The Kirk Session Minutes.

The Minute Books of the Kirk Sessions of Kirkinner and of Penninghame are the root source for what happened at Wigtown in May, 1685, being testimony by persons who knew of the events first hand. These extracts are reproduced in "The Martyr Graves of Scotland" by Rev. J. H. Thomson (1906). The minutes were drawn up by order of the General Assembly in order to be forwarded to the Rev. Robert Wodrow for his forthcoming publication "History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution", first published in 1714.

Kirk Session of Kirkinner. April 15, 1711.

"Post preces sederunt, all the members except John McCulloch, William Hanna and John Martin, younger in Airles. Inter alia:- The minister gave in the account of the sufferings of honest Godly people in the late times which was read, and is as follows: Margaret Laughson of known integrity and piety from her youth aged about 80, widow of John Milliken, wright in Drumjargan, was in or about the year of God 1685, in her own house, taken off her knees in prayer, and carried immediately to prison, and from one prison to another, without the benefit of light to read the Scriptures; was barbarously treated by dragoons, who were sent to carry her from Mahirmore to Wigtown; and being sentenced by Sir Robert Grier of Lagg to be drowned at the stake within the flood mark just below the town of Wigtown for conventicle keeping and alleged rebellion, was, according to the said sentence, fixed to the stake till the tide made and held down within the water by one of the town officers by his halbert at her throat till she died"

After narrating twelve other cases of suffering, in the forms of banishment, imprisonment, fining etc. the minute concludes:

"The which particulars aforesaid being read, they partly from credible information, partly from their own personal knowledge, do believe the said information to be matters of fact, and appoint the same to be recorded in their session book ad futuram et memoriam, and the clerk to give extract to the Presbytery of Wigtown according to appointment. Sederunt. Closed with prayer."