Ayrshire > Volume 2

io HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE
was enacted that a Professorship of Humanity should
be instituted in St. Salvator's College, and that these
fourteen prebendaries should be assigned as part of the
maintenance of the Professor. The patronage was
vested in the Earl of Cassillis, and so continued till
1747, when the two Colleges of St. Salvator and St.
Leonard were united ; and, the Chair of Humanity in
the former being suppressed, the right of presentation
was transferred to the Chair of Civil History. The
death of this distinguished prelate, whose virtues have
been highly extolled by the historian, excited much
public regret. It was at once a serious loss to the Church,
of which he was an ornament, and to the nation which
he had served so faithfully, and deprived the Crown of
a safe and a much needed counsellor.
Gilbert, as we have said, succeeded to the headship
of the family, and to the family honours. Between
May, 1457, and March, 1458, he was created Lord
Kennedy. In addition to high office in Carrick, he was
appointed (1465) Keeper, and then (1466) Constable of
Stirling Castle. He became involved, with the Boyds
of Kilmarnock, in the capture of James III., 1466, but
made a show of opposition, and, for the sake of
appearances, submitted to a brief imprisonment in
Stirling Castle ; but he was wise enough not to permit
himself to be involved in the fall of the Boyds in 1469.
He frequently attended Parliament, his last appearance
there being in March, i_j 78-79. By his first wife, a
daughter of Lord Maxwell of Caerlaverock, he had six
sons, of whom only one, and he the youngest, attained
to eminence. This was Walter Kennedy of Glentig
and parson of Douglas — the " greit Kennedie " of
Gavin Douglas in his " Palace of Honour." He is
most famous for the poem in which he and Dunbar
took part, called " The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy."
The poetry is perhaps less conspicuous than the mutual
abuse in which they indulged and the boasting of their
respective pedigrees. Kennedy describes himself as
" the Kingis blude, his treu speciall clerk," and as