloway, has already been incidentally noticed. Sir Patrick Maclellan, proprietor of the barony of Bombie, situated in the parish, incurred forfeiture in consequence of marauding depredations on the lands of the Douglases, Lords of Galloway. Sir William, his son—incited by a proclamation of James II. offering the forfeited barony to any person who should disperse a menacing band of gypsies who infested the country, and capture the body of their leader, dead or alive, in evidence of success—rushed boldly in search of the proscribed marauders, and earned back his patrimony, by carrying to the King the bead of their captain on the point of his sword. To commemorate the manner in which he regained the barony, he adopted as his crest an erect right arm, the hand grasping a dagger, on the point of which was a Moor's head couped, proper; with the motto, * Think on,'—intimating the steadiness of purpose with which he contemplated his enterprise. Sir Robert, the 4th in descent from Sir William, acted as gentleman of the bedchamber to James VI. and Charles I.; and, in 1633, was created by the latter a baron, with the title of Lord Kirkcudbright. John, the 3d Lord, was an eccentric, addle-headed being, who, with all the impetuosity of a roused bull, and with an amount of imprudence which brought down his reason to a level with its instinct, ran right forward in a pell-mell career along the path which first offered, ready to be booted or scared round into a sideward or reverse career of similar character, to the detriment of all who had followed him in the chase. He commenced by being a fierce opponent of Cromwell and the Independents; and being, at the time, the proprietor of greater part of the parish, he compelled his vassals to take arms in the cause of the King, occasioned the ruin of the villages of Dunrod and Galtway, by levying nearly all their male population, sent off his recruits to fatten the soil of Ireland with their carcases, and incurred such enormous expenses as nearly ruined his estates. But at the Restoration, just when any royalist but himself thought everything gained, and ran fleetly to the King in hope of compensation and honours, he shied suddenly round, opposed the royal government,— sanctioned the riot, slightly mentioned in our parochial notice, for preventing the induction of an Episcopalian minister,—and, at the time when the women were sent to the pillory, was captured, along with some other influential persons, sent a prisoner to Edinburgh, and driven to utter temporal ruin. His successors never afterwards regained so much as an acre of their patrimonial property; and, for a considerable period, were conceded their baronial title only by courtesy, and, when they appeared at the election of the representative peers of Scotland, suffered the indignity of having to vote under protest. One of them was the ' Lord Kilcoubrie,' whom Goldsmith, in his sneers at the poverty of the Scottish nobility, mentions as keeping a glove-shop in Edinburgh. In the reign of George III. they were at last formally and legally reinstated in their honours ; but, in 1832, at the death of the 9th Lord, the title—alternately a coronet and a football, now glittering on the head, and now tossed in the mire by the foot of every wayfarer—sank quietly into extinction.