taken at the door collections during the year, was the income for the year.

Shortly after the new church was built in 1864 Mr. Stewart left

Strathkinness to become minister in Kennoway, and he was succeeded by the

Rev. Thomas Murray. Nine years after the church had been built a manse was

completed, in 1873, on land also given by Mr. John Whyte Melville. He was

thanked by the Trustees of the church (of whom Mr. Melville was one) as ‘in

addition to the free sites for the Church and Manse [he] was a large

contributor’.

The Strathkinness Kirk Session minute book from 1860 until the 1890s

is largely taken up with entries recording the censuring of people accused of

‘acts of scandal’. After appearing before the Kirk Session and giving seemingly

voluntary confessions and expressing penitence for their behaviour they would

be ‘absolved of the scandal of their sin’ and restored to the privileges of the

church. Although the church censured people found guilty of having con-

ceived a child before marriage, the method of farm hiring encouraged men to

make sure, before marriage, as his livelihood depended upon a source of cheap

labour, that a wife would be capable of bearing children. The church’s dis-

approval and censuring did not seem to affect the number of people who

appeared and confessed their guilt. Absolution of their sin enabled them to

become members of the community without feeling stigmatised.

In 1875 a proclamation giving new charges for the reading of Banns of

Marriage was issued. This caused a good deal of concern within the congre-

gation, and led to a statement a few months later saying ‘this system of Banns

of Marriage is more strictly legal than the hitherto prevailing mode of pro-

cedure’. In spite of this new system of a sliding scale of charges ranging from

one guinea (one pound and one shilling) to five shillings being declared ‘more

strictly legal’ it was changed two years later to a flat rate of two shillings

and sixpence for each reading of the Banns.

Mr. Murray left Strathkinness in 1876 to go to Anstruther Easter as

minister. One of the first changes decided upon when Rev. Andrew Tait

became the next minister of the parish church in Strathkinness was to have

only one service on the Sabbath during the winter months. There is no record

of the congregation not agreeing to this decision of the Kirk Session, but in

1892 and 1893 the Strathkinness Parish Magazine (of which there seems to

be only these two copies still in existence) said that ‘as in former years a service

would be held in the church at six o’clock on moonlight nights’ — except when

there was a Bible Class at four o’clock. The magazine went on to say that

people would be ‘neglecting their responsibility’ by not attending the evening

worship. It is not known how long these evening services continued, but in

1907 the Committee of the Free Church General Assembly investigating the

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