The Bulwark Magazine of the Scottish Reformation Society

The Bulwark Magazine of the Scottish Reformation Society APR - JUNE 2014 // £1 April - June 2014 1 The Bulwark Magazine of the Scottish Reformation Society The Martyrs’ The Magdalen Chapel 41 Cowgate, Edinburgh, EH1 1JR Tel: 0131 220 1450 Email: [email protected] Monument www.scottishreformationsociety.org Registered charity: SC007755 Chairman Committee Members Greyfriars, Edinburgh » Rev Dr S James Millar » Rev Maurice Roberts Vice-chairman » Rev Kenneth Macdonald » Rev John J Murray » Mr James Dickson The Martyrs’ monument in Greyfriars Secretary churchyard, Edinburgh was originally » Mr Allan McCulloch » Rev Douglas Somerset set up in 1706. The decision had been taken in October 1701, at a General Treasurer » Rev Andrew Coghill Meeting of the United Societies held at Crawfordjohn, that ‘all the Correspondences provide and make CO-OPERATION OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY ready stones, as signs of honour to (a) To propagate the evangelical Protestant faith In pursuance of its objects, the Society may co- be set upon the graves of our late and those principles held in common by martyrs as soon as possible.’ Progress operate with Churches and with other Societies those Churches and organisations adhering to in Edinburgh was slow, and it was whose objects are in harmony with its own. the Reformation; not until 28th August 1706 that the (b) To diffuse sound and Scriptural teaching on Edinburgh Council received a memorial Magazine Editor: Rev Douglas Somerset the distinctive tenets of Protestantism and requesting permission for the erecting Roman Catholicism; All literary contributions, books for review and of a monument in Greyfriars. The papers, should be sent to: (c) To carry on missionary work among monument had already been prepared The Magdalen Chapel adherents of the latter faith with a view to and, permission being granted, it was winning them to the doctrines of grace and to 41 Cowgate, Edinburgh installed soon afterwards. According the fellowship of the true Gospel; EH1 1JR to the inscription on the old stone, the work was completed in 1706. (d) To produce and distribute evangelistic, The Martyrs’ monument in 1856 religious and other literature in connection with The views expressed in articles are those of the promotion of the Protestant religion; Photographed by Thomas Keith. Courtesy of www.capitalcollections.org.uk the contributor and may not necessarily reflect those of the Editor or the Committee of the (e) To promote the associating together of men and women, and especially young people, The description of the proposed monument or at least would obviate the need of paying Society. Scriptural references are from the A.V. for systematic Bible Study and holding of in the memorial to the Council is somewhat a fee to the Greyfriars Kirk Treasurer. In except where stated otherwise. meetings for the above specified purposes. puzzling. It says that ‘there [was] no the event, the monument that was set up inscription to be put upon the tomb but the was considerably more elaborate than 6 chapter of the Revelation verse 9, 10 and the description in the memorial. Two early DESIGNED & PRINTED BY: 11.’ Perhaps it was felt that this restriction descriptions of it exist, one in Robert www.peppercollective.com Tel:028 9851 2233 would make it easier to obtain permission, Monteith’s Theater of Mortality, published 2 The Bulwark April - June 2014 3 in 1713, and another in the first edition of his wife Helen Alexander had been married Cloud of Witnesses, published in 1714. The by the martyr James Renwick in 1687 fuller one, in the Cloud, says that ‘Upon the and both had suffered during the times of Head of the Tomb there’s the effigies of persecution. An account of their sufferings an open Bible, drawn with these Scripture was published in 1869 under the title Citations, Rev. 6. 9, 10, 11 [cited in full], Passages in the Lives of Helen Alexander Rev. 7:14’ (Monteith’s Theater mentions and James Currie. Currie was a close friend Rev. 12:11 instead of Rev. 7:14, but this of Sir Robert Hamilton, the most prominent appears to be a mistake). Below the Bible figure in the United Societies during the was the verse beginning ‘Halt Passenger’, 1690s. Currie died in 1736 at the age of and below this the prose beginning ‘From eighty and was buried in Old Pentland May 27th 1661.’ Finally, ‘upon the foot of cemetery. the monument stands a crown with this inscription: ‘Be thou faithful unto Death and The authorship of the poem ‘Halt I will give thee a Crown of Life’’ (Rev. 2:10). Passenger’ on the monument is unknown. Rev. J.H. Thomson in his book Martyr The leader of the group responsible for Graves of Scotland (1903) suggests that setting up the monument was James it was written by Hugh Clark (1688-1724), Currie, a merchant from Pentland. He and who was a noted poet and became clerk to the United Societies in about 1714. Clark’s Detail of the 1706 monument, showing the crude addition, probably from 1728. poem ‘Meditations upon the Love of Christ’ Courtesy of the City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries. went through several editions after his death. As Thomson mentions, however, it In his edition of Cloud of Witnesses, them had been cut off by the hangman at is a difficulty with his suggestion that Clark published in 1871, Thomson records a the time of execution, and had been placed was aged only eighteen in 1706. Another tradition, which he had received from Rev. on spikes at the Pleasance Port. At night, possibility, therefore, is William Swanstoun, William Goold, Reformed Presbyterian however, the heads and hand had been a friend of James Currie’s, who in 1701 minister in Edinburgh from 1804 to 1844, taken down by the martyrs’ friends—one composed an elegy ‘Death to Believers to the effect that in the time of persecution of whom was the young James Renwick, a Passage to Glory’ on the decease of the authorities ordered the grave-diggers engaged in his first ‘public work’—and Currie’s thirteen-year-old son James. to bury the martyrs’ bodies with those of hastily buried in the garden as dawn was This elegy was published by popular murderers and other criminals in Greyfriars, breaking. The well-known Patrick Walker request in 1704. Swanstoun may also but that the grave-diggers, being gives an account of the incident in his have composed the elegy on Sir Robert sympathetic with the Covenanters, secretly ‘Vindication of Richard Cameron’s Name’ Hamilton who also died in 1701, that was buried them in a separate place. It is in Six Saints of the Covenant. When the published that year and re-published in supposed that the bodies were buried near heads were re-discovered, they were put 1762. Currie and Swanstoun were both the present monument, which is therefore in a coffin, and Patrick Walker was one of prominent in the United Societies: they were not only a monument but a tombstone. the six people involved in their re-burial on the committee appointed to interview at the Martyrs’ monument. Huge crowds Rev. John Macmillan in 1704; they were In October 1726, the heads of five turned out to watch the occasion. Some signatories to his call in 1706 to become Covenanting martyrs, who had been of the Cameronians, however, objected minister to the United Societies; and they executed at the Gallowlee in Edinburgh in to the participation of people like Walker, The stone from the Martyrs’ monument in 1706. were regularly entrusted by the Societies October 1681, were found in a garden near who were not as clear in their disowning of Courtesy of the City of Edinburgh Council with the distribution of alms collected for Lauriston Lane, not far from Greyfriars. The the Government and separation from the Museums & Galleries. the poor. martyrs’ heads and the right hand of one of Church of Scotland as they would have 4 The Bulwark April - June 2014 5 wished. The Cameronians republished the had marched up Edinburgh High Street, testimonies of the five martyrs from Cloud burning the Oath of Abjuration on the point of Witnesses in a pamphlet, to which they of a dagger. From references in the 1726 appended a poem in which the heads of Cameronian pamphlet to both an ‘Active’ the five martyrs were supposed to speak and a ‘Passive’ testimony, it seems likely out in the following terms: that its authors were Howdenites. What doth the Lord regard this pompous In 1728, according to a report in the show, Edinburgh Evening Courant (quoted in Whereby to honour Us ye mourning go? Grant’s Edinburgh Old and New), the Whilst ye most basely bury that same Martyrs’ monument was repaired and Cause, ‘a compartment’ added to it ‘on which For which we dy’d thro’ Mens iniquous is cut a head and a hand on pikes, as Laws, emblems of their sufferings, betwixt which And by your Practice to the World is to be engraved a motto alluding to both.’ proclaim, Presumably this modification had a reference That ye All these Schismatical esteem, to the re-interment of the heads in 1726, and Who own this Day with Us, a Cause the again it seems likely that the Howdenites same. were behind it. Probably it was at this time With Contempt and Disdain we do reject that the date of ‘1706’ was added to the old These your pretended Honours and monument, and if the new ‘compartment’ Respect... was as crudely cut as the date, it must have been an unsightly piece of work indeed. Patrick Walker, in his turn, dismissed the Cameronian poem as ‘a slanderous elegy’ The monument continued in this condition, and answered it with a vigorous poem of as far as we know, until 1771 when it was his own.

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