KIRKCUDBRIGHT (pron.

See also:

• KER, JOHN (1673-1726)

Ker-k4-bri)  , a royal and police burgh, and county town of Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland . Pop . (1901), 2386 . It is situated at the mouth of the Dee, 6 m. from the sea and 3o m . S.W. of Dumfries by the Glasgow & South-Western railway, being the terminus of a branch line . The old form of the name of the town was Kilcudbrit, from the Gaelic Cil Cudbert, " the chapel of Cuthbert," the saint's body having lain here for a short time during the seven years that lapsed between its exhumation at Lindisfarne and the re-interment at Chester-le-Street . The estuary of the Dee is divided at its head by the peninsula of St Mary's Isle, but though the harbour is the best in south-western Scotland, the great distance to which the tide retreats impairs its usefulness . Among the public buildings are the academy, Johnstone public school, the county buildings, town-hall, museum, Mackenzie hall and market cross, the last-named standing in front of the old court-house, which is now used as a drill hall and fire-station . No traces remain of the Greyfriars' or Franciscan convent founded by Alexander II., nor of the nunnery that was erected in the parish of Kirkcudbright . The ivy-clad ruins of Bomby castle, founded in 1582 by Sir Thomas Maclellan, ancestor of the barons of Kirkcudbright, stand at the end of the chief street . The town, which witnessed much of the international strife and Border lawlessness, was taken by Edward I. in 1300 . It received its royal charter in 1455 .

After the

battle of Towton, Henry VI. crossed the Solway (August 1461) and landed at Kirkcudbright to join Queen Margaret at Linlithgow . It successfully withstood the English siege in 1547 under Sir Thomas Carleton, but after the country had been overrun was compelled to surrender at discretion . Lord Maxwell, earl of Morton, as a Roman Catholic, mustered his tenants here to act in concert with the Armada; but on the approach of King James VI. to Dumfries he took ship at Kirkcudbright and was speedily captured . The burgh is one of the Dumfries district group of parliamentary burghs . On St Mary's Isle was situated the seat of the earl of Selkirk, at whose house Robert Burns gave the famous Selkirk grace: " Some ha'e meat; and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we ha'e meat, and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit." Fergus, lord of Galloway, a celebrated church-builder of the 12th century, had his principal seat on Palace Isle in a lake called after him Loch Fergus, near St Mary's Isle, where he erected the priory de Trayle, in token of his penitence for rebellion against David I . The priory was afterwards united as a dependent cell to the abbey of Holyrood . DUNDRENNAN ABBEY, 42 M . S.E., was, however, his greatest achievement . It was a Cistercian house, colonized from Rievaulx, and was built in 1140 . There now remain only the transept and choir, a unique example of the Early Pointed style . TONGUELAND (or Tungland), 2i M . N. by E., has interesting historical associations .

It was the site of a Premonstratensian abbey built by Fergus, and it was here that Queen Mary rested in her

flight from the field of Langside (May 13, 1568) . The well near Tongueland bridge from which she drank still bears the name of the Queen's Well .