Excerpt from The Lords of Cuningham
From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries Ayrshire was the chosen home of the blood feud. National troubles weakened the central authority to such an extent that the barons, turbulent and jealous, took occasion by the hand; and when their energies were not called into exercise by the necessity for presenting common front to common foe, they sought to advantage themselves by carrying on destructive and desolating strife with their neighbours and rivals.
In Ayrshire these feuds were prosecuted with wonderful tenacity. In 1448, the office of King's Bailie in Cuningham, long held by the Cuninghames - Earls of Glencairn - was bestowed upon the eldest son of the first Baron Montgomerie. Incensed at the slight, Glencairn took the field; and the Montgomeries, nothing loath, sacked and burned the Castle of Kerslaw. In 1565, the King's coroner for Renfrewshire, William Cunninghame of Craigens, was set upon and wounded by the Master of Montgomerie; and two years later the rivals met in combat, to the loss of life and the accentuating of the rivalry. Arbitration was resorted to, and the Earl of Eglinton secured in the bailieship of the northern division of Ayrshire. But, so far from meliorating the existing conditions, the only result was to drive the Cuninghame family to continued reprisal.
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