BY THE REV. D. BEATON, WICK.
(Continued from page 298.)
MRS. BROWN, OF PRIESTHILL.*
AMONG the cruel persecutors of the Covenanters there is probably no name so execrated as that of the “bloody Claverse.” Notwithstanding all the efforts that have been made to vindicate his memory—and he has had faithful defenders—he stands at the bar of popular opinion in Scotland as a criminal charged with deeds of almost nameless cruelty. And even sober and unbiased history gives him enough to answer for. The latest and most thorough study of the Covenanting period—The Covenanters, by Dr. King Hewison—has done nothing to overturn the popular verdict. If anything, it has drawn the lines heavier where they were black enough already. His admirers have praised him for his beauty, his military genius, bravery, and unselfish devotion to his king. But others who have not come under his fascinating spell, fail to see these virtues in the hero of Killiecrankie, and are only too willing to join with the Ettrick Shepherd in ascribing to him “the nature of a wolf, if he had the bravery of a bull-dog.” Our main interest in Claverhouse for the present is the part he is said to have taken in one of the most cold-blooded and affecting tragedies that stain the page of Scottish history—the death of John Brown, of Priesthill.
It was the month of May, 1685—the same month and year that saw the tragedy of the Wigtown martyrs. Here is Claverhouse’s own account of the matter, in a letter written to the Duke of Queensberry on Sabbath the 3rd of May, 1685:—”On Frayday last,” he writes, “amongst the hills betwixt Douglas and the Piellands, we pursuede tuo fellous a great way throu the mosses, and in end seised them. They had no armes about them, and denayed they had any; but being asked if they would take the abguration, the eldest of tuo, called John Broun, refused it, nor would he swear not to ryse in armes against the King, but said he kneu no King; upon which, and there being found bullets and match in his house, and treasonable peapers, I caused shoot him dead, which he suffered very inconcernedly.”
This letter in itself is sufficiently damaging to those who would seek to exonerate Graham of Claverhouse from any participation in the murder of John Brown, of Priesthill, but it is not the only evidence, though Aytoun, in his Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, says that “For forty-three years after the Revolution the details of this atrocious murder were never revealed to the public! Nowhere in print or pamphlet, memoir, history, or declaration published previously to Wodrow—1722—does even the name of John Brown occur, save once in the Cloud of Witnesses, a work which appeared in 1714, and in that work no details are given, the narrative being comprehended in a couple of lines.” Dr. Smellie, in his Men of the Covenant, answers Aytoun by saying: “But, as Dr. Hay Fleming replies, ‘Aytoun’s search must have been perfunctorily performed.’ In a pamphlet by Alexander Shields, published immediately after the Revolution, the tragedy is thus told: ‘The said Claverhouse, in May, 1685, apprehended John Brown in Priesthill, in the parish of Moorkirk, in the shire of Air, being at his work about his own house, and shot him dead before his own door, in presence of his wife.’ A year later Gilbert Rule gives a brief but explicit account of the martyrdom. Two years afterwards there is allusion to it again in one of the best-known controversial books of the time. The Royalist professor has been negligent in his scrutiny.”
Before coming to describe the dire tragedy of that early May morning, a word or two must be said about her who played such a noble part when the cruel messenger of death came so suddenly to her home. John Brown and Isabel Weir had been together but three short years. It was Alexander Peden, the Prophet of the Covenant, who joined them together in the bonds of matrimony. And in keeping with the weird mystery that surrounded his person and sayings, he turned to the bride, who then had no consciousness of the terrible fate awaiting her husband, and said, “Isabel, you have got a good man, but you will not enjoy him long. Prize his company, and keep linen by you to be his winding-sheet, for you will need it when not looking for it, and it will be a bloody one.”
The night before the fateful May morning when Isabel Weir would require “the linen for his winding-sheet when she was not looking for it,” Alexander Peden, a solitary fugitive among the lonely mountains and glens, came to the humble home of John Brown. The next day he rose early. It was a misty morning, and, looking out over the moorland, Peden said, “A fearful morning, a fearful morning.” “Yes,” said someone, “it is a dark morning.” “Yes,” he replied, “a dark, misty morning.” With these words Peden passed into the mist, and pursued his way through the lonely moor to some friendly home. It was the last time he saw John Brown alive. That morning was to witness a darkness more terrible than that produced by the mist. All unconscious of danger, John Brown, with his nephew, was digging some peat ground, when suddenly the troopers of Claverhouse were upon them. They were immediately taken prisoners, and carried back to their home. John Brown was asked if he had ever preached, and on receiving a reply in the negative, Claverhouse said, “If he has not preached, meikle has he prayed in his time.” He turned to John Brown, adding, “Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die.” John knelt on the ground before his door, and in this hour of dire need poured out his soul to God.
It was a solemn hour, and, though ready to go, there was a young wife with their firstborn to be left behind. As he prayed for these and the Lord’s covenanted cause in Scotland, Claverhouse could stand it no longer. “I gave you time to pray,” he said, “and ye’ve begun to preach.”
Then came the last sad farewell between husband and wife. “Take good-night of your wife and children,” said Claverhouse. The brave man rose from his knees, and as he approached his wife, to bid her the last farewell on this side of eternity, he said, “Now, Isabel, the day is come that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me.” And the answer she gave made it easier for him to kneel for the last time ere the bullets of the troopers laid him a lifeless corpse on the green grass. “Indeed, John,” she said, “I can willingly part with you.” “That’s all I desire,” said the martyr; “I have no more to do but die.” He kissed his wife and child, knelt in prayer, and then, according to Patrick Walker, “Claverhouse ordered six soldiers to shoot him, and the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground.”
Then turning to the widow, Claverhouse asked, “What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?” “I thought ever much good of him,” she replied, “and as much now as ever.” “It were but justice,” was the cruel rejoinder, “to lay thee beside him.” “If you were permitted,” she said, “I doubt not but your cruelty would go that length; but how will ye make answer for this morning’s work?” “To man I can be answerable,” was the contemptuous and daring reply, “and for God, I will take Him in my own hands.”
It is but justice to state that, according to Patrick Walker’s account, it was not Claverhouse’s own hand, but those of his soldiers, that fired the fatal shots. The commonly received account, however, is that the soldiers were afraid to fire, and that Claverhouse’s own hand did the ghastly deed. Be that as it may, our chief concern is with Mrs. Brown, who, on that May morning, saw enacted before her a scene which the sorrows of after years could scarcely obliterate from her memory. After the troopers had left, the young widow laid her helpless infant beside the body of her dead husband, and lovingly gathered up in a napkin the fragments of the scattered head. When this labour of love was over, her heart at last became a fountain of tears as she realised what had taken place.
The news of the terrible tragedy having spread, some of the neighbours hastened to the grief-stricken home. “The first that came,” says Patrick Walker, “was a very fit hand—that old, singular, Christian woman in the Cummerhead, named Jean Brown, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland, and afterwards of two worthy sons, killed and shot. Then came David Steel, a godly man, and gathering the little company together, they joined in family worship. The Psalm chosen for praise was the twenty-seventh, and as the sorrowful group of mourners sang the words of this Psalm, as it is rendered in the Scottish metrical version, it must have comforted their hearts:—
“For He in His pavilion shall
Me hide in evil days;
In secret of His tent me hide,
And on a rock me raise.
And now, even at this present time,
My head shall lifted be
Above all those that are my foes,
And round encompass me.
Therefore unto His tabernacle
I’ll sacrifices bring
Of joyfulness; I’ll sing, yea, I
To God will praises sing.”
After family worship was over they laid the mortal remains of John Brown to rest in a grave dug out on the lonely moor.
A. B. Todd, in his Scottish Covenanters, speaking of a second visit he paid to the scene of John Brown’s martyrdom, writes: “Some years afterwards we visited the place again, this time in one of the glad, green, summer months, but even then it had a sad and a most lonely look, though the bluebells were bending their heads around the martyr’s grave, and the larks were singing joyously and well, away up on the rim of a gorgeous rainbow which rested on the sides of the eastern hills.”
Well may Dr. Smellie say, “One knows not whether the courage of husband or of wife is the more admirable.” But the courage that enabled Mrs. Brown to part with her husband was of a higher order than is born of this earth, and surely she has earned a right to a place among the true-hearted heroines of the Covenant.
(To be Continued.)
- This sketch has already appeared in the Protestant Woman.
The Prerogatives of the Son of God.—Jesus Christ, upon whose shoulders the government is, whose name is called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; of the increase of whose government and peace there shall be no end; who sits upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and justice, from henceforth, even for ever; having all power given unto Him in heaven and in earth by the Father, who raised Him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand, far above all principalities and power, and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come and put all things under His feet and gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all: He being ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things, received gifts for His Church, and gave officers necessary for the edification of His Church and perfecting of His saints.—Preface to the Westminster Form of Presbyterian Church Government.