had been pre-engaged to one Sir John Faw or Fall of Dunbar, who, taking advantage of the earl's absence at the Westminster Assembly, came with fourteen followers, disguised as gipsies, and carried her off. The earl, however, returning unexpectedly, pursued the fugitives, hanged the ravishers either at Carlisle or else on the ‘dule-tree’ at Cassillis, and imprisoned the countess in a tower at Maybole, where she worked a tapestry representing her elopement, and often said (falsely) to be still preserved at Colzean. The Faws or Falls of Dunbar were real gipsies, kinsfolk of the Yetholm Faas. But the absurdity of this attempt to fix the date and to identify the personages of the ballad is patent; for Lady Jean Hamilton was born in February 1607, was married in 1621, and died in December 1642, the year before the Westminster Assembly. There are two letters extant from Cassillis to the Earl of Eglinton and the Rev. Robert Douglas, in which he deplores the loss of his ‘dear bedfellow,’ his ‘beloved yokefellow.’ On the other hand, in the Skene collection of music, compiled between 1615 and 1620, occurs ‘Lady Cassillis's lilt,’ an air almost the same as that of ‘The Gypsy Laddie’ (Dauney, Ancient Scotish Melodies, 1838). This fact is seemingly unknown to Professor Child, who doubtfully assigns to the year 1720 a broadside version in the Roxburghe collection, where the husband is the ‘Earl of Castle,’ and who also cites an American version (c 1820), where he is ‘Lord Garrick’ (? Carrick). In Motherwell (1740) and some other early versions he is unnamed. If the tradition enshrines one grain of truth, it must be assigned to the first half of the sixteenth century, when ‘Johnne Faw, Lord and Erle of Litill Egopt,’ was really a notable personage. As regards the Cassillis family, however, the name, of course, is pronounced ‘Cassels,’ and very possibly we here have merely a confusion between ‘the castle gate’ and ‘Lord Cassillis' gate.’
[Historical Account of the Noble Family of Kennedy; Burnet's Hist. and his Dukes of Hamilton, pp. 422–3; R. Baillie's Letters and Journals, ed. D. Laing; Camden Miscellany, 1883, with ten letters from Cassillis to Lauderdale; C. K. Sharpe in Constable's Scots Mag. November 1817; James Paterson's Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire, 1847; Simson's Hist. of the Gipsies, 2nd edit. New York, 1878; Professor F. J. Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, pt. vii. pp. 61–74 (Boston, 1890, with eleven versions of the ballad); and the Gypsy Lore Journal for April 1891.]
KENNEDY, JOHN, seventh Earl of Cassillis (1646?–1701), son of John, sixth earl [q. v.], succeeded his father in 1668, ‘being heir,’ says his brother-in-law, Burnet, ‘to his stiffness, but not to his virtues.’ He belonged to the Hamilton or ‘patriotic’ faction opposed to Lauderdale's government, and in 1670 was the single person in the Scots parliament that voted in the negative in the division on the severe act against field conventicles. In February 1678 fifteen hundred of the ‘highland host’ were sent upon free quarters into Carrick, most of them being told off to the Cassillis estates. The earl himself was outlawed for declining to give sureties against recusancy, and gained nothing by two journeys to London with the Duke of Hamilton [see Douglas, William, third Duke of Hamilton]. He joined in the revolution. Claverhouse wrote to Melfort 27 June 1689: ‘Even Cassillis is gone astray, misled by Gibby’ (Napier, Graham of Claverhouse, iii. 602). In that same year he was sworn a privy councillor to King William, and made one of the lords of the treasury. He died on 23 July 1701. John, the elder of his two children by his first wife, Susanna, daughter of the first Duke of Hamilton, predeceased him, leaving a son, John, the eighth earl. By his second wife, Elizabeth Foix, he had likewise one son and one daughter.
[Historical Account of the Noble Family of Kennedy; Paterson's Hist. of the County of Ayr, i. 287; Wodrow's Sufferings, bk. ii. ch. xiii.; Burnet's Hist. i. 292.]
KENNEDY, JOHN (d. 1760), numismatist, was a native of Scotland, graduated M.D., and resided for some time in Smyrna. He was a collector of Greek and Roman coins, and, according to George Ballard [q. v.], his Roman collection was the best private cabinet of that series in Great Britain (Nichols, Lit. Illustr. iv. 209). Dr. Mead sold him a portion of his Greek regal coins (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. vi. 219). He is stated to have died at ‘an advanced age’ on 26 Feb. 1760, in the Strand, London (ib. v. 451; Gent. Mag. 1760, xxx. 102). Kennedy's coin collection was sold by auction by Prestage in Savile Row, London, on 8 and 9 May 1760 (Sale Catalogue, pp. 3–18, 4to, in department of coins, British Museum). It included 256 coins of Carausius and 89 of Allectus, which were purchased by P. C. Webb for 86l. 10s., and afterwards passed into the Hunter collection. Kennedy's collection of about two hundred pictures, including two heads of himself, was also sold by auction in 1760. He published: 1. ‘A Dissertation upon Oriuna,’ 1751, 4to (illustrated with coins of Carausius). 2. ‘Further Observations on Carausius … and Oriuna,’ &c., 1756, 4to. 3. ‘A Letter to Dr. Stukeley,’
