We hear nothing more of this case till the ensuing 11th of February, when the Lord Chancellor acquainted the Council that Anna Gibson had been brought to his lodging that forenoon. She was ordered to be placed in the family of Mr Alexander Gibson, one of the clerks of the Council, ‘ay and while she shall make choice of her curators after her age of twelve years complete.’ Apparently, the relatives on both sides had afterwards come to an agreement about this young heiress, as Lamont tells us that, on the 28th of August 1669, ‘Mistris Anne Gibson, Durie’s niece, remaining at Durie for the time, did choose her curators; among whom were the Earl of Rothes the chancellor, Sir Andrew Murray, and the Tutor of Stormont, her uncles on the mother’s side; Durie and his brother George Gibson, her uncles on the father’s side, &c. They dined that day at David Johnston, in Cupar, his house.’ Mrs Anna Gibson afterwards became the wife of John Murray of Touchadam and Polmaise. It is worthy of observation that she was the great-granddaughter of Lord Durie who was kidnapped by George Meldrum of Dumbreck; see under September 1601. * * * * * [Sidenote: MAY 22.] The town of Kilmarnock was wholly destroyed by an accidental fire, ‘wherethrough about sexscore families are set to the fields destitute both of goods and houses’--indeed, ‘in a condition of starving.’ Matters were the worse for them, by reason that they, ‘being all poor tradesmen, and having no other means of livelihood but their daily employment,’ had some time before been reduced to ‘great misery and affliction,’ in consequence of the quartering upon them of a great party of the king’s forces, when these were sent to the west to prevent a rebellion. Under the sanction of the Privy Council, a collection was made at the parish churches for the succour of these poor people. The event is chiefly worthy of notice as marking the smallness of Kilmarnock in those days, when as yet there was no such thing as manufacturing industry in the country. A hundred and twenty families speaks to a population of between five and six hundred: in 1851, this industrious town contained 21,443 inhabitants within the parliamentary boundaries. [Sidenote: 1668.] In April 1669, a fire broke out at midnight in the town of Cupar (Fife), and spread so fast and with such violence, that ‘above the number of twenty considerable families being asleep in bed, did, unclothed with their apparel, with great difficulty escape their dwelling-houses,’ which were consumed with their entire contents. Thus, not only were these people, with their many young children, ‘ruined and reduced to begging,’ but ‘a great part of that ancient burgh, being the head burgh of the shire, [was] annihilat and turned to desolation.’ On a petition, the Privy Council ordered a charitable collection in Fife and the adjacent counties ‘for the relief of the poor indigent families of the said ancient burgh.’