Skip to main content

Posts

Apples of Gold: Lady Mary Johnston

Covenant Ladies Index Page  (Apples of Gold) Lady Mary (Johnston) Lindsay Countess Crawford Lady Mary Johnson was the eldest daughter of James, Earl of Annandale and Hartfell, by his wife Lady Henrietta Douglas, daughter of William, first Marquis of Douglas, by his second wife, Lady Mary Gordon. She was married at Leith, on the 8th of March, 1670, to William, sixteenth Earl of Crawford, and second Earl of Lindsay, the son of John, Earl of Crawford and Lindsay, and brother to the Duchess of Rothes. Her husband, like his parents was a nonconformist, and great deference was paid to him by the Presbyterians. On this account he was, throughout the period of the persecution, a marked man; and, from the danger to which he was exposed, he once intended to go abroad, though he never went, but lived in retirement till the Revolution, which brought him deliverance and honour. The early education and family connections of this lady tended to prejudice her mind against the suffering Covenanters. Bu

William Guthrie

William Guthrie - Image from Banner of Truth Posted at Banner of Truth : William Guthrie, one of the holiest and ablest of the experimental divines of Scotland, was born at Pitforthy, Angus, the seat of his ancestors, in the year 1620. He was the eldest son of the family, and his superior genius was displayed in his early and successful attention to learning; but till his entrance into college life, he did not obtain that intimate and saving acquaintance with Divine truth which enabled him at once to stay his own soul upon God as the God of his salvation, and to prescribe most skilfully for the cases of spiritual disease that came under his notice. He felt himself greatly indebted for acquaintance with the way of holiness to the instructions of a near kinsman. This was his cousin, James Guthrie, then holding one of the chairs in the New College of St Andrews, and afterwards highly esteemed as the faithful minister of Stirling during the period of the Covenant, for his faithful adherenc

Apples of Gold: 'The Two Margarets'

The Two Margarets Covenant Ladies   Index Page  (Apples of Gold) Margaret McLauchlan and Margaret Wilson The years 1684 and 1685 were years of terrible suffering to the Covenanters. The history of these years is written in letters of blood, and they were emphatically called, by the sufferers, 'The Killing Time.' the savage ruffians, who were scouring the country like incarnate demons, hunted the poor helpless victims of their cruelty like wild beasts, over moors and mountains. If they met with a person who refused to answer their questions, or who did not satisfy them in his answers; or if they found another reading the Bible; or observed a third apparently alarmed or attempting to escape, they reckoned all such persons fanatics, and in many instances shot them dead on the spot. The devil had gone forth, having great wrath, as if knowing that his time was short. Patrick Walker remarks, that during these two years, eighty persons were shot in the fields, in cold blood; and he f

The Woman Who Never Was

By Dr. Mark Jardine -  Posted at Jardine's Book of Martyrs : Amid the flotsam of the Killing Times of 1685 are a few brief lines on a threatened drowning of a woman at Kirkcudbright. She never was drowned, but her remarkable story deserves to be told… The case of Grizel Fullarton has striking parallels with the drowning of the two Wigtown martyrs, Margaret McLachlan and Margaret Wilson . Grizel Fullarton was captured by Colonel James Douglas, who commissioned the court that initially sentenced the two Wigtown women to be drowned for refusing the abjuration oath in April, 1685, under powers awarded to him on 27 March . The events of Fullarton’s case took place earlier in the same year in the same jurisdiction, Galloway, but under a slightly different set of judicial commissions. She was scheduled to face some of the same judges that went on to condemn the Wigtown women, but under their commission to press the abjuration oath in January, 1685. Read more...

Handed Down From the Scaffold: The Cargill Bible

By Dr. Mark Jardine - Posted at Jardine's Book of Martyrs : Image from Jardine's Book of Martyrs One of Cargill’s last acts on the scaffold on 27 July, 1681, was to hand down his bible to a sympathizer and instruct them to pass it on to his sister. The incident is recorded in a handwritten entry in Cargill’s bible: ‘[Cargill] Bore this Bible to the Scaffold as his last best friend and handed it therefrom as his last sad legacy to be carried to his oldest sister Anne Cargill with these memorable words – ‘I am sure of my salvation being complete in Jesus Christ as I am of the truth of all that is contained in this holy this inestimable book of God!’ (Quoted in Crawford,  Scotland’s Books , 214 .) Cargill had three sisters. His bible was handed down via the family of Anne Cargill, the eldest of them. A second sister, Grizel Cargill, was married to Donald Crockatt , a notary in Alyth parish, Perthshire. A third sister may have been married to John Miller in Watershaugh in Shotts pa

Janet Geddes - Laud's Liturgy

For more background of the account of Jenny Gedde's tossing her stool at the minister at St. Giles, here is an excerpt from Laud's Liturgy as posted at The Salty Scrivener : Dean Hannay first read the new Scottish Prayer book, which became known as ‘Laud’s Liturgy’, at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, on the third Sunday in July 1637. There is an interesting story relating to the first reading of the Liturgy. It is believed that a vegetable-seller, known as Jenny Geddis was in the church for the service. When the Dean began to read the liturgy, Geddis rose to her feet, shouting, “The devil give thee bellyache! Woulds’t thou say mass in my lug!”   Geddis then proceeded to throw her stool across the room at the dean. How much of this is legend is unknown, but there is a plaque on the floor of St. Giles Cathedral today, which marks the point from where Geddis registered her protest. The protest is thought to have been both heavily organised and heavily politicised. One thin

David Dickson from Scots Worthies by John Howie

Posted at Monergism.com : David Dickson was born about the year 1583. He was the only son of Mr John Dick or Dickson, merchant in Glasgow, whose father was an old feuar and possessor of some lands in the barony of Fintry, and parish of St Ninian’s, called the Kirk of the Muir. His parents were religious, of considerable substance, and were many years married before they had David, who was their only child. As he was a Samuel asked of the Lord, so he was early devoted to Him and the ministry. Yet afterwards the vow was forgot, till Providence, by a rod and sore sickness on their son, brought their sins to their remembrance, and then he was sent to assume his studies at the University of Glasgow. Soon after he had received the degree of Master of Arts, he was admitted professor of philosophy in that college, where he was very useful in training up the youth in solid learning; and, with the learned Principal Boyd of Trochrig, the worthy Mr Blair, and other pious members of that society, h