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Cunningbame, lying on the northward of the Irvine river. All those great
divisions were ruled, even after the establishment of the shire, by baillies, who
in many points acted as sheriffs. We may see in the dispute between Ayr
and Irvine, as to their commercial privileges, that Robert II. directed the
baillie of Cunninghame to call an inquest for settling the facts (l); and
accordingly the inquest found in favour of the privileges which were claimed
by Irvine. The act for abolishing heritable jurisdictions put an end to
such authorities, and in lieu thereof the sheriff's court came in the place of
the whole, and is allowed to be a very respectable jurisdiction in our own
times. The commissary of Glasgow, indeed, holds a court to a limited
extent, which extends all over Ayrshire, in competition with the sheriffs,
being a cumulative jurisdiction. The justices of the peace hold courts generally
once a month at all the principal towns within the shire, which are of great
importance to the country. The royal burghs and the burghs of barony have
all limited jurisdictions, which are of some use within their usual limits. Ayr
and Irvine are the royal burghs, the burghs of barony are Kilmarnock,
Maybole, Saltcoats, Newton-upon-Ayr, Girvan, Mauchline, Kilmaurs, Newmilns,
Kilbirnie, Cumnock, and Prestwick; which, as they act under the control of
the court of session, very seldom extend their several jurisdictions beyond their
appropriate limits.
§ VI. Of its Civil History.] Ayrshire was originally settled by the same
British people who colonized England from the nearest coast of Gaul. With
the enterprize, which was natural to the earliest tribes, the Gaelic people of
England first planted Scotland and Ireland, so that the three British nations
were originally derived from the same Gaelic source during prior ages to the
first appearance of the Gothic colonists in Europe.
The great tribe of the British Damnii, both before and after the intrusion
of the Romans on Northern Britain, towards the end of the first century,
inhabited the ample bounds of Ayrshire with the neighbouring districts.
They long continued to hunt the game and to feed their flocks in the vales
and upon the hills of this diversified district, notwithstanding the Roman
inroad. Such were the occupations of the descendants of the Damnii, even
before the sixth century of our common era. They may have, indeed, been
sometimes disturbed by inroads from the south, before they were disturbed
by the invasion of the Scots from Ireland. But it was in subsequent ages
that the Scottish colonists from Ireland made lasting settlements among the
(l) Chart. Bob. ii., 8th April, 1372, in Hay's Vindication, 92, 93.