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

340
MAYBOLE.
Carrick, the place anciently wielded more influence
over its province than the modern metropolis of the
kingdom does over Scotland, and was the site of
winter-residences of a large proportion of the Car-
rick barons. As the seat, also, of the courts of jus-
tice of Carrick bailiery, — the place where all cases
ot importance in a roistering and litigating age
were tried, — it derived not a little outward respecta-
bility from the numbers and wealth of the legal prac-
titioners who made it their home. In connexion,
too, with its collegiate church and its near vicinity
To Crossraguel abbey, it borrowed great consequence
from the presence of mitred or influential ecclesiastics
who, in a dark age, possessed more resources of
power and opulence than most of the nobility. No
fewer than 28 baronial mansions, stately, turreted,
and strong, are said to have stood within its limits.
Two of several of these which still remain figure in
association with such interesting history that they
must be specially noticed.
The chief is the ancient residence of the Ailsaor
Cassilis family, the principal branch of the Kennedys.
The building stands near the middle of the town,
bears the name of the Castle par excellence, and is a
high, well-built, imposing pile, one of the strongest
and finest of its class. It was the place of confine-
ment for life of the Countess of Cassilis, a daughter
of the 1st Earl of Haddington, who eloped with the
Gipsy leader, Johnnie Faa. [See article Cassilis
Castle.] The town's-people assume looks of so-
lemn mystery when turning a stranger's attention to
the building, and tell strange traditions respecting
the lady and her days of duresse. The Earls of Cas-
silis, directly and through the medium of collateral
branches of their family, wielded such power over
the province that they were called both popularly
and by historiographers, " Kings of Carrick ;" and
they used the castle of Maybole as the metropolitan
palace of their " kingdom." Gilbert, the 4th Earl,
who lived in the unsettled period succeeding the
commencement of the Reformation, pushed his power
into Galloway, and by murder and forgery seized the
large possessions of the abbey of Glenluce. He, for
some time, saw his uncle abbot of Crossraguel ; but,
the office passing to Allan Stewart, who enjoyed the
protection of the Laird of Bargany, he rapaciously
desired to lay hands on all its revenues and temporal
rights. His brother, Thomas Kennedy, having
at his instigation enticed Stewart to become his
guest, the unprincipled Earl conveyed the ensnared
abbot to Dunure castle, the original residence of the
Cassilis family, and there, by subjecting him to such
torments as have rarely occurred but among the Ame-
rican Indians, or in the dungeons of the Spanish In-
quisition, forced him to resign by legal instruments
the possessions of the abbacy. A feud arose from
this event, or was aggravated by it, between the
Earls of Cassilis and the Lairds of Bargany, and at
last issued in very tragical events. In December,
1601, the Earl of Cassilis rode out from Maybole
castle at the head of 200 armed followers to waylay
the Laird of Bargany on a ride from Ayr to his house
from Girvan- water ; and on the farm of West Enoch,
about half-a-mile north of the town, he forced on the
Laird an utterly unequal conflict, and speedily
brought him and several faithful adherents gorily to
tlie ground. The Laird, mortally wounded, was
carried from the scene of the murderous onset to
Maybole, that be might there, if he should evince
any symptom of recovery, be despatched by the
Earl as ' Judge Ordinal' ' of the country ; and thence
he was removed to Ayr, where he died in a few
hours. Flagrant though the murder was, it not
only — through manoeuvring andstateinfiuence highly
characteristic of the period — passed with impunity,
but was formally noted by an act of council as good
service to the King. The Laird of Auchendrane,
son-in-law of the murdered baron, was one of the
few adherents who bravely but vainly attempted to
parry the onslaught, and he received some severe
wounds in the encounter. Thirsting for revenge,
and learning that Sir Thomas Kennedy of Colzean,
intended to make a journey to Edinburgh, he so se-
cretly instigated a party to waylay and murder him,
that no witness existed of his connexion with them
except a poor student of the name of Dalrymple, who
had been the bearer of the intelligence which suggested
and guided the crime. Dalrymple now became tbe ob-
ject of his fears ; and, after having been confined at
Auchendrane, and in the isle of Arran, and expatriated
for five or six years a soldier, he returned home, and
was doomed to destruction. Mure, the Laird, hav-
ing got a vassal, called James Bannatyne, to entice
him to his house, situated at Chapel-Donan, a lonely
place on the coast, murdered him there at midnight,
and buried his body in the sand. The corpse,
speedily unearthed by the tide, was carried out by
the assassin to the sea at a time when a strong wind
blew from the shore, but was very soon brought
back by the waves, and lodged on the very scene of
the murder. Mure, and his son who aided him in
the horrid transactions, fell under general suspicion,
and now endeavoured to destroy Bannatyne, the
witness and accomplice of their guilt ; but the un-
happy peasant making full confession to the civil
authorities, they were brought up from an imprison-
ment into which the King, roused by general indigna-
tion, had already thrown them, and were placed at the
bar, pronounced guilty, and summarily and ignomini-
ously put to death. These sanguinary and dismal
transactions form the groundwork of Sir Walter
Scott's dramatic sketch, called ' Auchendrane, or
the Ayrshire Tragedy.'
The house now occupied as the Red Lion inn,
was anciently the mansion of the provost, and is not-
able as the scene of a set debate between John Knox,
the reformer, and Quentin Kennedy, uncle of the 4th
Earl of Cassilis, and abbot of Crossraguel. An ac-
count of the transaction, written by Knox himself,
was, with all its obsoleteness of verbiage and autique-
ness of phraseology, republished in 1812 by Sir Alex-
ander Boswell, from a copy- — the only one extant — .
in his library at Auckinleck. The debate was occa-
sioned by a challenge, on the part of the abbot, given
in the church of Kirkoswald ; it was arranged in the
course of an interesting correspondence, during which
Knox laboured to obtain for it a large audience and
conspicuous publicity; it was conducted in a dingy,
pannelled apartment, in the presence of 80 persons
equally selected by the antagonists, and included
several nobles and influential gentlemen ; it lasted
for three days, and was eventually broken off through
the want of suitable accommodation for the persons
and retinues of the select auditors; it consisted partly
of idle quibbling and logomachy, partly on Knox's
side of powerful and impassioned appeal, chiefly of
controversy respecting the priesthood and offering of
Melchizedek in connexion with the doctrines of sac-
rifice and the popish mass, and in no degree of argu-
ment on the grand points at issue between Roman-
ists and the Reformed; and it ended in the virtual
prostration of the abbot under the weight of Knox's
blows, and in healthfully arousing and directing pub-
lic attention as to the foul doctrinal corruptions of
the Romish creed. The members of a ' Knox club,'
I instituted in the town to commemorate the event,
and consisting of all classes of Protestants, hold a
triennial festival to demonstrate their warm sense of
the religious and civil liberties which have accrued
from the overthrow of the Romish domination.