Grand Masters of Scotland - Onondaga and Oswego Masonic ...

They crossed a small part of Lord Eglinton's estate, in order to reach the seashore, where they intended to walk. When they arrived
at this spot it was near noon, and Lord Eglinton came up in his coach, attended by Mr Wilson, a carpenter, and followed by four
servants on horseback. On approaching the coast his lordship met Bartleymore who told him there were some poachers at a
distance, and that Campbell was among them. Lord Eglinton quitted his coach and, mounting a led horse, rode to the spot, where
he saw Campbell and the other officer, whose name was Brown. His lordship said: "Mr Campbell, I did not expect to have found you
so soon again on my grounds, after your promise when you shot the hare." He then demanded Campbell's gun, which the latter
declared he would not part with.
Lord Eglinton now rode towards him, while Campbell retreated, with his gun presented, desiring him to keep at a distance. Still,
however, his lordship advanced, smiling, and said: "Are you going to shoot me?" Campbell replied: "I will, if you do not keep off."
Hereupon Lord Eglinton called to his servants to bring him a gun, which one of them took from the coach, and delivered to another
to carry to their master.
In the interim Lord Eglinton, leading his horse, approached Mr Campbell and demanded his gun, but the latter would not deliver it.
The peer then quitted his horse's bridle and continued advancing, while Campbell still retired, though in an irregular direction, and
pointed his gun towards his pursuer.
At length Lord Eglinton came so near him that Campbell said: "I beg your pardon, my lord, but I will not deliver my gun to any man
living; therefore keep off, or I will certainly shoot you." At this instant Bartleymore, advancing, begged Campbell to deliver his gun to
Lord Eglinton; but the latter answered he would not, for he "had a right to carry a gun."
His lordship did not dispute his general right, but said that he could not have any to carry it on his estate without his permission.
Campbell again begged pardon, and still continued retreating, but with his gun in his hand, and preparing to fire in his own defence.
While he was thus walking backwards his heel struck against a stone and he fell, when he was about the distance of three yards
from the pursuer. Lord Eglinton observed him fall on his back, and stepped forward, as if he would have passed by Campbell's feet.
The latter, observing this, reared himself on his elbow, and lodged the contents of his piece in the left side of his lordship's body.
A contest now ensued, during which Bartleymore repeatedly struck Campbell. Being observed by Lord Eglinton, he called out: "Do
not use him ill." Campbell, being secured, was conducted to the wounded man, then lying on the ground, who said: "Mr Campbell, I
would not have shot you." But Campbell made no answer. His hands were tied behind him, and he was conducted to the town of
Saltcoats, the place of his former station as an exciseman.
Lord Eglinton dying, after languishing ten hours, Mr Campbell was, on the following day, committed to the prison of Ayr, and the next
month removed to Edinburgh, in preparation for his trial before the High Court of Justiciary. The trial commenced on the 27th of
February, 1770, and the jury having found Mr Campbell guilty he was sentenced to die.
On his return to prison he was visited by several of his friends, among whom he behaved with apparently decent cheerfulness; and,
retiring to his apartment, he begged the favour of a visit from them on the following day. But in the morning he was found dead,
hanging to the end of a form which he had set upright, with a silk handkerchief round his neck.
The following lines were found upon the floor, close to the body:--
"Farewell, vain world, I've had enough of thee,
And now am careless what thou say'st of me,
Thy smiles I court not, nor thy frowns I fear,
My cares are past, my heart lies easy here,
What faults they find in me take care to shun,
And look at home, enough is to be done."
http://www.uk-genealogy.org.uk/scotland/Ayrshire/gazetteer.html
It was," says Mr Robert Chambers, "on account of some attempts at reforming and improving the domestic condition of the farmers
of Ayrshire, that the unfortunate Earl of Eglinton acquired his unpopularity, and was so little lamented at his death. 'He's an unco
fashious man, that Yerll o' Eglintoune,' they would sometimes say to each other; ' he's aye plan-plannin', and aye change-changing;
and ae way or another he's never aff our tap. Od, I wiss he mayna meet wi' his merchant some day.' When eventually shot by a
poacher, it was very commonly remarked that ' he had lang been fey, and lang been working for a mischief, and noo he had got it.'"
The Earl of Eglinton's Encounter Near Ardrossan
http://www.maybole.org/history/Books/legends/earlofeglinton.htm
In the fall of the year 1768 an excise officer named Mungo Campbell was trespassing in pursuit of game on the lands of Eglinton.
Campbell was an excise officer at Saltcoats He was well connected in the county. His father was, Provost of Ayr, and his greatgrandfather
was Hugh Campbell of Netherplace. One of a family of twenty-four children, it can easily be understood that Mungo's
father, the Provost of the county town, could maintain him neither in independence nor in affluence. Like many another man, Mungo
had to shift for himself. Through his father's influence he obtained a situation in the Excise, and in the year named he was on the
station at Saltcoats, watching the smugglers who then, and for many years afterwards, ran their contraband cargoes of tea and of
spirits ashore on the lower shores of the Firth of Clyde. His position was no sinecure. The smugglers were numerous and daring.
They beached their small craft under cover of the night on the sandy shallows which abound all along the coast from Ardrossan to
Ayr, and, at risk to themselves as well as to the officers of the State, they handed their exciseable goods to their associates on the
mainland. Encounters were frequent, and it required men of courage in the Excise, to cope with the equally courageous and the
more reckless individuals who made their living by "running the cutter."
If Mungo Campbell endeavoured to make the law honoured on the one hand, he placed himself in conflict with it on the other. If he
kept one eye upon the whisky distilled amid the hilly wilds of Argyleshire or on the plains of France, he kept the other on the grouse
and the partridges, the hares and the rabbits, of the neighbouring proprietors. Gun in hand, sometimes alone and sometimes in
company with his brother excisemen, he was accustomed to roam the fields of the Earl of Eglinton and to take a quiet shot in the
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