James Rae, Uddingston, and John Park, weaver in Lanark, for Conventicles and refusing the Oath of Allegiance, to be banished; and under December 9, 1685, eleven more receive the same sentence.-ED.] INNO 1687 [1685], three-and-twenty men and women were sent to Barbadoes, whose names that subscribed the Joint Testimony are as follows: John Ford, Walter M‘Min, Adam Hood, John M'Gie, Peter Russel, Thomas Jackson, Charles Dougal, James Grierson, John Harvie, James Forsyth, George Johnson, John Steven, Robert Young, John Gilfillan, Andrew Paterson, John Kincaid, Robert Main, James Muirhead, George Muir, John Henderson, Anaple Jackson, Anaple Gordon, Jean Moffat. [1687 is here, from the place in which the paragraph stands, evidently a misprint for 1685. The compilers do not seem to have known that these were part of the banished given to Pitlochie. The substance of the joint testimony, with the names here given, and five others, occurs in Wodrow, and is dated from Leith Roads. August 28, 1685, while the ship was lying there waiting orders to sail.-ED.] NNO 1686 [1687], March 30, were banished to Barbadoes, John Stewart, James Douglas, John Russel, James Hamilton, William Hannay, George White, Gilbert MacCulloch, Thomas Brown, John Brown, William Hay, John Wright, John Richard, Alexander Bailie, Marion Weir, Bessie Weir, Isabel Steel, Isabel Cassils, Agnes Keir. [In Wodrow the same names and three others occur under 1687. He says, "April this year I find that sixteen men and five women were banished to America, and gifted to Captain Fairn, who carried them away in Captain Croft's ship, then lying at Leith. Their testimony they jointly signed lies before me, and therein they signify the reason of their sentence was, because they would not acknowledge the present authority to be according to the Word of God, nor disown the Sanquhar Declaration, nor engage not to hear Mr James Renwick, and conclude with leaving their testimony against the evils of the times, and sign thus." Then follow their names.-ED.] A List of those Killed in the Fields. SHORT ACCOUNT of those who were killed in the open fields without trial, conviction, or any process of law, by the executioners of the Council's murdering Edict whose names are here specified. [The Council's murdering Edict was passed November 22, 1684. It was, "The Lords of his majesty's Privy Council do hereby ordain any person who owns, or will not disown the late treasonable declaration [i.e., the Apologetic Declaration] upon oath, whether they have arms or not, to be immediately put to death, this being always done in presence of two witnesses, and the person or persons having commission from the Council for that effect." The Short Memorial, etc., drawn up by Alexander Shields, the author of the "Hind Let Loose," and quoted from in this Short Account, is a quarto of 56 closely-printed pages. It is a calm and able statement of the unlawful and tyrannical character of the administration of the governments of Charles II. and James VII. The pages here quoted form the much smaller part of the memorial -that occupied with a "short recapitulation in bulk of some instances of our several kinds of sufferings, with a touch at some of the most principal instruments thereof in the five western shires."—ED.] O give an account of the many hundreds, who either died or contracted their deaths in prison, by the severities they met with of cold, hunger, thirst, want of room and air, fetters, tortures, stigmatising [i.e., branding with a hot iron], whipping, etc., would be a work of immense labour; nor can any full account thereof be had, considering the vast numbers of such, and the neglect of writing memoirs of these things, or their being seized by the persecutors, who were industrious to suppress such accounts of their own villainies from the view of posterity. The number of such as suffered under colour of law, and judicial trial, from Mr James Guthrie the first, to Mr James Renwick the last, has been computed to amount to about one hundred and forty. But the councillors, willing to ease themselves of that lingering way of doing business, not content with Popery's gradual advancement, were for doing their work all at once; and accordingly authorised captains, lieutenants, sergeants, and single soldiers to shoot all suspected persons, wherever they could catch them, without further trial of their pretended crimes; and accordingly, betwixt the year 1682 and 1688, when a revolution of affairs put a stop to their career and bloodshed, there were murdered in the open fields the following persons, besides others that no certain list has been got of, as they are enumerated in a print, entitled, "A Short Memorial of the Suffering and Grievances of the Presbyterians in Scotland, particularly of those of them called by nickname Cameronians," printed in the year 1690. Which is as follows: OHN GRAHAM of Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, in the year 1682, with a party of his troops, pursued William Graham, in the parish of [Kells], in Galloway, making his escape from his mother's house, and overtaking him, instantly shot him dead. [There is no account of this martyr either in Wodrow or Crookshanks. His remains lie in the churchyard of Crossmichael.—ED.] T HE said Claverhouse, together with the Earl of Dumbarton, and Lieutenant-General Douglas, caused Peter Gillies, John Bryce, Thomas Young (who was taken by the Laird of Lee), William Fiddieson, and John Bruning, to be put to death upon a gibbet, without legal trial or sentence, suffering them neither to have a Bible, nor to pray before they died, at Mauchline, 1685. [Peter Gillies was a bleacher in Stirling. In 1674, a Presbyterian minister preached in his house. Tidings of the sermon came to the curate, and the result was that Gillies was turned out of his house, and stripped nearly of his all. In 1685, when in Muiravonside, the curate, displeased at his nonconformity, informed against him, and got a party of Highland soldiers, just arrived at Falkirk, sent to apprehend him, which they did April 30th. John Bryce, a weaver in West Calder parish, who had come to get some cloth, was taken with him. Peter Gillies' wife had given birth to a child a few days previous. In her presence, nevertheless, they threatened him with immediate death, and hurried him away without allowing him to speak to her or change his clothes. In less than an hour after, some of the soldiers came back to her with a story of their own, saying that her husband had signified she knew where his arms lay, and that if she gave them up his life would be spared, and if not he would be shot. She calmly replied that he had no arms she knew of, and if they got liberty to take his life she would endeavour to say, Good is the will of the Lord, and He who did all things well could not wrong her or hers. At this the soldiers flew in a passion, swore and threatened to burn her where she lay. They plundered the house of all they could carry away. Meanwhile the two prisoners had been tied together, and driven by the soldiers before them. When they had got a few miles on the road they blindfolded Peter Gillies, and set him on his knees as if to be shot, with a file of musketeers before him, and kept him in this position for half-an-hour, and then took him with them to the west country whither they were marching. As they passed through Carluke they seized William Fiddieson and Thomas Young. "All four, says Patrick Walker, were my very dear acquaintance." On May 4th they were at Middle Wellwood, two miles west of Muirkirk. Here, says Wodrow, "Peter Gillies writes a letter to his wife full of affection and seriousness, and leaves her and five children on the Lord, with much holy confidence, and desires her to speak to some of his relations, and reprove them for their faults, which he heartily forgives them." After reading some of the Scripture, for which the soldiers abused and threatened him, he wanted not impressions that he was to die, and would shortly be beyond the reach of enemies. That day they were taken to Mauchline, and next day they were examined by Lieutenant-General Drummond, Master-General of the Ordnance, and a jury called of fifteen soldiers, and an indictment given them, which Wodrow has preserved. As might be expected, they were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged at the town end of Mauchline next day, May 6th. No coffins were allowed them, nor dead clothes, but the soldiers and two country people made a hole and flung them together into it. Such is the substance of Wodrow's account of them. It differs somewhat from that in the text, but the difference is seeming rather than real. A trial before a jury of fifteen soldiers, and following immediately on the indictment being put into their hands, was not a legal trial. Lieutenant-General Douglas is not mentioned by Wodrow, but Mauchline was at that time his head-quarters.-ED.] HE said Claverhouse coming to Galloway, in answer to the Robert Stuart, John Grier, Robert Ferguson and James M'Michael, and instantly shot them dead at the water of Dee in Galloway, December 1684. Their corpses being buried, were at his command raised again. [Claverhouse came upon them at Auchincloy. There were eight of them altogether, two of whom made their escape. The six were Robert Smart and John Grier from Galloway, Robert Ferguson and James M Michael from Penpont, Robert Smith from Glencairn, Robert Hunter. The six had no other resource but to stand on the defensive. All were soon overpowered except James M'Michael, who fought single-handed with Claverhouse, until Claverhouse had to cry for assistance, when, according to tradition, M'Michael said to him, "You dare not abide the issue of a single combat! Had your helmet been like mine, a soft bonnet, your carcass had ere this found its bed on the heath." A dragoon came to Claverhouse's relief, and coming up behind M'Michael split his skull in two. Friends buried M'Michael's body, but Claverhouse, when he heard of the burial, ordered the corpse to be taken out of the grave and hung on a tree. M'Michael had been at Airsmoss and the rescue at Enterkin. It was he that, supposing his friends to be in danger, shot Peter Pearson, curate at Carsphairn. For this deed he had been expelled from the fellowship of the Societies. After James M'Michael was killed, Robert Ferguson, Robert Stuart, John Grier, who had been overpowered, were shot. Robert Smith and Robert Hunter, Claverhouse carried to Kirkcudbright, and went through a form of trial with them. They were speedily condemned, when they were not permitted to write a line, not even a letter to their relations. When brought to the gibbet, and they began to speak to the people, the drums were beat to prevent them being heard. After they were hanged they were beheaded.-ED.] HE said Claverhouse in May 1685, apprehended John Brown in Priesthill, in the parish of Muirkirk, in the shire of Ayr, being at his work about his own house, and shot him dead before his own door in presence of his wife. |
