Ayrshire > Volume 2

go HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE
to read that the witch " is now a prisoner in Paisley upon
that account."
Of this marriage there were three sons, all of whom
died young, and four daughters. The Earl's second wife,
Lady Anne Gordon, was the eldest daughter of the first
Earl of Aberdeen, Chancellor of Scotland, and by her he
had one daughter, Lady Mary, born 1704, a celebrated
beauty and the subject of several laudatory poems bv
Hamilton of Bangour. His third wife was the famous
Siisanna, daughter of Sir Archibald Kennedy of Culzean,
who presented him with three sons and eight daughters.
The eldest son, James, born 1718, died in August, 1724,
and his death was the occasion of great grief to his father,
as is evident from his record of the event in the family
Bible : —
" My dear son James, who was born the nintien of
April, 1718, was removed out of this vaine and tran-
sitorie world (I trust God) to thos mansions of glorie,
which he has prepared for those who love and fear Him,
upon Wensday the tuentie sixth of Agust, 1724, a day
which I resolve always to keep as a day of humiliation :
and I pray God I may be enabled by his grace to keep
it aright, that he out of his infinit mercie may avert
futour judgments my and my predecessors' sins so
justly deserve. My dear child dyed betuixt eight and
nine in the forenoon."
The second son, Alexander, was tenth, and the third,
Archibald, eleventh Earl. But before Lady Susanna had
a son at all, she had five or six daughters. When the first
of these was born " my lord," according to Baillie, " took
very ill and unchristianly." What must have been his
feelings as daughter after daughter arrived ! The eldest
daughter, Elizabeth, married Sir John Cuninghame of
Caprington, one of the greatest scholars of the age, and
at her death in 1800 was ninety-three years of age. The
second, Helen, was the wife of Francis Stuart of Pitten-
dreich, a son of the eighth Earl of Moray ; the third,