Kennedy Family

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Kennedy

The Kennedy's are a GALLOWAY / AYRSHIRE (an area on the south west coast of Scotland) family, descendants of Duncan of Carrick who lived in the twelfth century.

This Clan which dominated Carrick for so many centuries probably derived from a branch of the Celtic Lords of GALLOWAY. John Kennedy of Dunure had already acquired Cassilis by the time he married Mary, heiress of the Carrick earls. Their son, Sir Gilbert Kennedy, took a favorite personal name of those earls, and was the father of James Kennedy of Dunure who married Robert III's daughter. Their son, Sir Gilbert, was not unnaturally created Lord Kennedy in 1452, as the grandson of a King, while his younger brother James was appointed Bishop of St Andrews.

Bishop Kennedy, born in about 1406, was one of the most outstanding prelates in Scottish medieval history. His uncle, James I, placed him in the See of Dunkeld in 1437, where he did much to reform that turbulent Highland diocese before he was transferred to St Andrews in 1440. Here his predecessor Bishop Wardlaw had secured the foundation of Scotland's first university, to which Bishop Kennedy added the college of St Salvator's. He extended his work of reformation in his new diocese.

After the murder of James I he continued to act as advisor and administrator throughout the reign of James II. When James II was accidentally killed by a cannon in 1460, Kennedy assisted his widow Mary of Gueldres in the government of the country and under took the education of the infant James III. He, along with the Queen Mother, governed in the name of James III. The honest and humane old cleric kept the country at peace until his death 1465. Only after the Queen Mother had died in 1463, and the Bishop in 1465, did anarchy return. His brother Lord Kennedy then took part in the palace revolution which gave power to the Boyds until James III came of age.

Although this made Lord Kennedy one of the Regents of James III's minority, it did not recommend him to the new sovereign. But David, 3rd Lord Kennedy, found favor with James IV, who created him Earl of Cassilis four years before he fell with his King at the battle of Flodden in 1513.

Gilbert, 2nd Earl, was assassinated by Sir Hugh Campbell of Loudon, Sheriff of Ayr, and supporter of the Douglas Angus faction, from whom Gilbert had unsuccessfully attempted to rescue King James V.

At the Reformation the last Abbot of Crossraguel, Quentin Kennedy, was the uncle of the 4th Earl of Cassilis. He appointed the Earl lay administrator of the abbey properties the first step to their embezzlement. But on the Abbot's death Allan Stewart was made Commendator, which threatened to deprive the Earl of his prize. He therefore carried off Stewart to Dunure Castle and roasted him over a slow fire in order to compel him to sign the deed in the Earl's favor. According to his own testimony, Stewart withstood the treatment. "When then seeing I was in danger of my life, my flesh consumed and burnt to the bones and that I would not condescend to their purpose, I was relieved of that pain, wherethrough I will never be able nor well in my life." Stewart was rescued from Dunrue by his relatives the Kennedys of Bargany, who were at feud with their clan chief, but the Earl kept the lands of the Crossraguel and merely gave the crippled Commendator a pension.

But the 6th Earl earned himself the surest place in his country's folklore when he scotched his wife's love affair with Johnnie Faa. According to accounts he was Sir John Faa of Dunbar, of whom there is no historic record, although he came with a party of gypsies to carry off the Countess from Cassilis. But Johnnie Faa was the name of the gypsy king to whom James V had granted the right rule his followers in 1540, nearly a century earlier. And the ballad may well be correct in making the Countess declare: 'I'll follow the gypsy laddie.' She was disappointed. Her husband caught the eloping party, hanged Johnnie Faa and his companions before her eyes, and incarcerated her for the remainder of her life.

From Cassilis, where the Countess had been compelled to watch from a window as her lover was hanged from the Dule Tree, and from Dunrue, in whose Black Vault the Commendator had been roasted, the Kennedy chiefs moved to a new castle at Culzean on the shore of the Firth of Clyde. It is one of the strangest of Adam achievement, half Gothic and half classical. Opposite its windows rises the dramatic island from which Archibald, the 12th Earl, in 1806 chose his new title of Marquess of Ailsa. It was at this time that the family provided for one of the numerous children of Mrs Jordan and the future King William IV of England and III of Scotland.

Castle Kennedy was built by the Earls of Cassilis in 1607, but passed to the Earls of Stair. Culzean Castle is considered to be the "jewel in the crown" of the National Trust for Scotland, was built by Robert Adams for the 10th Earl of Cassilis on the site of an ancient Kennedy Castle.

Archibald Kennedy, 8th Marquess of Ailsa (b. 1956), and 19 Earl of Cassilis is the present Chief and resides at Cassilis Castl