On February 17th 1688 the Scottish Covenanter Minister James Renwick was executed in Edinburgh.
A follow on from my post earlier in the week.
Though none of the crowd that thronged Edinburgh’s Grassmarket this day in 1688 could know it, that date’s execution of minister James Renwick would make an end to the shameful period in Scotland we call The Killing Time.
Renwick was the last of many Covenanters who submitted to the public executioner; only a few months yet remained when officers in the field were empowered to force an oath of abjuration upon suspected dissidents, on pain of summary death in the field.
The son of a village weaver, Renwick manifested a martyr’s uncommon zeal for the faith early in life and matriculated at the University of Edinburgh. There in 1681 he witnessed the hanging of Covenanter preacher Donald Cargill.
After studying — and ordination — abroad in the Netherlands Renwick returned to his native soil in 1683. He managed some five years of secret ministering in hidden homes and conventicles, and all the while the law sought him ever closer. By the time it finally hunted him to ground in 1688, so many of the faith’s august champions had already taken their martyrs’ crowns that at age 25 Renwick was among the biggest game remaining.
How often cowled on ghostly moors by torchlight had the young reverend rehearsed the steadfast refusal he might one day deliver to his persecutors? Had he prayed that the weakness of flesh would not betray his spirit with an unbecoming attachment to his own life? “I cannot own this usurper as the lawful king, seeing both by the word of God such an one is incapable to bear rule, and likewise by the ancient laws of the kingdom which admit none to the crown of Scotland until he swear to defend their religion, which a man of his profession cannot do,” he declared to his captors when pressed for the formula of abjuration.
Renwick passed this test but little could even he have imagined how speedily would be fulfilled his gallows prayer recorded as such;
Lord, I die in the faith that Thou wilt not leave Scotland, but that Thou wilt make the blood of Thy witnesses the seed of Thy church, and return again and be glorious in our land. And now, Lord, I am ready.
The captain who finally caught Renwick is supposed to have exclaimed at seeing his youth, “Is this the boy Renwick that the nation has been so much troubled with?” The outlaw minister turned 26 two days before his execution.
His young years would not save him from the gallows though It is believed he was betrayed by a fellow Covenanter during a secret meeting in Edinburgh
The persecutions of Covenanters would end with the removal of King James and the ascension of William of Orange and his wife Mary (James’ daughter) to the thrones of Scotland and England in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.
He is celebrated as the last of the martyrs of the covenant, James Guthrie being one of the first. The two are thus commemorated in the inscription upon the ‘martyrs’ monument’ in the kirkyard at Greyfriars’ Kirk, where the original Covenant of 1638 has been signed.
The monument in the last pic marks Renwick’s burial-place, being fixed to the wall close to the spot where criminals were interred, the paintings by Thomas Allon is titled Condemned Covenanters on Their Way to Execution in the West Bow, Edinburgh
