Agnews of Lochnaw

1488.] THE THIRD HEREDITARY SHERIFF. 101
magnanimity of James treated the affair with due contempt, and it
expired in a torrent of ridicule against the archbishop ; Bead, one
of the accused, being a man of firm mind and facetious repartee/' 1
The year of the Sheriff's succession has a melancholy cele-
brity for unusually bad weather, and a bad harvest followed
by a famine. Galloway suffered severely, and certain meteors,
the accounts of whose size are probably exaggerated, filled the
country with dread as the harbingers of calamity.
" Three moons appeared in the firmament," writes Sir James
Balfour, " about two in the afternoon of the 25th of September, with
much fryre, thunder, and raine, for three whole days thereafter."
In 1487, by an Act of Parliament, the sheriffs were ordered
to charge themselves with the custody of delinquents arrested
by the coroners, or of any persons charged with serious crimes,
whom each sheriff was ordered to receive and keep in " surety
and firmance, till the Justice Aire, receiving for the expence of
each such prisoner three pennies each day." The old castle in
the lake of Lochnaw was used by the Sheriff of Galloway for
this purpose, and had occasional inmates of this description until
the reign of Queen Anne-
Early in 1488 an insurrection commenced in Scotland, the
promoters of which obtained possession of the person of the Prince
Eoyal, and proclaimed him king. The Earl of Angus was the
avowed leader, and when the summons to arms went forth from
both parties in the state, the Galloway barons ranged themselves
under his standard. Unfortunately the names of these gentle-
men have not been preserved, but historians say these Galloway
partizans were the bravest and best disciplined of the troops then
together in the field ; mounted on small but hardy steeds, and
carrying spears longer than those of the ordinary cavalry of the
period.
Led by their respective chiefs, this service-like division
hurried up Glen-App, 2 and passing along the Ayrshire coast,
1 Pinkerton.
2 An old paper in the Advocates' Library has (Macfarlane's Geographical Col-
lections), "Glenap is in Galloway in the way betwixt Chappel and Balantrae."
Chappel is the modern Stranraer. Glen-App is now a part of Ayrshire.