The Killing Times

by Kay McMeekin

The Ayrshire countryside was the site of a violent and bloody religious persecution in the 17th century. The Covenanters were a group of simple people who refused to follow King Charles II's instructions on religious matters. Many were hunted down and arrested in the hills and glens for holding illegal religious services. The captured rebels were then taken to Edinburgh for trial. The trial verdicts were mostly foregone conclusions, and many of the covenanters were hanged in the infamous Grassmarket area of that city. Others hid in the hills for many months, but were eventually discovered by the King's soldiers and shot where they stood, for refusing to recognise the King as the head of the church. 

The hardcore of the Covenanting movement was in the radical south-west of Scotland. Several Cumnock men were involved in the Pentland Rising; the Covenanting march from Dumfries via Mauchline, Ochiltree and Cumnock to the debacle of the battle of Rullion Green in 1666. This was followed by repression, and two local men were amongst those who paid for insurrection. Patrick McNaught was indicted in 1667, and George Crawford, a Cumnock weaver, was executed in December 1666. 

Further unrest in 1678 brought a billeting of some of the Highland Host* in the parish. An armed uprising followed, which ended disastrously with the Covenanters' defeat at the battle of Bothwell Brig. Two Cumnock men, John Gemill and James Mirrie, were taken prisoner, incarcerated in Edinburgh. The prisoners were held in the Greyfriar’s Churchyard, Canongate and Edinburgh Tollbooths (prisons) and Heriot’s Hospital. In November 1679, these unfortunates were led on to a ship in Leith, the Crown of London, with 257 prisoners, where they were to be transported to English plantations in America to become slaves. They spent 12 days in port, confined in a small space below deck, said to be so crowded that many fainted and some almost suffocated. They were given little to drink or eat which only exacerbated their already bleak conditions.

The captain's planned course is unknown, but the ship’s first port of call was Orkney, where, on 10 December 1679, she sheltered from a storm off Scarvataing, a headland in the parish of Deerness, a mile or two from the sheltered bay of Deer Sound.

In gales typical of the season, the ship was driven onto rocks after her anchor chain snapped. The captain and crew escaped the doomed vessel by hacking down the ship's mast and clambering across it to reach land.

The prisoners, however, were not so fortunate. They had been confined to the hold and the hatches were battened down under the captain’s orders. The reasoning behind this act was simple - the captain would be paid for the number of slaves on board the vessel and recompensed for those who died on the voyage. He would receive nothing for an escaped prisoner. So, when the ship left port, the captain took steps to make sure none did. One member of the crew did attempt a rescue by breaking through the deck with an axe. His valiant efforts meant that around 50 prisoners escaped and made it to the Deerness shore.The remainder perished as the ship broke up and sank. It is said that over the following days, bodies washed up over three miles of the Deerness coastline. Over 200 drowned. Of the 47 or so prisoners who escaped to shore, most were recaptured and shipped to slavery in Jamaica or New Jersey.

The people of Orkney were told that the prisoners were rebels fleeing from justice, but some are said to have escaped capture. Tradition has it that some survivors made it to Stromness, where they found passage on a ship to Holland. Local tradition also dictates that some were permitted to settle in Orkney. The 46 known survivors were possibly reshipped to Barbados, Jamaica or New Jersey as slaves. However, some were reported to have escaped to Ulster, Ireland. Additionally, the families of Muir and Delday, on Orkney, claim to be descended from survivors.

A monument for the Covenanters was erected in Deerness in 1888, three hundred yards from the spot where the ship went down. 

* The Highland Host refers to the deployment of a large force of troops, mainly from the Scottish Highlands, into the Lowlands of Scotland in 1678. This event was a form of military coercion authorised by the Scottish Privy Council to enforce religious conformity and suppress dissent against the established Episcopalian Church. 

Sources

Historic Cumnock, burgh survey 

see also 

https://www.orkney.com/news/covenanters-memorial

https://www.douglashistory.co.uk/history/ships/crown.htm