116 Transactions. 
probably the most memorable event that has occurred in the 
history of the parish :— 
On several occasions he preached in Galloway, and in January, 
1681, he visited Troqueer at the request of his old parishioners. 
He preached at Dalscairth to a vast assemblage, and the Laird of 
Dalscairth accompanied him to Lochmaben, and back again by 
Rockhall to Dalscairth, where he again preached on a green near 
the house. On his way back to Edinburgh he preached at Sundy- 
well, in Dunscore. It was a time of deep snow, but the people 
set a chair for him, and pulling bunches of heather, sat on the 
moorside. Dalscairth accompanied him, and they were obliged 
to take the road at God’s venture, the hills being loaded with 
snow. They shunned the pass of Enterkin, and went by Lead- 
hills as safest. But the people seemed to waylay him, and 
flocked about him to baptise their children. After this he 
returned no more to the South. 
In this same year he was apprehended in Edinburgh, and 
sentenced by the Privy Council to be imprisoned on the Bass 
Rock, where, after four years’ cruel confinement, he died in 1685. 
His body was brought ashore and buried in the churchyard of 
North Berwick, where a handsome tombstone and _ long 
inscription mark his grave. 
In the olden time the Griersons of Lag possessed large estates 
“betwixt the waters,” 2.¢., the rivers Nith and Urr. In this 
parish they owned all the land south of the present Troqueer 
road, including Ryedale and the Moat, to Nethertown and 
Dalscairth ; and had a residence called Lag Hall, on or near to 
the site of the mansion-house of Mavisgrove, a little below which 
at the riverside is still in use for vessels a small quay called the 
Port of Laghall. In these days the house upon Troqueer Holm 
was called the Hall House. 
Sir Robert Grierson, the ‘“‘ Redgauntlet ” of Scott, who obtained 
unenviable notoriety for his persecution of the Covenanters, was 
made a baronet by King Charles II. in 1685, and died in 1733. 
In these times land in the parish was described as within 
the regality of Lincluden, but regalities were abolished in 1746. 
I heard the late Mr Pagan of Curriestanes, who was born in 
1803, say that he had seen flogging at the cart’s-tail through the 
streets of Dumfries, and a pillory in use in the Brigend. 
But an older man was the late Mr Welsh, born in 1794, who 
told me he had seen the funeral of my wife’s grandfather, General 
