Ayrshire > Volume 2

132 HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE
when the great Norse King made his last fight for his
Scottish possessions.
Of the early lairds comparatively little is known. For
generations before 1493, as appears from an instrument of
sasine, they had held the office of Maor of fee (hereditary
Sergeant or Coroner) within the bounds of the lordship
of Largs. In 1536 a younger son of the family was
appointed hereditary Sergeant of the island of Cumbrae
by a Crown charter, which conveyed to him the lands of
BaUekewin. Tradition has it that a Boyle of Kelburn
was slain at the battle of Sauchieburn, June 11, 1488,
fighting for James III. When William Boyle died, in
or before 1495, he was succeeded in Kelburn by his son
John, who seems to have been a man of importance in
his time. He lived to a good old age, dying sixty years
after his succession. In 1541 he was granted exemption
from the personal military service which he owed as a
tenant-in-chief of the Crown, on account of infirmity,
an indulgence which was usually granted at the age of
sixty-five years. There is reason to believe that his
eldest son was one of the many slain at the battle of
Pinkie, September 10, 1547. ^ was his second son
who founded the family of Boyle of BaUekewin ; and
his third son received from his father in 1554 the lands
of South Ballochmartine in Cumbrae and became the
ancestor of a second cadet family.
These were rude times generally all over Scotland,
and conspicuously so in the west country, and it is not
surprising to learn that the Cumbrae Boyles lived among
a lawless people, and that they were not particularly
law-abiding themselves. Thomas Boyle in BaUekewin
was slain by four Highlandmen — why none can say —
and these satisfied justice in what was almost the
universal fashion by paying compensation to his heirs.
Then John Boyle, son of the second laird of BaUekewin,
some years later appears to have threatened certain
persons with violence who bad raised an action of
" lawburrows " against him — an exceptionally rigid
method of ensuring that he should be compelled to keep