Sarah's Daughters
11
THE TWO MARGARETS!
We sometimes feel that we are hard done by living in these days. But when we read about the committment of some of God's People in the past and the present, we are put to shame. Here we reproduce an account of the death of "the two Margarets" in Wigtownshire. Today there is an imposing monument [standing about 25 metres high] on the hill in the centre of the town. On a visit to the town many years ago specifically to see where the two Margaret's died, I asked one of the locals what the monument was for. His reply was: "I don't know." They are forgotten - but we ought not to forget them.
This account can be found in: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES
by Rev. John H. Thomson. Google maps will help you locate Wigtown if you don't know where it's located in Scotland.
UPON the 11th of May 1684, [1685] Margaret Lauchlane in the parish of
Kirkinner, and Margaret Wilson in Glenvernock in the shire of Galloway,
being sentenced to death for their noncompliance with prelacy, and
refusing to swear the oath of abjuration, by the Laird of Lagg, [i.e., Sir
Robert Grierson,] Captain Strachan, Colonel [Winram] Mr. David Graham,
and Provost Cultron [i.e., of Wigtown], who commanded them to receive
their sentence on their knees, which they refusing, were pressed down by
force till they received it: and so were by their order tied to a stake within
the sea-mark, in the water of Blednoch near Wigtown, where, after they
had made them wrestle long with the waves, which flowing, swelled on
them by degrees, and had sometimes thrust them under water, and then
pulled them out again to see if they would recant, they enduring death with
undaunted courage, yielded up their spirits to God.
The former was a widow woman of about sixty-three, of a most Christian
and blameless conversation, a pattern of piety and virtue, who having
constantly refused to hear the curates, was much pursued and vexed, and.
at length taken by the soldiers while she was devoutly worshipping God in
her family; and being indicted of being at Bothwell Bridge, Airsmoss, and
twenty field conventicles, and as many house conventicles, after sore and
long imprisonment, without necessary refreshments of fire, bed, or diet, at
length suffered this cruel death.
The other (Margaret Wilson), a young woman of scarce twenty-three years
of age, after she with her brother, who was about nineteen, and her sister
fifteen years old, had been long driven from their father’s house, and
exposed to lie in dens and caves of the earth, wandering through the mosses
and mountains of Carrick, Nithsdale, and Galloway, going to Wigtown
secretly to visit the foresaid Margaret Lauchlane, was taken by the fraud of
one Patrick Stuart, who, under color of friendship, having invited her and
her sister to drink with him, offered them the king’s health, and upon their
refusal of it, as not warranted in God’s Word, and contrary to Christian
moderation, went presently out and informed against them; her sister was
dismissed, as being but fifteen years of age, upon her father’s paying a
hundred pounds sterling for her ransom; she being detained and examined,
whether she owned the king as head of the Church and would take the
abjuration-oath; not answering to their pleasure, but adhering to the truths
of Christ, was in like manner condemned, and after great severities of
imprisonment, suffered the foresaid death; being put oft into the water, and
when half-dead taken up again, to see if she would take the oath, which she
refused to her last breath. While her fellow sufferer was wrestling with the
waves, as being put first in to discourage her; the persecutors asked her
what she thought of that sight? She answered, “What do I see but Christ
(mystical)wrestling there?” One of the times that she was taken out of the
water they said, Say “God save the king:” she returning with Christian
meekness, “I wish the salvation of all men, but the damnation of none:”
Upon which one of her friends, alleging she had said what they demanded,
desired them to let her go; but they would not, seeing she refused to take
the oath.
During her imprisonment she wrote a large letter to her friends, wherein,
besides the lively and feeling expressions of her sense of God’s love, she
doth, with a judgment not usual for her age and education, disclose the
unlawful nature of the Abjuration Oath, hearing of curates, owning the
king’s Supremacy, which was the thing the persecutors meant by his
authority, and proves the necessity of her suffering upon these heads.