Ayrshire > Volume 2

138 HISTORY OF AYRSHIRE
of ability and integrity, he was more than once associated
with his elder brother in Commissions to investigate the
values of forfeited estates ; the Government of the day
employed him to make quasi- judicial investigations
outside his jurisdiction as Provost ; and, in 1683, he
was required to make a special investigation into the
truth of a statement that " a bag of money or gold of
the bignes of a two hundred pound sterling bag," exposed
by the downfall of an old house called Dumbisdaill, in
the barony of Kilmaurs, had been appropriated by cne
of the finders in defiance of the rights of the Crown.
James married in 1668 the daughter and heir of Robert
Barclay, a cadet of the Perceton family, and a rich
merchant in Irvine, with whom he obtained 20,000
merks, the estate of Montgomeriestone in South Ayrshire,
and property in Irvine. Another son of David of
Kelburn, Patrick, became a Bailie in Irvine, where he
appears also to have had an appointment under the
Crown. The elder daughter was married, 1670, to
William Wallace of Shewalton ; the younger remained
unmarried.
It was in 1672 that John Boyle, as eldest son,
succeeded his father in Kelburn. He inherited the gifts
of wisdom and of judiciousness that his father had
enjoyed in so marked a degree, and was greatly trusted
and much employed by the Government under Charles
II. On intimate terms with Lord Haltoun, brother of
the Duke of Lauderdale, he supported the Administration
of the Duke until its fall in 1680, but, in place of sharing
in the rigours that befel the adherents of that
Government, he remained in high favour with the new
Administration, which no doubt knew the value of his
ability, experience, and local knowledge, and how to
turn these to the best account in the service of the
State. Before his father's death he had been appointed
by the Privy Council Sheriff of Bute, during the minority
of Sir James Stewart, the hereditary Sheriff of the
county, and he seems to have been also one of Sir James's
guardians. The father of this young man, Sir Dougal