ABSTRACT DANE LOVE - SCOTTISH COVENENTER STORIES - TALES FROM THE KILLING TIMES. 2005 Neil Wilson Publishing. ISBN 1-897784-9
–88 a common belief is that following the Restoration, Charles 2cd adopted a lenient forgive and forget stance towards most people who had stood against his father, and later against himself. True, the main regicides were tried and brutally executed. Those like Cromwell, Ireton & Bradshaw who had already died naturally were dug up and put on show trial. Most opponents of kingship were believed to have been allowed to go free. That was far from the case, especially in Scotland. The cots who had signed the Solemn League & Covenant, and fought against Montrose & McColla were to face intense persecution throughout the reign of Charles 2cd. This book, set out like Foxe’s Book Of Martyrs. Gives fifty interlinked stories of the Covenant Martyrs who were to lose their homes, their properties, their liberty and often their lives. Many were executed, others died by the sword. Others were driven to exile or sold into slavery. This is their remarkable story. It begins with the best known Covenanter trials and executions, those of the Covenant leaders, The Earl Of Argyll and & Lord Johnson Of Wariston, A keynote event in the persecutions was the
battle of Rullion Green. This was started over an attempt by the Royalists to roast a Covenant supporting farmer on a large griddle. Four Covenant fugitives who had been hiding in the Galloway forests rescued the wretch and organised a march on Edinburgh, drumming up support as they went. They raised 900 men, but 3,000 at Rullion Green on The 28th November 1666 routed them. The Royalists pulled out all the stops to round up the scattered survivors in the
years to follow. One of many bizarre stories given in Love’s book is that of eight prisoners captured and put on trial in Ayr for their part in the battle. Two hangmen refused to hang the men. One of the hangmen was he put in prison for his refusal. The other fled for freedom and was never seen again. The Ayeshire militia now hit on a novel solution to the crisis. They offered freedom to any of the eight who would willingly hang his seven co-conspirators. Remarkably, one of them, Cornelius Anderson, agreed to do it. He had to get himself blind drunk to go ahead with the grizzly business, and later, vilified by all and sundry, he fled to Ireland. He died there in an unexplained fire. On the 22cd September 1686, an Irish minister, David Houston, who had served the Covenant cause, was invited to the Lowther Hills to give a sermon to his old allies. Once back home in Ireland, anti-Covenanters arrested him. His friends sailed over to rescue him. They succeeded, even fighting a pitched battle at Bello Path, but no one was killed, though Houston fell from his horse in the escape and received serious brain damage. In the years following this event, Royalists searched out the Covenanters who had taken part in the rescue attempt. In June 1688, in Sorn, Scotland, the Royalists interrogated a sixteen-year-old boy called George Wood. hoping for leads. When he proved unable or unwilling to tell them anything they shot him. Wood was officially the last and youngest victim o f the period Scots have referred to ever since as the Killing Times. This is a book of amazing rarely told stories that border on folklore, but Love provides detailed footnotes to back his study of a forgotten consequence of the Civil war. He proves that the Restoration did not end the bloodshed, far from it.