Ayrshire and Renfrewshire

The shires of Ayr and Renfrew in the south west of Scotland had much in common. They were geographically contiguous, although Ayr was by far the larger of the two, paying nearly three times the assessment of Renfrew in the 1650s; and in the middle ages both shires had been incorporated into the Stewart principality, divided (from north to south) into the baronies of Renfrew, Cunningham and Kyle Stewart, and the earldom of Carrick. Acts Parl. Scot. vi, pt. 2, p. 837; A. and O.; Atlas Scot. Hist. 206-7. Ironically, during the mid-seventeenth century Ayr and Renfrew became the epicentre of covenanting resistance to the Stuart monarchs, encouraged by local noblemen such as Alexander Montgomery, earl of Eglinton, and John Kennedy, earl of Cassillis, and fired by the ministers of the radical synod of Glasgow. When much of the rest of Scotland agreed to enter the Engagement with Charles I in 1648, a council of war was held by Eglinton, Cassillis, the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*) and the local ministers in Ayrshire, who rejected the move and threatened to raise an army of their own. After the royalist defeat at Preston, Ayrshire, Renfrewshire and the rest of the region revolted, and their forces, led by Eglinton, Cassillis and John Campbell, earl of Loudon, marched on Edinburgh, to take over the government of Scotland in what would become known as the Whiggamore Raid. D. Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-revolution in Scot. 1644-51 (1977), 108, 115. This refusal to compromise reappeared in 1650, after the defeat of the Scots by Oliver Cromwell* at Dunbar, when a group of colonels abandoned the main army and formed ‘an association concluded and drawn up among the westland shires’, while the ministers of the south west issued their Remonstrance or Protestation, denouncing the majority of the Kirk for its continued attachment to the crown. J. Nicoll, Diary of Public Transactions (Edinburgh, 1836), 30. The forces of the new ‘western association’ were defeated by the Cromwellians at Hamilton in December 1650, and thereafter the covenanters of the south west cooperated with the invaders against their common enemy, Charles Stuart. Nicoll, Diary, 36-7.

Despite their quiescence during the military campaigns of 1651-2, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire were to prove awkward subjects for their Cromwellian masters. When formal union was tendered to the Scots in the spring of 1652, they were the only shires to refuse to send deputies to Dalkeith or to Edinburgh. Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, p. xxviiin, 184. This, and other acts of non-cooperation led the governor of Ayr, Colonel Matthew Alured*, to accuse the local gentry of being pro-royalist in January 1653, and fears of insurrection prompted the authorities to establish a strong garrison, with a new citadel, in the burgh of Ayr soon afterwards. Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 79. In the summer of 1653, as the earl of Glencairn led a royalist uprising in the highlands, both shires felt it necessary to send delegations to the English commander, Robert Lilburne*, to ‘vindicate and clear the said country and shire’ of involvement ‘with any in the north in arms’. Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 196-9. Government suspicions proved misplaced, however. When the rebellion reached the south west, it was in the form of raids from Argyllshire across the Clyde into Renfrew and Ayrshire, with the local population merely suffering the consequences, rather than joining the insurgents. Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 244.

The reluctance of the local leaders to collaborate with the government necessitated the use of military men in the administration of the shires. In 1653-4 the collection of assessments was assigned to two officers, Captain William Giffen in Ayrshire and Captain John Green in Renfrewshire, and their regulation in Ayrshire was allotted to the commanders of the Ayr garrison, first Colonel Alured and then Lieutenant-colonel Roger Sawry*. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, ff. 12v, 21, 27. Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, with Dunbartonshire and Lanarkshire, were effectively under the military control of the governors of Ayr in the same period – a necessary expedient, as moss-troopers and other robbers were still operating in the two shires in September 1654, and the assessment money was stolen in December of that year. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlv, unfol.: 16 Dec. 1653; xlvi, unfol.: 9 Sept., 2 Dec. 1654. Heavy-handed military government did nothing to encourage the local landowners to cooperate, and the parliamentary election held in September 1654 was a complete failure. Monck had to call upon on a former royalist, William Lord Cochrane*, to supervise another election, this time without the restrictions on voting which (he assumed) had ruined the first attempt. As he told Cochrane, the new vote ‘may be done without hazard, diverse members who were chosen by the shires after the time appointed by the ordinance having been accepted of, notwithstanding the qualifications of the persons electing’. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvi, unfol.: 2 Oct. 1654. Despite the easing of restrictions, once again no contest took place, as the local lairds stayed away.

After the collapse of the parliamentary process in 1654 the English government made greater efforts to encourage local participation in the administration of Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. Monck’s approaches to Lord Cochrane were part of this. In October 1654 he allowed Cochrane to travel to London, and gave him a letter to present to the protector, supporting local protestations of the ‘continuance of their peaceable demeanour’. NLS, MS 9752, f. 3. In the same month, Monck recommended that the former sheriff of Ayr, Adam Blair, should be restored to his post; and he ordered Sawry to gather the gentlemen and heritors together, to establish what money was owed by Renfrew to Ayr. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvi, unfol.: 2, 5 Oct. 1654. These initiatives continued over the next few years, and some improvements occurred. In 1656 the sheriffs of the two shires were local men: John Shaw of Sawbeg for Ayrshire and John Brisbane of Bishopstoun for Renfrewshire; and although an Englishman, Robert Wolseley*, was in post as commissary of Ayrshire, his counterpart in Renfrewshire was another Scot, Gavin Walkinshaw of that ilk. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, ff. 81v, 82; NLS, MS 9752, f. 11. But the climate of distrust remained. In July 1655, for example, when Sawry was ordered to convene the gentlemen of Ayrshire to choose some of their number to revalue the assessments, Monck added instructions as to how to proceed ‘in case the gentlemen so convened shall either refuse to make choice or those chosen refuse to act’. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 2 July 1655. The later assessment commissions also seem to have experienced problems of attendance. In most shires, the lists of commissioners drawn up in 1655 and 1657 were almost identical, but in Ayrshire and Renfrewshire there were significant changes. In Ayrshire, the 1657 commission omitted three of the 19 Scots named in 1655, and added a further 13 names, including Lord Cochrane and the earl of Cassillis. Renfrewshire lost three of 13 Scots from 1655 to 1657, and gained 10. Acts Parl. Scot. vi, part 2, pp. 838, 841; A. and O. Similar problems hampered the establishment of the new commissions of the peace in the winter of 1655-6. The Ayrshire list differed markedly from those appointed assessment commissioners in the same period, and the scheme had to be restarted on Monck’s orders in June 1656. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 20 June 1656; Scot. and Protectorate, ed. Firth, 309. The Renfrewshire commission was functional but lop-sided, as the most active members were drawn from the ranks of the local sympathisers with the Protester faction in the Kirk, including Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollok, Sir Ludovic Houston of Houston and James Hamilton of Aikenhead. NRS, JC26/19, ‘Bundle 3’, unfol.; JC26/22, ‘Bundle 5’, no. 8.

The elections for the second protectorate Parliament reflect the difficult political climate which had developed within Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. Initially, the Protesters tried to force the election of their own candidate, Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollok, who was ‘thought the week before to have carried, by a number of blue caps of that party … on purpose, as they say, to have been that party’s agent with the protector in all their desires’. Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. iii. 322. But Nether Pollok’s election was opposed by Lord Cochrane and his allies, who, through their ‘diligence and wisdom broke Sir George’s design’, probably with the connivance of the sheriff, John Shaw of Sawbeg. Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. iii. 322. The election indenture suggests that the turn-out was very thin. Of the nine names that can be identified with any certainty on a badly damaged document, only Sir Hew Campbell of Cesnock, Sir John Crawford of Kilbirne and John Kennedy of Culzean were of the most senior gentry rank, and Cesnock was the only justice of the peace from either shire who attended. C219/45, unfol.; P. Little, ‘Scottish Representation in the Protectorate Parliaments: the case of the shires’, PH xxxi. 322-4. The chosen MP, Lord Cochrane, was deeply controversial, and it seems the majority of the eligible electors chose to not to give him their endorsement. No details survive of the election for the third protectorate Parliament of 1659, but the result is significant. Instead of finding a suitable local representative to stand for election, the chosen MP was the deputy-governor of Ayr, Lieutenant-colonel Roger Sawry.

The drive towards native, civilian rule in the Scottish localities, so successful in other parts of Scotland, apparently had little effect on the covenanting heartlands of Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. Nor did the restoration of the hated Stuarts improve the situation. In the 1660s Ayrshire and Renfrew (along with neighbouring Clydesdale) saw the ejection of most of its ministers. Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 274. The exceptions from the Act of Indemnity, ratified in 1662, included such leading gentry figures as Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollok, Sir Hew Campbell of Cesnock and Sir William Cunningham of Cunninghamhead, while the earl of Loudon was fined a massive £12,000. Acts Parl. Scot. vii. 426, 424-5. Such treatment, and the attacks on covenanting conventicles which followed, provoked a spate of violent protests. Ayrshire and Renfrewshire were again united in their support of the Pentland rising of 1666 and the Bothwell Brig rebellion of 1679, which were put down with great brutality. Atlas of Scot. Hist. 145-7. The sullen refusal to cooperate, which marked the two shires’ relations with the Cromwellians, had been replaced by open hostility, revolt and suppression under the Stuarts.