Martyrs - Notes

These notes are taken verbatum from the Rev. C. H. Dick's "Highways and Byways in Galloway and Carrick"
(This book, published in 1916 is an excellent source of information for the western end of Dumfries and Galloway.)

The classical passage on the martyrdom of Margaret Wilson and Margaret Maclachlan is in Woodrow's
"The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland."

"Upon the 11th of May," he says, "we meet with the barbarous and wicked execution of two excellent women near Wigton, Margaret McLachlan and Margaret Wilson." Margaret Wilson, aged eighteen years, and her sister, Agnes, who was not yet thirteen years old, were the daughters of Gilbert Wilson, tenant of Glenvernoch in the parish of Penninghame, who conformed to Episcopacy. The girls adhered to the Covenants, fell into the hands of the persecutors, and were imprisoned.
Later, they left the district and wandered through Carrick, Galloway, and Nithsdale with their brothers and some other Covenanters.

On the death of King Charles, there was some slackening of the persecution, and the girls returned to Wigton. "There was an acquaintance of theirs, Patrick Stuart, whom they took to be a friend and wellwisher, but he was really not so, and betrayed them; being in their company, and seeking an occasion against them, he proposed drinking the king's health; this they modestly declined: upon which he went out, informed against them, and brought in a party of soldiers, and seized them. As if they had been great malefactors, they were put in the thieves' hole, and after they had been there some time, they were removed to the prison where Margaret McLauchlan was.

"Margaret Maclachlan was the widow of a tenant in the parish of Kirkinner," a country woman of more than ordinary knowledge, discretion, and prudence, and for many years of singular piety and devotion: she would take none of the oaths now pressed upon women as well as men, neither would she desist from the duties she took to be incumbent upon her, hearing presbyterian ministers when providence gave opportunity, and joining with her Christian friends and acquaintances in prayer, and supplying her relations and acquaintances when in straits, though persecuted.
It is a jest to suppose her guilty of rising in arms and rebellion, though indeed it was a part of her indictment, which she got in common form now used.

She was very roughly dealt with in prison, and was allowed neither fire nor bed although she was sixty-three years of age. All the three prisoners were indicted "for rebellion, Bothwellbridge, Ayr's Moss, and being present at twenty field-conventicles".
None of them had ever been within many miles of Bothwell or Ayr's Moss.

Agnes Wilson could be but eight years of age at Ayr's Moss, and her sister but about twelve or thirteen; and it was impossible they could have any access to those risings.

Margaret MeLauchlan was as free as they were.
When the Abjuration Oath was put to them, they refused it, the assize found them guilty, and the sentence was that "upon the 11th instant, all the three should be tied to stakes fixed within the flood-mark in the water of Blednoch near Wigton, where the sea flows at high water, there to be drowned".

Gilbert Wilson secured the liberation of the younger girl under a bond of a hundred pounds sterling to present her when he was required to do so. The sentence was executed on Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson. The narrative must be given as it stands in Wodrow's History.

"The two women were brought from Wigton, with a numerous crowd of spectators to so extraordinary an execution. Major Windram with some soldiers guarded them to the place of execution. The old woman's stake was a good way in beyond the other, and she was first despatched, in order to terrify the other to a compliance with such oaths and conditions as they required. But in vain, for she adhered to her principles with an unshaken steadfastness. When the water was overflowing her fellow-martyr, some about Margaret Wilson asked her, what she thought of the other now struggling with the pangs of death. She answered, what do I see but Christ (in one of his members) wrestling there. Think you that we are the sufferers? no, it is Christ in us, for he sends none a warfare upon their own charges. When Margaret Wilson was at the stake, she sang the 25th Psalm from verse 7th, downward a good way, and read the 8th chapter to the Romans with a great deal of cheerfulness, and then prayed. While at prayer, the water covered her: but before she was quite dead, they pulled her up, and held her out of the water till she was recovered, and able to speak; and then by major Windram's orders, she was asked, if she would pray for the king.
She answered, 'She wished the salvation of all men, and the damnation of none.' One deeply affected with the death of the other and her case, said, 'Dear Margaret, say God save the king, say God save the king.'
She answered in the greatest steadiness and composure, 'God save him, if he will, for it is his salvation I desire.' Whereupon some of her relations near by, desirous to have her life spared, if possible, called out to major Windram,
'Sir, she hath said it, she hath said it.' Whereupon the major came near, and offered her the abjuration, charging her instantly to swear it, otherwise return to the water.
Most deliberately she refused, and said, ' I will not, I am one of Christ's children, let me go.' Upon which she was thrust down again into the water, where she finished her course with joy."

No other event of the Persecution has been the subject of such vehement controversy. Mark Napier, Sheriff of Dumfries and author of "Memorials and Letters of Graham of Claverhouse (1859-62", contended that the sentence was not carried out, and wrote a monograph entitled "The Case for the Crown in re the Wigtown Martyrs proved to be Myths". His argument is based on the fact that a reprieve was granted in response to petitions presented on behalf of the prisoners.
Effective replies were written by the Rev. Archibald Stewart, Minister of Glasserton, and others; and the only lasting result of the controversy has been the accumulation of evidence in support of Wodrow.

Local traditions traceable almost to the time of the execution and illustrating the popular conviction of its actuality have been collected in "The Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway"'.
"A minister long resident in the district told the author that the name of the man by whose information the women were arrested is well known, and his memory execrated still. One of his descendants, "getting into an altercation with a person in the Burgh, was thus taunted the other day: 'I wadna like to have had a forebear who betrayed the martyrs; I wadna be coomed o' sic folk'. "

Another informant had communed with a person (Miss Suzan Heron) whose grandfather had seen the execution; whose words were: 'The sands were covered wi' cluds o' folk, a' gathered into clusters, many offering up prayers for the women while they were being put down'."

Some rather grotesque stories are told.
"A town sergeant, who had been officiously active - when the women finally refused Lag to take the test - pressed down their heads with his halbert, and cried with savage glee. 'Tak' another drink o't, my hearties!' Hardly had he returned home when he was troubled by an extraordinary thirst: it continued. No amount of drink he could take could allay it. His unnatural craving forced him, when obliged to go abroad, to carry a pitcher on his back. If crossing a stream, he was irresistibly impelled to kneel down and lap water like a dog. Medical skill was of no avail: as the wretch wandered about the country, now turning to curse a group of urchins who followed to mock his sufferings, now sprawling to moisten his tongue in the gutter, even his ribald companions shrank from him with horror, and the people, whose sympathies were with his victims, pointed to him as a man whose eternal sufferings had begun."

Still more grotesque is the tradition of the 'Cleppie Bells. A constable who was held to have carried out his orders unfeelingly, as he fastened the women to the stakes, was asked how the poor creatures behaved when the cold wave roared and foamed about their heads. ' Oo,' he replied jocularly, 'they just clepped roun' the stobs like partons, and prayed.' Soon after, Bell's wife was brought to bed, when the howdie exclaimed in horror: ' The bairn is clepped!' (i.e. the fingers grew firmly together). Another child was born, and yet another, and as each little wretch in turn was seen to be 'clepped', the most incredulous were convinced it was a judgment of Providence.

We have been gravely assured that within the memory of man a female descendant of the bad constable, on giving birth to a child, was horrified by the exclamation, ' The bairn is clepped!'"

The following saying belongs to more recent days.
" An old elder in the parish, on being told that historical doubts had been started as to whether the said women had been drowned at all, answered with much simplicity:
'Weel, weel, they that doots the droonin' o' the women wad maybe doot the deein' o' the Lord Jesus Christ '."