I.
IT has been truly said that “of all the Covenanters who figure in the history of the last persecution, which, with increasing bitterness, extended over the long period of twenty-eight years, from 1660 to 1688, no one had a more remarkable career, or is better or more lovingly remembered in death, than Alexander Peden.” He was no ordinary man. No doubt his hair-breadth escapes from his persecutors and his remarkable utterances gave him a place among the people that none of his contemporaries enjoyed. After his death a little book—Peden’s Prophecies—was published in 1725 and reprinted by Patrick Walker with additions in 1726, and this had much to do in keeping green the supposed prophetic utterances of Peden. The book is supposed to have been compiled by Patrick Walker, a pedlar, gifted with a remarkable nervous English style as is evidenced by his Biographia Presbyteriana.† Walker had little judgment and was very credulous. He did not possess the gift of separating the false from the true with the result that not a few of the stories in the book are recognised now by competent authorities as imaginary. Yet it must be admitted that after a careful pruning there are utterances by Peden and Cameron which cannot be lightly set aside as the deliverances of mere visionaries. These were men who spent days and nights with their God in lonely solitudes and should it be thought a thing incredible that the Holy Spirit would at times give them a sight into the future denied to their contemporaries?
Alexander Peden was born at Auchincloich, in the northern part of the parish of Sorn in 1626. He was educated at Glasgow University. He may have been a student when Robert Baillie and David Dickson were teaching there. He was licensed to preach the gospel in 1659 and in the Diary of Andrew Hay of Craignethan (Scottish History Society) there is an account given of his “trial” discourse. Hay gives the following leading ideas in the discourse preached from Acts v. 23, which were strangely prophetic of Peden’s checkered career: “1. That sometimes the Lord makes His enemies errand-bearers of His people’s delivery. 2. That wicked men leave no means unessayed to embitter the lot of the righteous. 3. That ordinarily the Lord disappoints the enemies when they think themselves sikker (sure). 4. That it’s a hard thing to bear home the conviction of a disappointment on the wicked. 5. That the wicked are so blind as they cannot see most palpable progress of God’s power. 6. That God whiles trysts [meets] His people’s deliverance with impossibilities.” For sometime Peden was schoolmaster, session-clerk, and precentor at Tarbolton about 9 miles to the west of his native place. The minister of the parish at this date was the Rev. John Guthrie, brother of the better known William Guthrie of Fenwick (pronounced Finnick), and cousin of James Guthrie, Stirling, the martyr. It was probably before his licensure that Peden held the above offices. It was while at Tarbolton, Peden passed through a fiery trial. A young woman made a cruel charge against him. Peden asserted his innocence and said the Lord would vindicate him. The out-gate from his trouble is thus stated by John Howie in his Scots Worthies: “The woman, after suffering many calamities, put an end to her own life, in the very same place where Peden had spent twenty-four hours seeking the divine direction, while he was embarrassed with that affair.” In 1660 Peden was ordained minister of New Luce, in Galloway, sometimes called the Muir Kirk of Glenluce. New Luce did not long enjoy his ministrations for he was evicted in 1663 with the great majority of faithful Presbyterian ministers by a decree of the Privy Council passed at Glasgow on 1st October, 1662, when according to Bishop Burnet the Councillors were “so drunk that they were not capable of considering anything.” Episcopacy was now set up and established in Scotland and began that odious career of persecution the memory of which has lingered in the memory of Scotsmen to this very day. The day he bade farewell to his people he preached in the forenoon from the Acts of the Apostles xx. 7, to the end, stressing the words: “Therefore watch and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn,” etc. In the afternoon he preached from: “And now brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them that are sanctified” (Acts, xx. 32). The congregation were so overcome that they fell to weeping and it was with difficulty they were persuaded to leave the church. As Peden closed the pulpit door behind him, he knocked upon it three times with the Bible, solemnly saying: “In my Master’s name I arrest thee! that none ever enter thee, but such as enter as I have done, by the door.” And remarkable to relate no curate or indulged minister entered that pulpit during the ascendancy of Episcopacy in Scotland. From the date of his eviction Peden became a wanderer, hunted, searched for by dragoons, but never falling into his enemies’ hands. His life onwards was full of incident with hairbreadth escapes and filled full with marvellous providences. As time went on the fires of persecution began to burn more fiercely and on being summoned to appear before the Privy Council and refusing to attend he was “put to the horn” and later his life and fortune were forfeited. In one of the Government proclamations issued at the beginning of 1666 Peden is described “riding up and down the country with sword and pistols, in gray clothes.” After the rising of the Covenants which ended so disastrously for them at Rullion Green, Peden, with others, is described as the worst of traitors and when captured he and they are to be handed over to the Lords of the Privy Council. In 1667 in a proclamation granting a general pardon Peden is expressly excepted. We now enter on an interesting period of Peden’s life when as a wanderer he figured in those extraordinary escapes which have covered his name with a romantic interest. On one occasion he was hotly pursued by the dragoons and on reaching a swollen stream he urged his horse into the waters and got safely to the other side. On turning round he saw the leader of the dragoons urging his horse into the waters when he arrested him with the words: “Stop man! you have not my Ferryman to take you across. Consider where your landing would be. Ye are fighting for the devil, and riding post to him. Oh! think of it.” On another occasion when it looked like that he would fall into the hands of his enemies he prayed pathetically to his Lord: “Twine them about the hill, O Lord, and cast the lap of thy cloak over puir auld Sandy.” His prayer was immediately answered by the mist coming down and shrouding him from his enemies. He had an uncanny sight into character—”There comes the devil’s rattlebag” he said on one occasion as he saw a voluble religious professor approach. The man afterwards became a turncoat and Peden’s characterisation stuck to him and to his family. After the Revolution the man complained to his minister but all the comfort he got was: “You well deserve it; he was an honest man that gave it to you; you and yours must enjoy the title, there’s no help for it.”
At length Peden was captured in 1673 at Knockdow, in the parish of Colmonell, in South Ayrshire. He had been holding a conventicle in the neighbourhood and after preaching he retired to the house of Hugh Ferguson, who constrained him to stay for the night. Peden warned his host that it would be a dear night’s lodgings to both and so it turned out. Both were apprehended and taken to Edinburgh where Ferguson was fined a thousand merks. Peden was sentenced to imprisonment for several years.
After his release we find him performing the marriage of John Brown (the Christian Carrier) and Isobel (or Marion) Weir in a quiet moorland farmhouse where the hunted minister and the godly couple met for the ceremony which was to make John and Isobel one. When the wedding ceremony was over the young wife listened to ominous, prophetic words from Peden, which must have filled her heart with strange forebodings: “You have got a good husband,” he said, “value him highly, and keep linen for a winding sheet beside you, for in a day when you least expect it the Master will take him away from your head.” Three years afterwards the young wife saw her husband shot before her eyes by Claverhouse.
(To be continued).
It is common for men to make doubts when they have a mind to desert the truth.—Samuel Rutherford.
*The fullest biography of Peden is that of Rev. Kirkwood Hewat published at Ayr in 1911.
†This work was re-issued with notes by Dr. Hay Fleming in 1901 under the title, Six Saints of the Covenant, (2 vols.), with the exception of the life of Renwick by Shields.