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Maybole Town
MAYBOLE, a burgh-of-barony, an ancient town,
and still the
reputed capital of Carrick, stands near the southern
extremity of its cognominal parish, on the mail road between
Glasgow and Port-Patrick; 12 miles from Girvan, 25 from
Ballantrae, 9 from Ayr, 22 from Kilmarnock, 44 from Glasgow,
and 81 from Edinburgh. It stands chiefly on the declivity and
partly along the skirts of a very broad-based and flattened
hill, with an exposure to the east, the summit of the hill
intervening between it and the frith and coast of the Clyde;
and it commands a pleasant and somewhat extensive view over
one-half of the points of the compass into the interior of
Carrick. An old rhyme, using one of several obsolete
variations of the town's ancient name says,—
"Minnibole's a dirty hole,
It sits aboon a mire."
This representation, in the sense usually attached to it of
the town being situated on miry ground, is now, and probably
always was, incorrect. A broad belt of deep green meadow,
nearly as level as a bowling-green, stretches along the base
of the hill, and seems anciently to have been a marsh; but it
could not have been a marsh of a miry kind, or otherwise than
green and meadowy, nor does it, even at present, form the
site of more than a very small and entirely modern part of
the town. The whole ancient site is declivitous, abounding
with copious springs of pure water; and, not improbably was
clothed in its natural state with heath. Two sets of names,
both very various in their orthography, but represented by
the forms Maiboil and Minnybole, were anciently given to the
town; they have greatly perplexed etymologists, and seem to
have bewildered the usually astute George Chalmers; but they
may, Professor Gray thinks, be referred to Gaelic roots,
which make them mean, 'the Heath-ground upon the marsh,' and
'the Heath-ground upon the meadow.' A town built upon a
heathy declination, and closely skirted by a meadow, or even
a grassy marsh, may thus, without 'sitting aboon a mire,' be
both 'Minnibole' and Maybole. The lower streets of the town,
called Kirklands, Newyards, and Ballong, are not within the
limits of the burgh, and consist almost wholly of weavers'
houses and workshops, tidier and in every respect better than
similar buildings in most other towns. The main street runs
nearly north and south, and—with the exception of a brief
thoroughfare going off westward at right angles from its
middle—occupies the highest ground within the burgh. A
considerable space, deeply sloping between it and the
low-lying suburbs, is disposed to a small extent in the
ancient cemetery and the relics of the collegiate church ; to
a greater extent in four or five incompact and irregularly
arranged streets; and to a yet greater extent in fields and
gardens which give all the intersecting thoroughfares a
straggling or detached appearance, and impart to the whole
town a rural, airy, and healthful aspect. The only parts
which draw the attention of a stranger, are the Main street,
and what is called the Kirk-wynd. These are narrow, and of
varying width, quite destitute of every modern attraction,
and sinless of all the ordinary graces of a line town ; yet
they possess many features ot antique stateliness, decayed
and venerable magnificence, and even fading dashes of
metropolitan greatness, which strongly image the
aristocratical parts of Edinburgh during the feudal age.
As the capital of Carrick, the place anciently wielded more
influence over its province than the modern metropolis of the
kingdom does over Scotland, and was the site of
winter-residences of a large proportion of the Carrick
barons. As the seat, also, of the courts of justice of
Carrick bailiery, —the place where all cases of importance in
a roistering and litigating age were tried, —it derived not a
little outward respectability from the numbers and wealth of
the legal practitioners who made it their home. In connexion,
too, with its collegiate church and its near vicinity to
Crossraguel abbey, it borrowed great consequence from the
presence of mitred or influential ecclesiastics who, in a
dark age, possessed more resources of power and opulence than
most of the nobility. No fewer than 28 baronial mansions,
stately, turreted, and strong, are said to have stood within
its limits. Two of several of these which still remain figure
in association with such interesting history that they must
be specially noticed.
The chief is the ancient residence of the Ailsa or Cassilis
family, the principal branch of the Kennedys. The building
stands near the middle of the town, bears the name of the
Castle par excellence, and is a high, well-built, imposing
pile, one of the strongest and finest of its class. It was
the place of confinement for life of the Countess of
Cassilis, a daughter of the 1st Earl of Haddington, who
eloped with the Gipsy leader, Johnnie Faa. [See article
CASSILIS CASTLE.] The town's-people assume looks of solemn
mystery when turning a stranger's attention to the building,
and tell strange traditions respecting the lady and her days
of duresse. The Earls of Cassilis, directly and through the
medium of collateral branches of their family, wielded such
power over the province that they were called both popularly
and by historiographers, "Kings of Carrick;" and they used
the castle of Maybole as the metropolitan palace of their
"kingdom." Gilbert, the 4th Earl, who lived in the unsettled
period succeeding the commencement of the Reformation, pushed
his power into Galloway, and by murder and forgery seized the
large possessions of the abbey of Glenluce. He, for some
time, saw his uncle abbot of Crossraguel; but, the office
passing to Allan Stewart, who enjoyed the protection of the
Laird of Bargany, he rapaciously desired to lay hands on all
its revenues and temporal rights. His brother, Thomas
Kennedy, having at his instigation enticed Stewart to become
his guest, the unprincipled Earl conveyed the ensnared abbot
to Dunure castle, the original residence of the Cassilis
family, and there, by subjecting him to such torments as have
rarely occurred but among the American Indians, or in the
dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition, forced him to resign by
legal instruments the possessions of the abbacy. A feud arose
from this event, or was aggravated by it, between the Earls
of Cassilis and the Lairds of Bargany, and at last issued in
very tragical events. In December, 1601, the Earl of Cassilis
rode out from Maybole castle at the head of 200 armed
followers to waylay the Laird of Bargany on a ride from Ayr
to his house from Girvan-water; and on the farm of West
Enoch, about half-a-mile north of the town, he forced on the
Laird an utterly unequal conflict, and speedily brought him
and several faithful adherents gorily to the ground. The
Laird, mortally wounded, "was carried from the scene of the
murderous onset to Maybole, that he might there, if he should
evince any symptom of recovery, be despatched by the Earl as
'Judge Ordinar' of the country; and thence he was removed to
Ayr, where he died in a few hours. Flagrant though the murder
was, it not only—through manouvering and state influence
highly characteristic of the period—passed with impunity,
but was formally noted by an act of council as good service
to the King. The Laird of Auchendrane son-in-law of the
murdered baron, was one of the few adherents who bravely but
vainly attempted to parry the onslaught, and he received some
severe wounds in the encounter. Thirsting for revenge, and
learning that Sir Thomas Kennedy of Colzean intended to make
a journey to Edinburgh, he so secretly instigated a party to
waylay and murder him that no witness existed of his
connexion with them except a poor student of the name of
Dalrymple, who had been the bearer of the intelligence which
suggested and guided the crime. Dalrymple now became the
object of his fears; and, after having been confined at
Auchendrane, and in the isle of Arran, and expatriated for
five or six years a soldier, he returned home, and was doomed
to destruction. Mure, the Laird, having got a vassal, called
James Bannatyne, to entice him to his house, situated at
Chapel Donan, a lonely place on the coast, murdered him there
at midnight, and buried his body in the sand. The corpse,
speedily unearthed by the tide, was carried out by the
assassin to the sea at a time when a strong wind blew from
the shore, but was very soon brought back by the waves, and
lodged on the very scene of the murder. Mure, and his son who
aided him in the horrid transactions, fell under general
suspicion, and now endeavoured to destroy Bannatyne, the
witness and accomplice of their guilt; but the unhappy
peasant making full confession to the civil authorities, they
were brought up from an imprisonment into which the King,
roused by general indignation, had already thrown them, and
were placed at the bar, pronounced guilty, and summarily and
ignominiously put to death. These sanguinary and dismal
transactions form the groundwork of Sir Walter Scott's
dramatic sketch, called 'Auchendrane, or the Ayrshire
Tragedy.'
The house now occupied as the Red Lion inn, was anciently the
mansion of the provost, and is notable as the scene of a set
debate between John Knox, the reformer, and Quentin Kennedy,
uncle of the 4th Earl of Cassilis, and abbot of Crossruguel.
An account of the transaction, written by Knox himself, I
was, with all its obsoleteness of verbiage and antiqueness of
phraseology, republished in 1812 by Sir Alexander Boswell,
from a copy —the only one extant— in his library at
Auchinleck. The debate was occasioned by a challenge, on the
part of the abbot, given in the church of Kirkoswald; it was
arranged in the course of an interesting correspondence,
during which Knox laboured to obtain for it a large audience
and conspicuous publicity; it was conducted in a dingy,
pannelled apartment, in the presence of 80 persons equally
selected by the antagonists, and included several nobles
and influential gentlemen; it lasted for three days, and was
eventually broken off through the want of suitable
accommodation for the persons and retinues of the select
auditors; it consisted partly of idle quibbling and
logomachy, partly on Knox's side of powerful and impassioned
appeal, chiefly of controversy respecting the priesthood and
offering of Melchizedek in connexion with the doctrines of
sacrifice and the popish mass, and in no degree of argument
on the grand points at issue between Romanists and the
Reformed; and it ended in the virtual prostration of the
abbot under the weight of Knox's blows, and in healthfully
arousing and directing public attention as to the foul
doctrinal corruptions of the Romish creed. The members of a
'Knox club, I instituted in the town to commemorate the
event, and consisting of all classes of Protestants, hold a
triennial festival to demonstrate their warm sense of the
religious and civil liberties which have accrued from the
overthrow of the Romish domination.
The noticeable civil buildings, additional to the
two mentioned, are the ancient town-residence of
the Lairds of Blairquhan, now used as the tolbooth,
-the ancient residence of the Lairds of Kilhenzie,
now the White Horse inn, —the ancient residence of
the Kennedys of Knockdow, now called the Black
house, —the house occupied by Sir Thomas Kennedy
of Colzean, now the property of Mr. Niven of Kirkbride, the
ancient residence of the Kennedys of
Ballimore, situated in the Kirk-wynd, —the ancient residence
of the abbots of Crossraguel, called the
Garden of Eden, and the Town-hall, a cumbrous old
pile with a low, heavy, spiral tower, situated at the Cross.
Though the town has not one modern public civil building, it
abounds in commodious and comfortable dwelling-bouses,
greatly superior, for every domiciliary use, to even the best
of its remaining baronial mansions. The parish-church is a
plain edifice, and might even claim to be neat were it not
disfigured by a small steeple which looks like a burlesque
upon architecture. The United Secession chapel arrests
attention chiefly for having a deep slice cut away from one
of its corners, —occasioned by a very bigotted and discreditable
attempt to prevent its erection.
Maybole, in every thing except its buildings, has been
singularly denuded of its ancient character; and, after
passing through a season of great depopulation and decline
consequent on the abolition of hereditary jurisdictions, has
risen into considerable importance as a busy outpost of the
cotton-manufacturers of Glasgow, and a ready receptacle of
the immigrant weavers of Ireland. It has no manufacture
whatever of its own, beyond the usual produce of
handicraftsmen for local use; and figures simply as a seat of
population, where the Irish weavers and the agents of
Scottish employers conveniently meet. Incomers from Ireland
have been so numerous as almost to counterbalance the
aboriginal inhabitants, and give law to the place; and, many
of them being Orangemen, they make periodical
party-demonstrations, such as give some trouble to the
sheriff, and excel in boldness most which occur in even
Orangeized Ulster. Excepting a few coarse woollens and
blankets, all the fabrics woven are pullicates, imitation
thibets, and mull and jaconet muslins. Maybole, jointly with
the villages of Crossbill and Kirkmichael, had, in 1828,
1,700 hand-looms, and, in 1838, 1,300. The gross average of
wages earned by each weaver is about 6 shillings per week.
The Report of Assistant Hand-loom Weavers' commissioners,
says that the morals of the Maybole weavers are "apparently
very low," and gives some details respecting them and the
agents which we do not choose to repeat. The
procurator-fiscal believes the value of weft annually stolen
in these parishes [Maybole and Kirkmichael], amounts to
£1,300 per year, and that warp is sent by 'small corks' at
Glasgow to certain weavers at Maybole, to be wefted there with 'bowl'
weft, so called because women who sell bowls were employed to buy it.
Maybole appears to have been erected into a burgh-of-barony
by a charter of James V., dated at Edinburgh the 24th
November, 1516. This charter gave to the inhabitants full
power to buy and sell, within the burgh, wine, wax, woollen
and linen cloth, and the power and liberty of "having and
holding, in the said burgh, bakers, brewers, fleshers, and
venders as well of flesh as fish, and all other tradesmen
belonging to a free burgh-of-barony." It granted, likewise,
"that there be in the said burph free burgesses, and that
they have power, in all time to come, of electing annually
bailies, and all other officers necessary tor the government
of the said burgh." The power of electing their own
magistrates does not appear to have been exercised by them
for more than a century. The records of the burgh prior to
1721 have been lost, but they are preserved from that time,
and it appears that the burgh was then, and has ever since
been, governed by a council, consisting of 17 members elected
for life. When a vacancy occurs by the death or resignation
of a councillor, or by his leaving the burgh, it is filled up
by a person elected by the remaining councillors. The council
choose two bailies and a treasurer yearly out of their own
number. The property of the burgh consists of the town-house,
flesh-market, and slaughter-house; apiece of ground called
the Ball green, and another piece of ground, of about four
falls in extent; and a pew in the gallery of the church,
occupied by the magistrates and council. There is a debt of
£30 due to the burgh from the parish conversion money. The
debt due by the burgh amounts to £37 1s. 5d. The revenue is
derived partly from the property, and partly from street
custom, market-dues, fees from entries of burgesses,
amounting to about £5 per annum on the average of the last
forty years, and from an annual tax imposed upon the
inhabitants, called stent, amounting, for the year 1832, to
£40 17s. 6d. The total revenue of the burgh, for the year
1832, was £68 5s., and upon the average of the six years
previous it was £65 per annum. The expenditure for the year
1832 was £63 2s. 3d. The magistrates have jurisdiction over
the whole burgh, and possess the usual powers of the
magistrates of burghs-of-barony, which were independent of
the superior previous to the passing of the Act 20, Geo. II.
They hold a weekly court, in which petty delinquencies, and
personal actions to any amount are tried; and they judge in a
summary manner in actions called 'Causeway complaints,' when
the sum at issue does not exceed 6s. 8d., and in geneial
services of heirs. From 1820 to 1833, the average annual
number of criminal cases before the burgh court was 10, of
civil cases 7. The magistrates have no assessor but the
town-clerk, who has no salary for the judicial part of his
duty; and the council patronially elect only the town-clerk,
who has £4 4s. a-year and fees, —the procurator-fiscal, who
has £2, —the collector of stent, who has 10 per cent, on the
amount collected, —and two town-officers, each of whom has £1
1s. and fees. A burgess-right must be obtained by any person
who would manufacture or trade within the burgh, and costs to
a stranger £1 1s., and to the son of a burgess 10s. 6d. The
number of burgesses, in 1833, was 205, of whom 137 were
resident. There are not within the burgh any incorporated
crafts possessing exclusive privileges. The town is lighted
with gas, and supplied with water, from the common good; the
police is regulated by the magistrates in virtue of their
powers at common law; and the streets are maintained and
cleaned at the expense of the turnpike-road trust funds of
the county. A weekly market is held on Thursday; and annual
fairs are held on the first Tuesday of February, O.S., and on
the last Tuesday of April, of July, and of October. The town
has branch-offices of the Ayr bank and of the Ayrshire
banking company; a savings' bank; nearly 40 inns and
ale-houses; a subscription and circulating library; a
parochial school; and an agricultural association called the
Carrick Farmers' society. In 1833, the population, within
burgh, was about 3,000, and in the streets of Kirklands,
iS'ewyards, and Ballony, about 1,000; and, in the same year,
the number of householders within burgh whose rents amounted
to £10 was about 55, anil in the adjoining streets 27, —of
householders whose rents were £o, but less than £10, was within burgh
184, and in the adjoining streets 40.
Maybole, till after the commencement of the present century,
was, in a great measure, isolated from other town's, and from
all Scotland except its own immediate precincts. The
deadening influence which fell upon it after it lost its
metropolitical character and importance, placed defences
around it almost as impassable as the moat and the exterior
fortifications of a feudal castle. Access to it was neither
invited, by its inhabitants, nor desired on the part of most
strangers; and by the few who sought it, it was not easily
obtained. But —through the exertions chiefly of Mr.Niven of
Kirkbride —excellent roads have been opened to it from every
direction, and various appliances set up to bring it into
terms of free communication with other parts of Scotland. An
extensive: carrying-trade to Glasgow, rendered necessary
since the introduction of cotton weaving, has gradually
familiarized it with the metropolis of the west, and has led
to a numerous transference of the enterprising or
adventure-seeking part of its population. The Glasgow and
Port-Patrick mail daily passes through it, to both the north
and the south; a stage-coach between Girvan and Ayr runs
through it twice a-week; a stage-coach of its own runs daily
to Ayr: and an impulse, not of trivial value, has been given
by the opening of the Glasgow and Ayr railway. —The climate,
though very humid, is said to be markedly salubrious. Maybole
escaped the visitation of Asiatic cholera, and is
traditionally reported to have escaped the plague. Instances
of longevity are numerous. " Within these 5 years," says the
Old Statistical Account, "Mr.David Doig, schoolmaster at
Maybole, died at the age of 104. About three years ago, a
woman died here, aged 105. In this town there are at present
10 persons, whose ages put together amount to upwards of 900
years." —The Rev. Dr. Macknight, the well-known theological
writer, was minister of Maybole for 16 years, and,
respectively in 1756 and 1763, while he held the office,
published his 'Harmony of the Gospels' and his 'Truth of the
Gospel Histories.' The Rev. Dr. Wright, the author of a
volume of Sermons, succeeded Dr. Macknight. A surviving
successor is the Rev. George Gray, now Professor of Hebrew
and Oriental literature in the University of Glasgow.
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