Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/432

  mainly with this period; Pitcairn conjectures it to have been written by Auchendrain himself; Scott's Ayrshire Tragedy; Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, iii. 124–99.]  KENNEDY or KENNEDIE, JOHN (fl. 1626), poet, a Scotsman, published two small volumes at Edinburgh in the early part of the seventeenth century. His first work was a love tale interspersed with songs and relations in different metres, and entitled ‘The History of Calanthrop and Lucilla, conspicuously demonstrating the various mutabilities of Fortune in their loves, with every several circumstance of joyes and crosses, fortunate exploites and hazardous adventures, which either of them sustained before they could attaine the prosperous event of their wished aimes. Edinburgh, printed by John Wrettoun, and are to be sold at his shop a little below the Salt Trone,’ 1626. From the dedication to Sir Donald Mackay, afterwards Lord Reay of Stranever, it appears that this was the author's first production. It was reprinted with an altered title at London in 1631 as ‘The Ladies' Delight.’ Both editions are only extant in unique exemplars. The unique copy of the earlier edition passed from the hands of J. Chalmers, F.R.S., into the British Museum, while that of the later is in the Huth Library. Kennedy also wrote ‘A Theological Epitome or Divine Compend, apparently manifesting Gods great Love and Mercie towards Man,’ Edinburgh, 1629, of which a copy, believed to be unique, is in the Huth Library.

[Addit. MS. 24492, f. 132 (Hunter's Chorus Vatum); Payne Collier's Catalogue of Heber's Collection of Early English Poetry, p. 170; Corser's Collect. pt. viii.; Huth Library Cat.; Hazlitt's Handbook.]  KENNEDY, JOHN, sixth (1595?–1668), was the eldest son of Gilbert, the fourth earl's third son, by Margaret, daughter of Uchtred Macdowall of Garthland, and succeeded his uncle, John, fifth earl of Cassillis [q. v.], in 1615, being served heir to him on 25 July 1616. In January 1620 he obtained a license from James VI to spend five years in France, Germany, and the Low Countries ‘for his instruction in languages and doing his other lawful affairs,’ but in less than two years he was back in Scotland to be married. A rigid presbyterian, he took an early and prominent part in opposition to Charles I's ecclesiastical policy (1638), though at first he obstinately refused to join in any course tending to a forcible resistance. ‘But when,’ says Baillie, ‘he was given over of all as desperate, I took him by the hand, and left him not till at last by God's grace he became as frank in the defence of his country as any of his neighbours.’ He was present in the covenanters' camp upon Duns Law (1639), in 1641 was nominated a privy councillor, in 1643 was one of the three ruling elders sent from Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, and in February 1645 dated his second marriage contract from ‘the Scots League at Heighton in England.’ In the following August, after the battle of Kilsyth, he fled to Ireland; in 1646 he was one of the Scottish commissioners directed to urge on Charles I his acceptance of the English parliament's proposals; in 1648 he opposed the ‘engagement,’ and, with Argyll, Eglinton, and Lothian, headed the Whiggamores' Raid to Edinburgh, which expelled the convention of estates. He was the only peer among the seven commissioners sent in March 1649 to confer with Charles II at the Hague, and in the summer of that year he was appointed lord justice-general, and admitted an extraordinary lord of session. In 1650 he opposed the appointment of fresh commissioners to treat with the king at Breda, but was himself appointed one of them, along with the Earl of Loudoun. He declined to come to terms with Cromwell, and suffered much by sequestration. In February 1661 he was reappointed a privy councillor, and in June an extraordinary lord of session, but in July 1662 was superseded, for refusing to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy unless he might join thereto his explanation in writing of the supremacy. At the same time he alone in either parliament moved for an address to the king to marry a protestant, and found only one to second him. He gave Charles his word not to engage in any plots, and received in return ‘a promise under the king's hand that he and his family should not be disturbed, let him serve God in what way he pleased’ (, i. 227). He died in April 1668. The ‘grave and solemn earl,’ as Craufurd calls him, ‘Don John,’ to give Tweeddale's nickname, was a man of much virtue and justice, but ‘stiff’ and eccentric. He married, first, in 1621, Jean, daughter of Thomas Hamilton, first earl of Haddington [q. v.], and by her had a son, James, who died young, and three daughters, of whom the eldest became Margaret Burnet [q. v.] He married, secondly, in 1645, Margaret, daughter of William, tenth earl of Errol, and widow of Henry, lord Ker, and by her had issue John, seventh earl [q. v.], and two daughters.

It is his first countess who is identified with the heroine of the ballad of ‘The Gypsy Laddie’ by Finlay, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Robert Chambers, and subsequent writers. According to them, her affections