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APRIL

 13, 1685 --Scotland. Four women stand before a criminal court at Wigtown. They are being convicted for having denied First, Prelacy --the belief that in the church there are those of superior rank and authority, and second, for having refused the Oath of Abjuration, which declares the Church to be a department of the State. In addition, they have been convicted on twenty counts for attendance at Conventicles both for worship indoors as well as at field preaching. Such constitutes rebellion against the State for such is opposed to the State Church.
     Margaret Maclachlan has been much harassed for her piety and has been arrested by a detachment of soldiers who when they arrived at her house found her on her knees with her family around her worshipping God. They have arrested and imprisoned her, and she has as a result suffered greatly from insufficient food, warmth, and suitable bed. Even suitable light by which she might read the Scriptures has been denied her.
     Margaret and Agnes Wilson together with their brother, Tom have refused to conform to episcopacy. As a result, they have had to flee to the mountains to live among the bogs and in the dens of the earth when for their testimony they are hunted as animals. Their parents are forbidden to feed, clothe or lodge them, or even to see or speak with them, and themselves have been subjected to heavy fines. The weekly court session will span a period of three years, and will leave the father to die in extreme poverty.
     The two girls have left Tom in the mountains while they visit friends here in Wigtown, but while here, they have been asked to drink to the king's health. Since such a practice is not to be found in Scripture, they have refused. It is upon this their refusal that has resulted in their being recognized. They have subsequently been arrested and imprisoned in the Thieves Hole.
     The three are tried today along with Margaret Maxwell, a twenty-year old serving maid. Their violent persecutor, finding them guilty, orders them to receive their sentence upon their knees. When the women refuse to kneel, they are brutally forced down and held there while their sentences are given.
     Margaret Maxwell, the twenty-year old maid is to be whipped through Wigtown by the hangman on three successive days and to stand each day for one hour in the stocks. When the officers and hangman ask her if they should lessen the time, she replies, "No! Let the clock go on.”
     Thirteen year old Agnes Wilson is to be redeemed by payment of a hundred pounds which when her father pays, he sets out immediately for Edinburgh to appeal the conviction of his daughter Margaret, but by the time he returns, she will have been martyred.
     Margaret Wilson, eighteen years of age, and Margaret Maclachlan, an elderly widow of seventy years, are condemned to be drowned. Two long stakes are planted in the bed of the Bern: one farther out for the elderly woman, and one nearer for the young lady. Margaret Maclachlan will end her days in unbroken communion with Christ.
     The young woman of eighteen years will sing the melodies she has often sung among the hills when she was hunted along with her brother and sister. From Psalm 25, verse seven, she sings --

 “May sins and faults of youth
Do Thou, 0 Lord, forget;
After Thy mercy think on me,
And for Thy goodness great.
God good and upright is:
The way He'll sinners show;
The meek in judgment He will guide
And make His path to know."

She will open her Bible and will read for her last time Romans Chapter eight. The waves dash over her head, but loosely tied, her tormentors pull her from the sea. When she can speak, she will be asked to pray for King James, "as he is supreme over all persons and causes, ecclesiastic as well as civil." She will respond she wishes the salvation of all men, which, when they hear, her persecutors will dash her under the water again.
     "Dear Margaret, say, 'God Save the King!'" her relatives entreat.
     "God save him if He will!" she whispers, "for it is His salvation I desire."
     Judge Grierson offers her the Oath of Abjuration that grants the King supremacy in civil matters and is now used to apply to ecclesiastical matters as well.
     "I will not!" she groans, "No sinful oaths for me. I am one of Christ's children. Let me go."
     Her tormentors brutally fling her back into the waves where she will die a virgin martyr.
     "He shall have judgment without mercy that hath shown no mercy."
      On her tombstone in the Wigtown churchyard can be read,

"Let Earth and Stone still witness bear
There lies a virgin martyr here;
Murdered for owning Christ supreme,
Head of His church and no more crime
But not abjuring Presbytry,
And her not owning Prelacy,
They her condemned by unjust law
Within the sea tied to a stake,
She suffered for Christ Jesus' sake.
The actors of this cruel crime
Was Lagg, Strachan, Winram and Graham;
Neither young years, nor yet old age
Could stop the fury of their rage."

     Years passed, and a broken old man can be seen wandering alone through the streets of Wigtown tormented by an unquenchable thirst --a thirst so unnatural that he will never dare to leave home without carrying with him a large jar of water. He is the Town's Officer who when Margaret Wilson was raised out of the sea and who still refusing to take the Oath, thrust her down with his halbert saying, "Take another drink, honey!" and bid her gossip with the crabs.



 

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