Grampian Club > Monuments and monumental inscriptions in Scotland > Volume 1

366 AYESHIRE,
to be the instrument of carrying out a sentence of banishment
against so many earnest persons, Peden obtained his liberty. After
preaching in the north of England, he returned to Scotland in
1679. He ministered under hiding in different parts of Scotland
and Ireland till, worn out with suffering, he returned to Sorn,
where he lived in a cave prepared for his reception. There he
died in January, 1686, at the age of sixty. His remains were com-
mitted to the churchyard of Auchinleck, but forty days afterwards
his body was disinterred by a troop of dragoons, who dragged it to
Cumnock, proposing there to suspend it on a gibbet. At the inter-
cession of his countess, the Earl of Dumfries prevented the indig-
nity. The body was therefore interred at the gallows-foot. So
many persons in dying desired to rest beside the dust of Peden,
that the scene of his second interment at length became the paro-
chial burying-ground.
A tombstone in the churchyard commemorates Thomas Kichards,
Simon Patisou, and David Dunn, Covenanters, slain by order
of Colonel Douglas. A gravestone at Stonepark denotes the burial-
place of John McGeahan, a Covenanter.
PAPJSH OF CEAIGIE.
On Barn Weill HiU a memorial tower was reared in 1855 by the
late Mr. William Patrick, of Eoughwood, in commemoration of
Sir William Wallace, the Scottish patriot. Erom Barnweill Hill
Wallace is supposed to have witnessed the result of his stratagem
in destroying by fire the lams or barracks of Ayr, in revenge for
the wanton treachery of the English governor in entrapping and
slajdng Sir Eanald Crawfurd, his maternal uncle. As the hero
observed the flames and smoke ascending from the dwellings of
his country's foes, he exclaimed, " The barns burn weel ;" hence the
name of this hill. Barnweill monument is about eighty feet in
height; the top, reached by a spiral staircase, commands a wide