The family of the Trails is one of considerable antiquity, and was at an early period possessed of the estate of Blebo, in Fifeshire. The first historical notice we find of them is in Keith’s Catalogue of Scottish Bishops, wherein it is stated that Walter Traill, who was raised to the metropolitan see of St. Andrew’s by King Robert III about the year 1385, was a son of the Laird of Blebo. Andrew Traill, the great-grandfather of the writer of these sermons, was a younger brother of the then proprietor: he embraced the profession of arms, and served with distinction as a colonel in the wars of the Netherlands against Spain, and afterwards under the young King of Navarre, better known as Henry IV of France.
Robert Traill, the grandson of the preceding, and father of the subject of our memoir, is well known in the history of those who, during the 17th century, were sufferers for the truth in Scotland. He was minister of Elie in Fife, and afterwards of the Greyfriars’ Church in Edinburgh—a situation that connected him with the public events, and involved him in the disastrous calamities of that stirring period. After witnessing the miseries inflicted by the Marquis of Montrose upon his country, he was one of the ministers who attended that noble to the scaffold. On the invasion of Cromwell, and the approach of the English army to Edinburgh, he took refuge in the Castle with those who refused to submit to the victorious general and, in the siege that followed, he was severely wounded. At the Restoration, and when the whole land was maddened with a blind fit of loyalty, his deepest thought was for the safety of the Church of Scotland; and with other nine ministers he drew up a declaration to the king in which, after congratulating His Majesty’s return and professing their loyalty and submissiveness, they ventured modestly to remind him of his promises and engagements on behalf of the national church when he was crowned at Scon. But for this, Traill was imprisoned with his brethren in the Castle for the space of seven months. Even when liberated he was narrowly watched by the prelates; and having ventured to expound the scriptures to a few friends in the house where he dwelt, he was accused of holding a conventicle and summoned before the Council. His sentence was banishment for life; and in 1663, when more than sixty years old, he was obliged to bid a mournful farewell to his home and family, and retire to Holland. Such is but a brief outline of his labours and sufferings. It does not appear that he published any work; but his two letters written to his wife and children during his exile, and which have been repeatedly printed, have been always deservedly admired by the Christian public for their apostolic simplicity, their tenderness and piety.
Robert Traill, his son, and the subject of this brief notice, was born at Elie in May, 1642. After he had passed through the usual preparatory studies, he was sent to the College of Edinburgh, where he distinguished himself in the several classes, and was much commended by the professors for his industry and acquirements. As he had devoted his life to the work of the ministry, he applied himself for several sessions to the study of theology; and his heartiness to the cause of the church of his fathers, which he ever afterwards so nobly defended, was shown by his fearless attendance upon Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling to the scaffold.
But his own personal troubles soon followed. His father’s banishment had so straitened the circumstances of the family that they were often without a home; and in 1666, in consequence of some copies of the Apologetic Relation, a work which the prelates hated, and the Privy Council had condemned to the flames, having been found in their dwelling, he was obliged, with his mother and brother, to hurry into concealment. The oppressions of the prelatists produced their natural results: a portion of the people prematurely rose in arms and, after great suffering, were routed at Pentland Hills by the king’s forces. Robert Traill, it was asserted, had been in arms with the insurgents; and in consequence of this report, whether true or unfounded, he was obliged to fly to Holland to his father in 1667. In this shelter of persecuted Presbyterianism, he continued his studies in theology and assisted Nethenus, Professor of Divinity at Utrecht, in publishing Rutherford’s Examination of Arminianism. But his stay in Holland could not have been long, for we find him in London preaching in April 22, 1669, upon the Thursday previous to the administration of the Lord’s Supper. It is probable that in the earlier part of the same year he had come to London and been ordained to the work of the ministry by the Presbyterian clergymen in the metropolis. From the notices in his manuscript sermons it also appears that, after preaching some time in London without any settled charge, he was permanently stationed at Cranbrook, a small town in Kent.
In the year 1677 Traill was in Edinburgh, probably upon a temporary visit to his native country and friends; and, as he was a faithful workman in his sacred calling, both in season and out of season, he privately preached in the Scottish capital, notwithstanding the very stringent laws in force against such religious meetings. He was soon apprehended and arraigned before the Privy Council as a holder of house-conventicles. He acknowledged this part of the charge. He was asked if he had also preached at field-conventicles, but this question he very properly refused to answer. It would have been to confess a capital offence, and pronounce his own death-sentence. He was ordered by the judges to purge himself by oath of having either preached or attended at such meetings, but with this he also refused to comply. All that he would acknowledge amounted to this, that he had received Presbyterian ordination in London, and that he had conversed with Mr. John Welch on the English Border. Upon these slender grounds he was sentenced to imprisonment in the Bass; and in this loathsome dungeon he found Frazer of Brea, Alexander Peden, and other distinguished captives, who were suffering in the same good cause for which he was sent thither. His confinement, however, lasted only three months, at the end of which he was released by an order from Government. On being liberated he returned to his little flock at Cranbrook and, after some time, removed to London, where he officiated to the close of his life as pastor of a Presbyterian congregation. After outliving the persecution of the Stuarts, and witnessing their downfall and the establishment of the Hanoverian dynasty on the British throne, he died in May, 1716, at the age of seventy-four. (Extracted from Notes in a book of his sermons.)