Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

170
KIRKCUDBRIGHT.
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 designative 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 belong-
ing to the burgh. A Sabbath school of old stand-
ing is attended by 300 scholars, and has a library.
There are two dissenting congregations, United Se-
cession and Holy Catholic Apostolic. The latter
assemble in a dwelling-house, having about 80 sit-
tings, 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 com-
pleted in 1822, and cost £1,100. Sittings 550.
Stipend £85, but variable and increasing. An ec-
clesiastical 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 cog-
nominal place in the appellation of the parish, into
" Cudbright," and still more oddly fused, in popular
pronunciation, into "Coobry." The site of the an-
cient church is commemorated by a cemetery J 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 interest-
ing 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 circum-
jacent country, famous for its sturdy defences of the
covenant. The church was given, in the 12th cen-
tury, 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 dedi-
cated to St. Andrew; the chaplainries, cemetery,
and other pertinents of which were conferred on the
corporation of the burgh at the overthrow of Pop-
ery. 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 au-
thor 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 par-
ishes 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
once 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 Kirk-
cudbright. 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 stream-
lets which flow into the estuary of the Dee. A
place near it is called, by a pleonasm not uncommon
in the Scottish topographical nomenclature, Gait-
way-bank. The church, with its pertinents, being
given by Fergus to the monks of Holyrood, was ap-
propriated 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 Kirkcud-
bright in the reign of Alexander II. ; but, in conse-
quence of the ancient records having been carried
off at the Reformation, it is very obscurely known
to history. John Carpenter, one of its cowled in-
mates, 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 Mary to the ma-
gistrates 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 con-
vent itself, and the adjacent orchards and gardens,
were given, in 1539, to Sir Thomas Maclellan of
Bombie In the town is an excellent burgh aca-
demy, 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, 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 Dum-
fries ; 33 from Newton-Stewart ; 60 from Portpa-
trick; 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 com-
ing umbrageously down from the gentle heights on
the back ground, or stretehing southward in abroad
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 tinily 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 sub-
scription of all the members a given number of
houses annually, and dispose of each among the sub-
scribers 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 imi-
tation 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 com-