Ayrshire > Volume 2

THE BOYLES OF KELBURN 141
for Argyll. He was inundated with applications for
employment, or for protection, and in some of the
letters which he received somewhat curious requests
were presented. Thus, writing from Dunavertie, April
16, 1683, Robert Stewart says in a postscript: — "Lachlie,
his service remembered, intreats that ye may have a
cair of David Stewart that he spend not all his money
befoir he gae home, and have a cair that he keep it to his
wife and bairns, and ye should tell him quhen he wreitts
to him again that he seal his letter, and that he provyde
himself better with wax than he has done before he
come out of Bute again." Kelburn encountered great
difficulties in collecting monies due to the Crown by the
tenants of the Earl of Argyll and by way of feu duties,
and it was necessary for the Treasury to hold a judicial
inquiry. In his travels through the country the laird
found many of the inhabitants in a miserable state of
poverty. A subordinate agent, writing from Campbel-
town, June 28, 1684, bespeaks his favour for Kintyre.
" Your Honour," he says, " would pitie the cais of this
poor countrie as it now is, iff ye knew it ;" and yet, in
the same letter, he assures his patron that he need not
fear the incoming of Irish meal, the comparative
cheapness of which would have been so great an
advantage to the people.
While Kelburn's hands were sufficiently full in
Argyll, he did not neglect his duties elsewhere. He
remained acting chief of the preventive service in Ayr
and Renfrew, a post in which his position was
strengthened and his emoluments increased ; and he
was present at the meeting of Parliament in 1685, when
he was appointed to the important post of Lord of the
Articles. It was Argyllshire, however, that claimed
the exercise of his strenuous and unresting energies.
The same year the Earl of Argyll, acting in support of
the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, made his unsuccessful
descent on the West of Scotland. The Marquis of
Athol was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Argyll, with
Boyle as his deputy ; and on August 19 he received a