THE KINTYRE ARMOURS - A NEW APPROACH TO THE FIRST GENERATION
Peter Armour Niblock
Through correspondence in 1997 with the late AIB Stewart, I was invited at that time to submit to The Kintyre Magazine an article on the Armours of Kintyre. As one whose own Kintyre roots have been overlaid with a Canadian context since 1821, I was both surprised and pleased that from a distant shore I might be permitted to offer some insights into my Kintyre Armour origin. My great-great-grandfather, John Armour, was the son of Alexander Armour, tenant in Bellochgoiken, as it was then called, and Jean Love, whom the family knew as Jane. At the age of one year he was old enough to be included in the 1792 census of the Inhabitants upon the Duke of Argyll’s Property. With two sisters he took ship on the Niagara in 1820, arrived in Philadelphia on September 5th, wintered in Pittsburgh, and desiring to live once again under the British flag, they made their way north to Canada in the following spring.
In 1993 I knew nothing of my Kintyre roots. Since then, it has been a joy and challenge to chart this genealogy back to the original Armour family that came from Ayrshire as part of the Ralston plantation during the 1650s. It is well known that of the 12 tacksmen appointed it was John Cunningham of Hill-of-Beith who was given the tacks of Trodigal and Machrihanish. And knowing from the existing records that the Armours of Kintyre appear first as farmers at Trodigal, one is led to suppose that Cunningham would have drawn upon the inhabitants of his own estate in Beith to populate his tacks, and the original Armour progenitor may indeed have come as Cunningham’s Trodigal manager, while at Machrihanish he saw to his affairs himself.
Having met my namesake, Peter Armour, during a brief visit to Campbeltown in 1996, I learned of an article on the Kintyre Armours which he had authored in 1992 but which I had not had occasion to read until this past summer. In stating that the Armour family came from Stewarton in Ayrshire about 1665, he provided some corroboration for my conjecture about Beith, for Stewarton and Beith are but seven miles apart, which as origins go is about as small a ‘home-base’ as one is likely to obtain. It was, however, not sufficient that I be content with my Beith surmise without some other evidence to back it up. Whether it be Beith or Stewarton one imagines it was from the nearby port of Ardrossan that the Lowland plantation in Kintyre first set sail.
A door opened in reading again Andrew McKerral’s fine history of 17th century Kintyre. On page 129 he refers to a James Armour of Hillabee, one of whose servants, a John Martin, was taken prisoner following the abortive rebellion of the Earl of Argyll against the King in 1685. Because other prisoners cited were listed as of Kintyre, and because Kintyre was the launching pad for the revolt, I looked for Hillabee on a Kintyre map, but in vain. Through Mr Stewart I learned that it was a colloquialism for Hill-of-Beith. He went on to say further that the ‘of’ in ‘of Hillabee’ denoted ownership and clearly the archival source quoted by McKerral in good faith was in error because John Cunningham alone was the proprietor of that estate. But the error had the more relevance because for it to have been made at all implied that this James Armour must have had sufficient standing in Cunningham’s employ for it to have occurred. That he was a farm manager, or more likely, the chief steward of the estate, would be enough for the uninitiated fortuitously to have mistaken him for the owner himself. On this basis, then, one can see how it is that Cunningham took the one tack by the sea and left it to James Armour to guide the farming fortunes of the other at Trodigal next door.
But which James Armour might he be? The earliest baptismal records in the Lowland congregation date from 1659, in which year is recorded at Trodigal the birth of a daughter, Janet, to Andrew Gardener and his wife, Agnes Armour, indicating that there was an Armour presence in Trodigal some six years earlier at least than the date proposed by Peter Armour in his account. The first Armour men to appear in that record are likewise both from Trodigal - James, whose eldest son, Walter, was baptised in 1672, and Alexander, no doubt a brother, whose eldest child, Janet, was baptised in 1676.
These two men would probably have been in their early twenties as their respective families commenced, putting them by 1685 into their early thirties. Indeed, both of them appear on lists that year as known Argyll supporters. Neither seems, however, to have been taken prisoner, since both are also on the Hearth Tax list of 1694; Alexander is listed too as a fencible, in 1692. Is this James, in his early thirties, the James Armour of Hillabee referred to by McKerral? The credentials outlined above would tend to describe a somewhat older man, suggesting that he was, rather, the father of James and Alexander, and of Agnes too, although there is room here to claim that Agnes could be this James’s sister and that the daughter baptised in 1659 may have had older siblings born in Beith before the Kintyre plantation began.
It is to be noted too that the second child of both the younger James and Alexander is also called James, an indication, according to the almost universal naming rule employed at that time, that each was named after his common grandfather whom I would assert to be the above James Armour of Hillabee.
Two queries remain. Did James Armour of Hillabee live at Trodigal too? And was he also a supporter of Argyll together with his sons? His grown sons on their own could have come to Trodigal by 1672 while the parents stayed on at Beith, or the entire family could have arrived together. But if the father had the leadership role outlined above, we would expect them at Trodigal from an early date, and probably before 1659.
No doubt there was periodic commerce between Cunningham’s Ayrshire holdings and his Kintyre tacks and he or James Armour of Hillabee would travel between the two as occasion required. We know, though, that Cunningham, while retaining his title ‘of Hill-of-Beith’, did, as the Lowland Baptismal Register reflects, make his home in Kintyre once the plantation had begun. With James Armour the case, as implied above, is not so clear. But it is reasonable to imagine that, in having the ascription ‘of Hillabee’, it was an accolade more likely to have been accorded him in Kintyre than in Beith, since in Beith it would be common knowledge, whereas in Kintyre it would draw attention to what was not obvious, that Cunningham, though at Machrihanish, held the Trodigal tack too and James Armour thereby was connected both to Cunningham and Cunningham’s Ayrshire estate.
As to his support of Argyll, we can only surmise that if his sons were known as such in that watershed year of 1685, then he might be too. Indeed, the James Armour listed as an Argyll supporter could well be Hillabee himself, his namesake son having died before or after the baptism of his youngest child, John, on March 13, 1683. That Alexander alone is listed as a fencible in 1692 would enhance this supposition, Hillabee himself being exempt by reason of his age. We speak of a watershed, because Charles II died that February and his brother, now James II, succeeded him as king and invoked now a much sterner approach to any act of insurrection.
Some 180 men, not all of Kintyre, were thus dealt with, including John Martin, servant to Hillabee. Where many pleaded innocence on the grounds that they had been pressed, including Martin, many were sentenced none the less, but where the punishment is noted in the records cited by McKerral, in Martin’s case it is strangely absent. It may well be that Martin, whether innocent or guilty, was taken as a warning to those whom he served, for it is equally strange that none of the Argyll Armours was apprehended. One could hardly be a supporter without being implicated in the plot.
In this regard we point to another James Armour, a Glasgow merchant, cited in Robert Wodrow’s lengthy account of the sufferings inflicted on Covenanting people of those times, who was one of the many banished to America that year for his part in the revolt. He went on to prosper in New York and spent his last years in London. One wonders if, from time to time, James Armour of Hillabee might have conducted Cunningham business in Glasgow, and while there on some mission leading up to the revolt to have been apprehended, confused as to domicile but not intent, and sent abroad. This James Armour was sentenced on March 27th, a full two months before the revolt launched out from Campbeltown, and could have been in the tolbooth as early as the preceding October when the Government first got wind of Argyll’s plans, but more likely after James had come to power. All of which would strongly suggest two men having the same name, especially when in John Martin’s capture, following the revolt, James Armour of Hillabee is implied to be still at large.
To the Armour farming context we must, in the end, return. Even though Campbeltown itself did in time see Armours emerge from their rural roots as men of prominence in the town’s business and commerce, it is with Trodigal that the name is so closely linked and is linked still. We will, therefore, be on a firmer base in the view that James Armour of Hillabee and of Trodigal, though he was proprietor of neither, remained a man of the soil, lived out his days with his children and his children’s children, and in due course was interred in the ancient burial ground nearby.
No 50 Autumn 2001
Wee Drams E-mails, comments, queries and enlightenment from around the world
Page 2: A History of the Gilchrists...............continued
Page 3: E-mails - Machrihanish and Fessenden
Page 4: The Kintyre Armours - A New Approach to the First Generation
Page 5: The Campbeltown Book - You must look at this!
Page 6: The MacKeith Family at Kilmichael
Page 7: By Hill and Shore - Angus Martin
Page 8: The Rev. Alexander Stewart (1755 - 1798)