Upon the 11th day of May, 1685, these two women, Margaret M'Lachlan and Margaret Wilson, were brought forth to execution. They did put the old woman first into the water, and when the water was overflowing her, they asked Margaret Wison what she thought of her in that case? She answered: `What do I see but Christ wrestling there? Think ye that we are sufferers? No, it is Christ in us, for he sends none a warfare on their own charges.' Margaret Wilson sang Psalm xxv, from the 7th verse, read the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and did pray, and then the water covered her.

But before her breath was quite gone, they pulled her up and held her till she could speak, and then asked her if she would pray for the king. She answered that she wished the salvation of all men, but the damnation of none. Some of her relations being on the place cried out, `She is willing to conform,' being desirous to save her life at any rate. Upon which Major Winram offered the oath of abjuration to her either to swear it or return to the waters.

She refused it, saying, `I will not, I am one of Christ's children, let me go.' And then they returned her into the water, where she finished her warfare, being a virgin martyr of eighteen years of age, suffering death for her refusing to swear the oath of abjuration and hear the curates.

"The said Gilbert Wilson was fined for the opinion of his children, harassed with frequent quartering of souldiers upon him, sometymes ane hundreth men at ance. who lived at discretion on his goods, and that for several years together; and his frequent attendance in the courts at Wigtown almost every week; at thirteen miles distance for three years tyme; riding to Edinburgh on these acounts, so that his losses could not be reckoned and estimate (without doubt) not within five thousand merks; yet for no principle or action of his own, and died in great poverty lately a few years hence; his wife, a very aged woman, lives upon the charity of friends; his son Thomas lived to bear arms under King William in Flanders and the castle of Edinburgh; but had nothing to enter the grounds which they possessed where he lives to certifie the truth of these things with many others who knew them too weel."

The entry is attested:

"The Session having considered the above particulars and having certain knowledge of the truth of most part of them from their own sufferings, and eye witness of the foresaid sufferings of others, which several of this Session declares, and from certain information of others in the very tyme and place they were acted in, and many living that have all these things fesh in their memory, except those things concerning Gilbert Milroy - (he was banished, sold as a slave in Jamacia, had returned, and was then an elder in the neighbouring parish of Kirkowan ) - the truth whereof they think there is no reason to doubt of; they do attest the same, and order an extract to be given in their name to the Presbytery, to transmit to superior judicatories. Sederunt closed with prayer."

The Rev. J. H. Thomson observes that to the Scottish people well acquainted with the trustworthiness and truthfullness of the men who discharge the duties of an elder in their different congregations, it will seem impossible to doubt the veracity of these narratives attested by the respective Sessions, and that, indeed, they bear the marks of truth stamped upon their every line.

And the independent view of Daniel Defoe in his "Memoirs of the Church of Scotland", succinctly explains that when the women refused to pray for the king, it was simply because they could not ask a blessing to rest upon a ruler who had broken every pledge he had made when he ascended the throne, and who, in his daily life, was trampling upon the laws of his country as well as those of God.

Meet the Author, Brian Orr, Researcher with The Guild of One Name Studies

Back to The Covenanters, Main Page

Part One: The Covenanters: Who Were They?
Part Two : The Kirk and its Impact on the People
Part Three : Tales of the Covenanters
Part Four : What's in a Name?
Part Five : The Sanquhar Declaration
Part Six : Covenanter Ships: The Eaglewing, The Crown and Henry & Francis
Part Seven : Female Covenanters: Execution by Drowning
Part Eight : Covenanter Prisons: Bass Rock and Dunnattor Castle
Part Nine : Greyfriars Kirk and the National Covenant
Part Ten : Battle of Rullion Green
Part Eleven : Rev. James Renwick, Martyr
Part Twelve : Presbyterians in Ireland
Part Thirteen: The Final Word on the Solway Martyrs
Part Fourteen: The Margaret Wilson Statue
Part Fifteen: After the National Covenant

Covenanters Time Line
Research Links