On the River Ericht, just upstream from Blairgowrie, lies a stunning gorge. This scenery, famous as a beauty spot in Scotland, once witnessed a minister fleeing for his life in 1679 from the dragoons of King Charles II. As the soldiers came in hot pursuit, Revd Donald Cargill leapt the narrow river at the Keith Falls, safely to the other side, leaving the soldiers foiled and fuming. He had often evaded the king’s soldiers, and even those who sought him dead or alive for the king’s ransom of 2000 merks became frustrated. Finally, he was caught and sentenced to death for treason by hanging in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket on 27 July, 1681, along with four other Covenanters.
This man of prayer and resolute boldness had defied King Charles II, causing his wrath to fall. When the king was restored in 1660, 29 May became a compulsory day of celebration for Charles II, enforced by Parliament. Openly disregarding this, Cargill said to his congregation on 29 May, 1662: ‘We are not come here to keep this day upon the account for which others keep it. We thought once to have blessed the day wherein the king came home again, but now we think we shall have reason to curse it; and if any of you come here in order to the solemnising of this day, we desire you to remove.’ Cargill was reported to the authorities for his insubordination and removed from his pastorate at the Barony Church in Glasgow. It was this same year that witnessed the cruel ejecting of about 2,000 English Puritan ministers who had stood by the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and almost 400 Presbyterian ministers in Scotland. During this period, Cargill became an outlaw and field preacher to crowds of Christians who sought to hold fast to their confession.
After being wounded in the battle between the Covenanters and Royalists at Bothwell Bridge in 1679, Cargill escaped to Holland to recover. By 1680 he was back in Scotland, where he was nearly caught by soldiers at South Queensferry, but they apprehended his accomplice Covenanter called Henry Hall, who had in his possession a document known as The Queensferry Paper. Their enemies called this document ‘A Treasonable and Bloody Paper called the Fanatics New-Covenant’. In this paper, Cargill expounded the gospel and the cause of the Reformation, and called Presbyterians to repent from compromise, but it also rejected Charles II as king, and called for a Christian-based democratic republic, as well as a declaration of self-defence against the king’s soldiers. The text calls for the removal of the worldly control of the king and bishops over the church, and states that Charles II had ‘overturned the fundamental and established laws of the kingdom [of Scotland], taken away altogether Christ’s church-government, and changed the civil government of this land, which was by a king and free parliament, into tyranny’. It is no wonder that the king and his followers’ blood boiled when they read this document. Fanatics, in their eyes, were people who rejected Charles II’s absolute autonomy, and promoted a more fair and just system of church and state.
In his Last Speech and Testimony, which Cargill wrote in the Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh, he exulted in his heavenly homecoming: ‘THIS is the most joyful day that ever I saw in my pilgrimage on earth. My joy is now begun, which I see shall never be interrupted.’ However, he expressed his grief at the compromised state of the Church of Scotland. ‘My soul trembles to think how little of regeneration there is amongst the ministers and professors of Scotland,’ he said.‘O the ministers of Scotland, how have they betrayed Christ’s interest and beguiled souls! ‘They have not entered in themselves, and them that were entering in, they hindered.’ They have sold the things of Christ and liberties of His Church for a short and cursed quiet to themselves.’ How we need to heed his words today.
‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints’ (Psalm 116:15, NKJV).
Image: Revd Donald Cargill’s Queensferry Paper of 1680, as viewed by his enemies. Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.