Transactions. 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 IL., 
Wodrow says of him—‘“ This public-spirited gentleman, and 
Andrew Hay of Craignethan, had the honour to be.the two 
ruling elders who were present with Maister James Guthrie and 
other ministers when they met in the house of Robert Simpson 
in Edinburgh 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 Sessions—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 patron, and institution from the bishop of the diocese. He 
continued to hold field meetings although ejected from his 
charge, and it is recorded of his 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—J ohn 
a) 
