Pentland Rising
This excerpt comes from a joint declaration issued by ten Covenanters who were executed at the Market Cross of Edinburgh on the 7th December 1666, for their involvement in the Pentland Rising.
The men were: John M’Culloch, John Shields, Andrew Arnot, James Hamilton, John Gordon, Robert Gordon, John Parker, Christopher Strang, John Ross, and Gavin Hamilton.
In it they explain why they rose in arms:
“…the laws establishing prelacy, and the acts, orders, and proclamations made for compliance therewith, being executed against us by military force and violence. And we, with others, for our simple forbearance, being fined, confined, imprisoned, exiled, scourged, stigmatized, beaten, bound as beasts, and driven unto the mountains for our lives; and thereby hundreds of families being beggared, several parishes, and some whole countryside’s exceedingly impoverished…. there was no other remedy left to us, but that last of necessary self-preservation and defence….it cannot in reason or justice be reputed a crime, or condemned as rebellion by any human authority.”
The declaration continues with a solemn warning about the nation’s backsliding: the overturning of the Reformation, the persecution of God’s people, and the spiritual ignorance of those in authority in both church and state. They plead with the people of Scotland not to share in such wickedness.
They remind the nation of God’s past blessings—how the church had flourished since the signing of the Covenant—and urge the people to defend the Reformed faith in the Church of Scotland, and to:
“shake off this heavy yoke of prelacy, which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear, and which is destructive to all our true interests, religious and civil.”
They conclude by declaring that they are neither afraid nor ashamed of the situation they face. They would not exchange their testimony for any earthly price, and they are confident that, in time, God will deal with His adversaries in this land.
The sentence pronounced against them ordered that they were:
“to be taken upon Friday the seventh day of December instant, betwixt two and four hours in the afternoon, to the market-cross of Edinburgh, and there to be hanged on a gibbet till they be dead; and after they are dead, their heads and right arms to be cut off and disposed upon as the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council shall think fit; and all their lands, heritages, goods, and gear to be forfeited to His Majesty’s use for the treasonable crimes aforesaid.”
This sentence was carried out. They were hanged at Edinburgh’s Market Cross, next to St Giles Cathedral, their heads severed and sent to various locations, and their right hands fixed to the Tolbooth in Lanark—the very place where they had renewed the Covenants.