Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/309

   CUNNINGHAM, ALEXANDER, first (d. 1488), was descended from a family which obtained the manor of Cunningham, in the parish of Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, in the twelfth century. He was the eldest son of Sir Robert Cunningham (who received a charter of the lands of Kilmaurs from Robert, duke of Albany, and was knighted by James I) by his wife Ann, a daughter of Sir John de Montgomery of Eglinton and Ardrossan. He was created a lord of parliament by the title Lord Kilmaurs about 1450. In January 1477–8 he received a charter of the lands of Drip in the parish of Kilbride, Lanarkshire (Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, vol. i. entry 1,342). He was created Earl of Glencairn (a parish in the western part of Nithsdale, Dumfriesshire) by James III 28 May 1488, for the powerful assistance he had rendered against the rebel lords at Blackness. He was slain at the battle of Sauchieburn 11 June of the same year. By his wife Margaret, daughter of Adam Hepburn of Hailes, he had four sons. By the Rescissory Act passed by James IV 17 Oct. 1488, his eldest son Robert was deprived of the earldom and reduced to the rank of Lord Kilmaurs. It was, however, revived in the person of Cuthbert, third earl, in 1505.

 CUNNINGHAM, ALEXANDER, fifth (d. 1574), one of the principal promoters of the reformation in Scotland, was the third son of William, fourth earl, by his second wife Margaret (or Elizabeth), daughter and heiress of John Campbell of West Loudoun. Along with his father he was, as Lord Kilmaurs, a supporter of the reformed faith as early as 1540, and about this time composed a satirical poem against the order of Grey Friars, who had lately made themselves odious by their persecution of George Buchanan. It is entitled ‘Ane Epistle direct fra the Holye Armite of Allarit (Thomas Douchtie, the founder of the chapel of our Lady of Loretto; formerly called Allarit or Alarett) to his Brethern the Gray Freires,’ and was printed by Knox in his ‘History of the Reformation’ (Works, ed. Laing, i. 72–5). It was also published in Sibbald's ‘Chronicle of Scottish Poetry.’ The fact that Knox printed the verses in his ‘History’ may be accepted as at least sufficient proof of their pungency and terseness. The fifth earl of Glencairn was perhaps the most consistent supporter of Knox among all the nobles of Scotland, and one of the few actuated by a strictly religious or ecclesiastical zeal. His valuable characteristics were at an early period discerned by Sir Ralph Sadler. Writing to Henry VIII in 1543, when Kilmaurs was in England as a pledge of his father's sincerity, he says: ‘Furthermore, he’ (the fourth earl of Glencairn) ‘hath written to your majesty to have his son home, entering other pledges for him. He is called the Lord Kilmaurs and master of Glencairn; and in my poor opinion they be few such Scots in Scotland for his wisdom and learning, and well dedicate to the truth of Christ's word and doctrine’ (, State Papers, i. 83). After receiving him safe from England his father, in January 1543–4, surrendered him as a pledge for the performance of a treaty with the governor against England, but on the invasion of Scotland by the English he appears to have been liberated by the governor along with Sir George Douglas on 15 May, and in the agreement concluded on the 17th by Lennox and Glencairn with Henry VIII an ample pension was conferred on the son as well as on the father. In September of the same year he along with his father declined to assist Lennox in his expedition to the west of Scotland. Succeeding to the earldom on the death of his father in 1547, he gradually came to the front as one of the most persistent opponents of the papal party. On the condemnation of Adam Wallace for heresy in 1550, Glencairn alone of those present protested that he consented not to his death (, Works, ed. Laing, i. 240). In September of the same year he formed one of the cortège of the nobility who accompanied the queen-dowager on a visit to her daughter in France (ib. i. 241). After the return of Knox to Scotland in 1555, Glencairn invited him to his house at Finlayston near Glasgow, where Knox, besides preaching, dispensed the Lord's Supper (ib. i. 250). In May of the following year he 