designed to be laid before the Prince of Orange, but this design was subsequently abandoned. Mr. Napier, though labouring under a strange delusion regarding its history, is quite aware of its existence, and has criticised its contents, but his eyes have been closed to its double reference to the Wigton Martyrdom. But as one of his admirers has somewhat quizzically said, Homer sometimes nods. In page 16. of this pamphlet it is written:

'with the address and grievances, and Dr. Ford or James Wilson to 'go with them.' (P. 380.)

At a subsequent meeting, held on the 4th of March, it was con'cluded that 301. sterling should be given to the three men who 'were to go to the Prince of Orange with the foresaid address, 'which sum was to be presently borrowed and afterwards to be 'collected in the societies and paid again' (p. 386.). We are informed afterwards how circumstances occurred which created delay; So that time and season passing over, the Prince was proclaimed King; after which the doing thereof became doubtful to 'some, yet others, notwithstanding, were desirous that the same 'might be set about for the same reasons that moved them at first to 'agree therewith; but still new things occurring (which produced ' matter of new thoughts, resolutions, and actings), that business was 'laid aside' (p. 387.). Mr. Napier says the Memorial was written by Shields, and it may have been so, but if so, it was revised by the Societies and stamped with their authority. Mr. Napier says the Memorial was laid before the Prince, and chuckles over the supposed rebuff of the memorialists. Here we learn it was never presented to him at all. Mr. Napier says it was afterwards presented to the General Assembly by the three Cameronian ministers, when they sought admission to the church, and not allowed to be read because it contained 'several peremptory and gross mistakes, unseasonable and impracticable 'proposals, and uncharitable and injurious reflections, tending rather 'to kindle contentions than to compose divisions.' Mr. Napier assumes that the paper rejected by the Assembly and the Memorial of Grievances are identical, because Walker speaks of the 'hard and bad treat'ment Messrs. Shields, Lining, and Boyd met with, their paper 'containing their [not the, as Mr. Napier writes] grievances only read in a committee.' Simply from the introduction of the word 'grievances' here, Mr. Napier jumps at his conclusion, as if the Presbyterians of that period were not constantly speaking of their grievances, and of their grievances only. We have the most decisive evidence that the paper rejected by the Assembly was a totally different production. It was afterwards published as a pamphlet, entitled 'An Account of the 'Methods and Motives of the late Union and Submission to the Assembly, 1690;' and a very full abstract of it is given in the Epistle to the Reader appended to Walker's 'Life of Renwick.' So much for Mr. Napier's knowledge of the literature of that period upon which he plumes himself so greatly!

Thus a great number of innocent people have been destroyed without respect to age or sex. Some mere boys have been for this hanged; some stooping for age; some women also hanged, and some drowned, because they could not satisfy the council, justiciary court, and the soldiers with their thoughts about the Government.'

And again in a list of some of the most noted murders in the western shires, we have at page 35. the following:

'Item. The said Colonel or Lieut.-General James Douglas, together with the laird of Lagg and Captain Winram, most illegally condemned and most inhumanly drowned at stakes, within the seamark, two women at Wigton, viz. Margaret Lauchlane, upwards of sixty years, and Margaret Wilson, about twenty years of age, the foresaid fatal year 1685.'

These decisive and specific statements, originally intended to be laid before the Prince of Orange, and published to the whole world only five years after the events to which they relate had occurred, are stamped with the authority of the Cameronian Societies, to which the martyred women belonged.

In 1691 a pamphlet was published, entitled 'A Second "Vindication of the Church of Scotland,' in which we have the following passage:

'Some gentlemen (whose names out of respect to them I forbear to mention) took two women, Margaret Lauchland and Margaret Wilson, the one of sixty, the other of twenty years, and caused them to be tied to a stake within the sea-mark at Wigton, and left them there till the tide overflowed them and drowned them; and this was done without any legal trial, 1685.' (P. 128.)

6

Mr. Napier speaks of this as the first specific mention of the martyrs, but we have seen that in this he is utterly wrong. But as the pamphlet is against him, he remarks of it, with that refinement of diction for which he is so highly distinguished, that the plan of it is to rake together in the most slovenly ' and reckless form, all the rubbish of unvouched scandal and calumny against the Government that could be gathered from 'the gutters of the Covenant.' (Appendix.) We read in Eastern story, of an unfortunate pastry-cook of Damascus, named Bedreddin, who was threatened with crucifixion for having made his cream-tarts without pepper. Mr. Napier need not dread his fate, for most certainly he has not committed this fault.

Sir George Mackenzie's Vindication of his Government called forth an answer in the following year (1692), entitled 'A Vin'dication of the Presbyterians in Scotland from the malicious 'Aspersions cast upon them in a late pamphlet written by Sir "George Mackenzie.' Mr. Napier triumphs in the thought

that in this pamphlet there is no answer to the advocate's assertion that but two women were executed for state crimes during the reigns of Charles and James. We venture to think he has triumphed without having conquered. In that pamphlet we have the following notice:

'Nay it is sufficiently known that women were not exempted from their cruelty (persons, one would think, that could never either by their policy or strength undermine the Government, and a sex that might have expected at least some protection from the severity of the laws, from such a prince as Charles II. was), but were imprisoned, fined, and some of them executed.' (P. 15.)

And afterwards the passage from the Prince of Orange's Declaration, regarding the drowning of women, is quoted at length. Mr. Napier is singularly blind when reading Presbyterian pamphlets.

But every year has its own witness to this great crime. In the Answer to the Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence,' published in London in 1693, it is recorded that Colonel Douglas,

Together with the Laird of Lagg and Captain Winram, did illegally condemn and inhumanly drown Margaret Lauchlan, upwards of sixty years old, and Margaret Wilson, about twenty, at Wigton, fastening them to stakes within the sea-mark. This in

1685.'

Thus in 1687, 1688, 1690, 1691, 1692, and 1693, we have notices of the martyrdom. We must now overleap a period of eighteen years, but notwithstanding the increasing distance of time, the evidence gains rather than loses in force, from the peculiarly reliable source from which it is obtained. In the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a very general desire throughout Scotland that the different Kirk Sessions should collect and preserve in their registers an account of the martyrdoms which had taken place within their bounds under the despotism of the Stuarts, while the memory of them was still fresh. In accordance with this desire, expressed through the General Assembly and Synod, the Kirk Session of Kirkinner, the native parish of Margaret Lauchlison, entered the following notice in their minutes on the 15th of April, 1711:

Margaret Lauchlison, of known integrity and piety from her youth, aged about eighty, widow of John Milliken, wright in Drumgargan, 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, and without the benefit of light to read the Scriptures, was barbarously treated by dragoons, who were sent to carry her from Machermore to Wigton, and being sentenced by Sir Robert

Grier of Lagg to be drowned at a stake within the floodmark, just below the town of Wigton, 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.'

The Kirk Session formally attests its belief of these particulars 'partly from credible information, and partly from their own 'knowledge.' The neighbouring parish of Penninghame was the native parish of Margaret Wilson, and its record, dated 25th February, 1711, is still more minute:

Upon the 11th day of May, 1685, these two women, Margaret Lauchlane and Margaret Wilson, were brought forth to execution. They put the old woman first into the water, and when the water was overflowing her, they asked Margaret Wilson what she thought of her in that case? She answered, "What do I see but Christ wrest"ling there? think ye that we are the sufferers? No, it is Christ in "us, for he sends none a warfare on their own charges." Margaret Wilson sang psalm 25 from the 7th verse, read the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, prayed, 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, but the damnation of none. Some of her relations on the place cried out she was willing to conform! they 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 water. 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.'

Here then we have a narrative almost identical with that to be found in the glowing pages of Macaulay. It is followed by this attestation:

The Session, having considered all the above particulars, and having certain knowledge of the truth of the most part of them from their own sufferings, and eye-witnesses of the foresaid sufferings of others, which several of the Session declares, and from certain information of others in the very time and place they were acted in, and many living that have all these fresh in their memory, they do

attest the same.'

We know not what better evidence could be had than that here given. The Kirk Session is a judicatory of the Church of Scotland, and consists of those parishioners who are most distinguished for their probity and piety. In country parishes like Kirkinner and Penninghame, the largest proprietors and

These

most respectable farmers are generally members of it.* are called elders, and have ordinarily reached middle age before their election. As a matter of certainty men of forty or fifty in 1711 must have remembered with accuracy what happened in the parish in 1685, twenty-six years before, more especially so remarkable an event as the drowning of women. But in addition to their own personal knowledge, they had the evidence of persons still living who had been eye-witnesses of the factand those who saw the sight would never forget it. What more than this could be required?

But if this be not enough, surely the graves of the women in the churchyard of Wigton should convince the most sceptical. And we speak not of graves existing now, and pointed out by the vague finger of tradition, but of graves and tombstones existing before the generation which had witnessed the martyrdom had passed away, and while many of the relatives and friends of the martyrs must still have been living, and every Sunday passing through the churchyard where the tombstones stood. We know from the Cloud of Witnesses' that previous to 1714 there was a stone with an epitaph upon it in memory of Margaret Wilson; and in the churchyard of Wigton at this day there is to be seen a stone, of undoubted antiquity, on which the names of both the martyrs are engraved. But here we may be allowed to ask, if these women were not martyred, what was done with them, what became of them? In the course of nature the widow of three score and ten must soon have disappeared from the world; but Margaret Wilson, the maiden of eighteen or twenty in 1685, would be a woman of only fortyfive in 1711; and thus, if not really drowned, must have walked upon her own grave, read her own epitaph, and been amused at the inquiries of the Kirk Session regarding her drowning scene twenty-five years before. But what of the relatives of these women, be they dead or alive? Our information is so minute that we can tell something even of them. In 1711 the mother

The following are some of the lay elders who attended the Synod of Galloway at the time this inquiry was proceeding. Sir Charles Hay of Park, Sir James Agnew of Lochnaw, Heron of Bargallie, M'Culloch of Barholm, M'Millan of Brockloch, Cathcart of Glenduisk, Halliday of Mark, M'Dowall of Culgroat, M'Dowall of Logan, Martin of Airies, Gordon of Largmore, Blair of Dunskey, M'Dowall of Glen, Gordon of Garery, M'Lellan of Barmagachan, &c. The present clerk of the Synod of Galloway, who furnishes these names from the records in his possession, in a letter to the 'Kirkcudbright'shire Advertiser,' states that the mansion houses of some of them overlook the bay of Wigton.