Iain McKenzie Thank you for your kind words about my CD-ROM disk "The Argyll Courts". Perhaps as the person who produced the disk, I might be presumed to know a little about the background of the records contained in it. You ask about the Campbeltown lists of non-attenders at Church. This was part of the aftermath of the rebellion in Scotland in May 1685 of the Earl of Argyll against James II and its suppression, which brought the Earl of Argyll to the scaffold. This rebellion was contemporary with but much less well known than the corresponding Monmouth Rebellion in England. These Rebellions were both Protestant rebellions against a Catholic King. In Kintyre and Campbeltown there were many who were supporters of the Earl of Argyll and one of the forms in which this support was expressed was refusal to attend the Established Church of the time which was episcopal. The immediate reaction to the failure of the rebellion was hunt down those who were or might have been involved in it. Failure to attend church at this time was therefore seen as treasonable conduct and the Justices of the Peace were given a special commission to deal with this aspect of the rebellion. To me one of the fascinations of the lists is the number of times it was the women of the families who refused to attend church. The rebellion is remarkably well documented, particularly in the Lieutenancy papers of Argyll of the time. Some were published in 1935 in a book called "The Commons of Argyll" - now long out of print. It is hoped that much of this documentation will be made available as the work proceeds of cataloguing and calendaring the papers of the various courts in Argyll which have been for a very long time concealed among the papers of the Sheriff Court. The pursuit of those who did not attend church did not go on for long because in June 1687 James II issued a proclamation that his subjects were allowed "to meet and serve God after their own way." Frank Bigwood