Covenanters' attack on Stranraer castle

We recently did some open air outreach outside Stranraer Castle - also known as the Castle of St John. In the late 1600s, the Castle served as a prison for Covenanters as well as a base for Covenanting persecutor John Graham of Claverhouse - ‘Bloody Claverhouse’.

Around the summer of 1685, some Covenanters attacked the castle in order to rescue prisoners.

The historian Robert Wodrow records that:

On 15 October, 1685, the privy council appointed that ‘Hugh M’Kinasters, who has made discoveries of several persons rebels in Galloway, and who were accessory to the attack of the castle of Stranraer, whereof some are taken, to be further examined upon oath by the earl of Balcarras and [John Graham of] Claverhouse.’ (Wodrow, History, IV, 223.)

Dumfries & Galloway Council have an information leaflet about the Castle that you can view here. You can watch some recent drone footage of the Castle below:

Stranraer RPC on the BBC

A recent episode of the BBC NI TV programme ‘Hame’ was partly filmed in our church building and featured an interview with our minister and presenter Ruth Sanderson.

The fourth series of the Ulster-Scots documentary series is the first one to be filmed in Scotland. The episode that Stephen featured on also included a segment filmed at the Covenanter martyrs’ memorial in Wigtown.

A write-up about the episode featured in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press:

An episode on an earlier series featured RPCI historian William Roulston speaking about Covenanter preacher Alexander Peden, minister at New Luce and then field preacher, who travelled between Scotland and Ireland:

Scottish Church History in 10 minute videos

Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary have recently produced over forty 10-minute videos by Ian Hamilton on key people and events in the history of the church, covering the period from the early church up to the 1800s.

The videos that are particular relevant to Scottish church history are listed below, and are well worth watching:

Livingstone, Lady Culross & the Kirk of Shotts revival

Yesterday marked the 349th anniversary of the death (in Rotterdam) of the Covenanter John Livingstone, who was minister in Stranraer from 1638-48. While he was here, ‘his ministry produced a great impression, and his communions were attended by crowds from Ireland’ (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). His diary is in Stranraer Museum.

Kirk of Shotts today

Livingstone is most well known, however, for a sermon he preached at the Kirk of Shotts Revival in June 1630. Livingstone records: ‘'The day in all my life wherein I found most of the presence of God in preaching was on a Monday after the communion in the churchyard of Shotts, June 21, 1630’. He then begins his account of what happened by telling us: ‘The night before I had been in company with some Christians who spent the night in prayer and conference’. One local minister later said that about 500 people were converted that day, and most of them proved to be genuine. This minister attributed what happened to the prayers of the people, saying ‘the night before being spent in prayer, the Monday’s work might be discerned as a convincing return of prayer.’

A flagstone in Edinburgh’s lawnmarket commemorating Lady Culross, unveiled in 2014

Stephen mentioned the above details in a recent sermon entitled ‘Praying for Revitalisation’. What is less well-known, however, is Livingstone’s account of the most memorable prayer preceding the communion. The prayer was by Lady Culross (Elizabeth Melville), the first woman in Scotland to have her writing published.

Livingstone’s record of what happened is preserved for us in Scottish Puritans (Banner of Truth, 2008), pp 346-7. It’s also on the Reformation Scotland website. Livingstone writes:

“At the communion in Shotts, in June 1630, when the night after the Sabbath was spent in prayer by a great many Christians in a large room, where her bed was; and in the morning all going apart for their private devotion, she went into the bed, and drew the curtains, that she might set herself to prayer. William Rigg of Athernie [sometimes spelt Ridge of Adderny] coming into the room, and hearing her have great motion upon her, although she spoke not out, he desired her to speak out, saying that there was none in the room but him and her woman, as at that time there was no other. She did so, and the door being opened, the room filled full. She continued in prayer, with wonderful assistance, for large three hours’ time.”

Lady Culross also penned the well-known encouragement to Rigg when he was imprisoned in Blackness Castle, that “the darkness of Blackness was not the blackness of darkness”. (p. 342).

Related Posts: John Livingstone Commemorated (2019)

Where the Reformed Church in Scotland falls short

In our morning services, we’re currently working our way through Christ’s letters to the seven churches in Revelation. One of the classic commentaries on Revelation was written by the Scottish Covenanter James Durham and first published shortly after his death at the age of 36.

Of all the seven letters, Durham said that the letter to the church in Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) was the one that was most relevant to the Covenanted Church in Scotland, and called on his readers to ‘look upon this epistle as if Christ were writing a letter to Scotland’.

He says that Christ’s problem with the Reformed Church in Scotland in his day wouldn’t have been because of their lack of orthodoxy or zeal or outward worship - but a lack of love for God manifested in a lack of love for one another:

‘Wonder not why God quarrels with Scotland; we need not say it is for corruption in doctrine or discipline, nor for our zealous going about it; that was not his quarrel with Ephesus…Neither is it his quarrel with us, but as it was his quarrel with Ephesus, that she was fallen from her first love, so it is with us.

…Our Lord Jesus would never have quarrelled [with] Ephesus nor us for zeal and faithfulness. But…there is a declining love, especially love to God and love to one another, which may be seen in our walking uncharitably and untenderly. A defection in the manner of performing duties; our fasts have not been from a right principle, our censures not in love to the souls of the people; much roughness and untenderness in drawing them forth.

…Therefore look upon this epistle as if Christ were writing a letter to Scotland; and in his letter saying, “for as much purity and zeal as you have, yet you are fallen from your first love; much of your love, warmness and tenderness is away”’.

He says elsewhere that the church in Ephesus was zealous for the external worship of God, but had failed to live out the ‘one anothers’:

‘Though there was zeal in the external Worship of God: yet there was great defect of that love, sympathy and affection of one of them, with and to another, that should be; this being ordinary, that love inflamed toward God, and love one to another, go together: and therefore as it importeth they had fallen from their former warm impressions of love to God, so also from their kindly affection one to another, and had fallen in part to be more in sacrifice, and externals of Worship, than in Mercy and love one to another’.

Durham comments later on that it was likely that the outward state of their church was admired because of purity of their outward worship and the vigour of their discipline, as it is ‘too ordinary for men to think too much of external forms’.

He concludes: ‘Nothing has more influence in procuring judgement than coldness in love to God and others’.