Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kennedy, John (1646?-1701)
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.]