Transnctions. 33 



most famous of the family, and would seem to have been an 

 elder in the parish kirk of Dunscore. Referring to the Restora- 

 tion of Monarchy in 1660 in the person of King Charles II., 

 Wodrow says of him — " This public-spirited gentleman, and 

 Andrew Hay of Craignethan, had the honour to be the two 

 ruling elders wlio were present with Maister James Guthrie and 

 other ministers when they met in the house of Robert Simpson 

 in Edinburgli at the Restoration of Charles the Second to agree 

 in an Address to the King, and was thereby imprisoned for 

 some months." (Wod. I. 7. 21.) Soon after, Mr Archibald, 

 minister of Dunscore; was by his Presbytery deputed to go to 

 Edinburgh to present a petition to the Earl of Glencairn, Lord 

 High Chancellor of Scotland, for the release of the Rev. John 

 Welsh of Irongray, James Kirko of Sundaywall, and others then 

 in prison — a rather riskish commission in the nature of things as 

 they then stood. A copy of the petition stands in the Presby- 

 tery records of Dumfries under the date 9th September, 1660, 

 and on the 20th of November in the same year the Clerk of the 

 Presbytery of Dumfries reports that a letter had been received, 

 wherein Mr Archibald of Dunscore declares that he had duly 

 delivered the said petition, and also that up to the date of this, 

 his letter, there had been no reply received. This boldness was 

 not forgotten, for Mr Archibald was one of the 400 ministers 

 declared to have no right to their benefices because they had 

 been elected by the Kirk Se.ssions — a practice followed between 

 1649 and 1660 — and not by the lawful patrons, and ejected in 

 1662 because they would not seek to receive a presentation from 

 the pati'on, and institution from the bishop of the diocese. He 

 continued to hold field meetings although ejected from his 

 charge, and it is recorded of liis widow, Elizabeth Key, that 

 when she died in 1689 she left one hundred marks for the 

 benefit of the poor of Dunscore. 



Imprisonment did not make any change in James Kirko's 

 sympathy for the Covenanters. Sundaywell became a favourite 

 resort of the ejected ministers. The famous John Blackadder, 

 of Troqueer, was in the habit of visiting and preaching there. 

 He was Kirko's guest at the time of the c-lebrated communion 

 held on Skeoch Hill in Irongray in 1678, and preached the 

 preparation sermon on the Saturday preceding at the " Preach- 

 ing "Walls," of which the ruins still remain on the farm of 

 Newhouse in Holywood. The officiating ministers were — John 



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