ABSTRACT
James Kirkwood was born in the vicinity of Dunbar in 1650, and attended the University of Edinburgh. He went first to a chaplaincy in the house of the Campbells of Glenorchy, next to a curacy at Weemys, and then in 1679 he became minister at Minto in the Presbytery of Jedburgh. This lasted only a couple of years because of his refusal to take the Test (1681) whereby one swore to accept the royal supremacy in religion, but he was apparently indulged at Colmonell, Stranraer Presbytery, the next year. Then, in 1684, with the help of his friend Gilbert Burnet who was still in England, he became rector of Astwick, Beds., but was ejected in 1702 for political sins; he died in c.1708.2
Although it does not appear that he had a family of his own, Kirkwood obviously had a heart for families. He published, under several different titles, a work treating the relations between parents and children, and to my knowledge, this is the only such piece by a Scottish divine – even if out of the country at the time of writing – during the second half of the seventeenth century.3 Certainly this want of publications is not to be regarded as a lack of interest in the family on the part of Scots; indeed, its significance seems to have been taken utterly for granted.4
