Ayrshire > Volume 2

THE KENNEDYS 31
prisoner, but their request was refused, and no further
proceedings were taken against him.
The losses that had accrued to the Earl through the
persecution, combined with those that his father had
sustained, chiefly during the brief period when the
latter occupied the post of Treasurer for Scotland, so
crippled his resources that he was compelled in 1674
to sell some of his lands in Ayrshire as well as his estates
in Wigtownshire, which he did, through John Hamilton,
Lord Bargany, to Sir John Dalrymple of Stair, for
£93,712 6s 8d Scots, a sum equivalent to £7800 sterling.
It was not, however, till 1681 that steps were taken to
relieve him of the obligations under which his father
had come in the public interest, and the debt transferred
to the public account. At the Revolution the Earl
took an active part in public affairs, and from 1689
onwards he was frequently engaged in Parliamentary
and Treasury business. In 1695 he granted a lease to
some Edinburgh and London merchants to work minerals
on his estates, on a lordship of an eighth of the metals
wrought. He attended to public business to the last,
and was present in Parliament, January, 1701, six
months before his death.
The seventh Earl was twice married — first, to Susan,
the youngest daughter of James, first Duke of Hamilton,
and, second, to Mary Fox, daughter of John Fox of
Lincoln's Inn Fields. The latter became somewhat
notorious in London society. In 1728 she was arrested
at the instance of her milliner, to whom she was
very largely indebted ; and again, in 1745, for keeping
a gaming house and resisting its suppression. As a
result of her action in the latter affair, a resolution
was passed by the House of Lords that it should be
unlawful in such cases to claim the privilege of peerage
against prosecution. This lady died the following year.
The Earl's eldest son, John, Lord Kennedy, had
predeceased his father, and when the seventh Earl died
he was succeeded by his grandson, John, as eighth
Earl of Cassillis.