[Scottish National Memorials Contents]
PEDEN’S STAFF has a decagonal metal top, and is shod with brass. Although now shortened by about eighteen inches, it is still of serviceable length. When preaching in Wigtownshire he frequented the house of Mr. McCIure, at Challoch, Leswalt; and the staff, which has been handed down in the McClure family, is now the property of Mr. William McJannet, banker, Irvine. Another staff of Peden’s is preserved in Sydney.
(439) Lent by JAMES DICKIE.
PEDENS SWORD has a double-edged blade 32 ⅝ inches long and 1 3⁄16 broad at the junction. The words ‘ANDREA FERARA’ are quite distinct on one side, but are partly worn out on the other. The hilt is gone, and the wooden grip is plain and recent. A niece of Peden’s married a McCrone, and the sword and under-mentioned Bible have been handed down in that family to the present time.
(440) Lent by JOHN McCRONE.
PEDEN S POCKET-BIBLE is a duodecimo bound in dark leather, (see Plate XV.) The title of the Old Testament and several of the first leaves are wanting. The title of the New Testament is also gone, but the colophon at the end bears that it was ‘Imprinted at London by the Company of Stationers, anno Dom. 1653.’ It is in fact the same edition as Captain Paton’s Bible (416). Some of the editions printed about that time are only distinguished for their many and glaring inaccuracies.1 Many passages in this copy are underlined, and the MS. marginal notes, written in a small, neat, contemporary hand, are believed to be Peden’s. At the end of the Old Testament there is written in an old hand, ‘Agnes Petheine lawfwll posessor.’ The binding belongs to the latter half of last century, for inserted are ‘The Psalms of David in Metre. Glasgow, printed by William Duncan, M.DCC.LI.’ Another Bible of Peden’s, now in the possession of Mr. James Mudie, Broughty-Ferry, has been briefly described in Johnston’s Treasury of the Scottish Covenant, p. 640; and more fully in the of 24th March 1884. Still another Bible of Peden’s is said now to belong to Mr. Francis Cooper, Alloa.
(441) Lent by MRS. CONNAL.
Plate XV. – Alexander Peden’s Pocket Bible.
Born in or about the year 1626, Peden became minister of New Luce in 1660, and was ejected in 1663. On the last day that he occupied the church, he chose the strikingly suitable text, Acts XX. 31, and in the afternoon took the next verse, on which he discoursed to his attached and sorrowing flock until the evening. ‘When he closed the pulpit door he knocked three times very hard on it with his Bible, saying three times over, I arrest thee, in my Master’s name, that none ever enter thee, but such as come in by the door, as I have done.’ From Scott’s Fasti it appears that no successor was ordained over his parish until 1694; but, according to tradition, one who was presented was killed by a fall from his horse ere he reached the church. Peden’s wanderings, sufferings, persecutions, and marvellous escapes were long and intimately known over Scotland, chiefly through the wide circulation of Patrick Walker’s Life and Death of Mr. Alexander Peden,2 and Howie’s Scots Worthies, in which he occupies an honourable place. While Wodrow held that his reputation had been injured by some of the prophecies fathered upon him, he fully believed that Peden foretold the lifting of his corpse, having been assured on the point by several who were present.3 And in this Wodrow does not stand alone.4 That he was taken from his grave and re-interred at the gallows-foot, and that thereafter the old burying-ground was forsaken for the once despised and ignominious spot, are not only undeniable facts, but remarkable proofs alike of the implacable rage of the persecutors and of the loving veneration of the people. Patrick Walker reveals the source of the old man’s strength when he relates that at one period he could seldom be prevailed on to preach, ‘frequently answering and advising people to pray meikle, saying, it was praying folk that would win through the storm.’ ‘Peden at the grave of Cameron’ is the title of one of the poems in Mrs. Stuart Menteath’s Lays of the Kirk and Covenant; Dr. James Dodds, in his Fifty Years’ Struggle of the Scottish Covenanters, devotes a whole chapter to ‘Peden the Prophet’; and in his Introduction5 to Miss Jean L. Watson’s Lives of Peden and Renwick (Edinburgh: Gemmell) Dr. John Ker has paid a well-deserved tribute to his memory.
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RAPIER, used by John Young of Peelhill in Covenanting times. FOLIO BIBLE, strongly bound, has brass clasps with leathern hinges. Printed at Amsterdam by Thomas Stafford in 1644, ‘according to the copy printed at Edinburgh by Andro Hart, in the year 1610.’ The title of the Old Testament is perfect, but the upper half of the title of the New Testament has been cut out. It was used by the Youngs of Peelhill, who were represented both at Drumclog and Bothwell. DUODECIMO BIBLE, printed in London in 1684. The Psalms bound up with it were printed at Edinburgh by Evan Tyler in 1682. It bears the signatures of ‘Elizabeth Carmichaell’ and ‘Lillias Hebburn,’ and contains an interesting note concerning the Youngs of Peelhill and their sufferings during the persecution.
(401, 442, 443) Lent by MISS JULIA J. STRUTHERS.
SIX ANDREA FERRARA SWORDS, five of which have been handed down in Covenanting families; the other belonged to Clarkson of Wiston.
(427-432) Lent by J. B. DALZELL.
TWO ANDREA FERRARA SWORDS, one of them double-edged. RAPIER. PIKE-STAFF. SWORD-STICK, imitation bamboo. PRESENTATION WALKING-STICK. BLUNDERBUSS. FLINTLOCK PISTOL.
(388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 408, 409) Lent by JOHN DENHOLM.
PLUG DIRK.
(402) Lent by MRS. NAPIER.
OLD POWDER-HORN, with many initials, but no ornamentation.
(413) Lent by JOHN HOWIE.
SPANISH RAPIER, inscribed ‘En Toledo,’ found when taking down Craighead House, Lesmahagow, about forty years ago. Two IRON SPEAR-HEADS, of the Covenanting period, from Lesmahagow.
(425, 433, 434) Lent by J. B. DALZELL.
PARTISAN, used in Covenanting times in Lesmahagow. Has a long spear-head; the crescent-shaped back and the hook in front are of open work. (See Fig. 84.)
(437) Lent by J. B. GREENSHIELDS.
SWORDS, Ferrara and country-made, used in the time of the Covenanting troubles.
(453) Lent by COLONEL W. W. HOZIER.
SEVENTEEN OLD SILVER COINS, hid by James Howie during the persecution and accidentally discovered in 1813. See Edinburgh Christian Instructor, new series, i. 17; and Thomson’s Martyr Graves of Scotland, first series, pp. 152-157.
(414) Lent by JOHN HOWIE.
LARGE SILVER COIN, hid and found with the above.
(420) Lent by REV. W. H. CARSLAW.
THICK QUARTO MANUSCRIPT VOLUME, being, as the title runs, ‘A Colection of seventy valuable lecture and sermons, preached, mostly in the time of the late persecution, by these eminent servants of Jesus Christ, Messrs. David Dikson, Wm Guthrie, Jo. Livingston, Jo. Kidd, Rd Camreon, Dd Cargill, Jo. Welch, Jo. Blackadder, M. Bruce, Gab. Semple, Jo. Dickson, Ro. Fleming, Jam. Hamilton, and Alex. Sheilds; with an action-sermon, debaration, invitation & 1 table, a[t] Maybole communion, by Mr. Arch. Riddle… Transcribed by Jo. Houie from several old manuscrips, about the years 1778-79. &c.’ Loosely inserted in this volume, and folded as if for a book-mark, is a small slip of paper, containing the causes of a Cameronian fast observed on the second Thursday of January 1699. A volume of such lectures and sermons was published for John Howie in 1779, and republished in 1880 with an Introductory Note, Commemoration Sermon, and biographical notices, by Dr. James Kerr. Howie also appended a much smaller Collection of very valuable Sermons to the Faithful Contendings Displayed in 1780.
(418) Lent by REV. W. H. CARSLAW.
Three small oblong MANUSCRIPT VOLUMES, filled chiefly with Sermons by William Guthrie and Donald Cargill. The writing is in an older hand than that of the author of The Scott Worthies.
(411) Lent by JOHN HOWIE.
THE BIBLE of John Howie, author of The Scots Worthies. This is a copy of the Genevan Version, or, as it is frequently called, the Breeches Bible, and was ‘Imprinted at London / by the Deputies of Christopher Barker, printer to / the Queen’s most excellent Majestie / 1599 / Cum privilegio.’ 4to. About two hundred editions of this version are known. ‘In 1599 no less than ten distinct editions were printed, each of which consisted of a large number of copies.’6 It con tinued to be printed long after the introduction of the so-called King James’s version, and was much used in Scotland, both in families and churches.7 The metrical Psalms are not in this copy.
(410) Lent by JOHN HOWIE.
JOHN HOWIES WALKING-STICK. This other relic of the worthy author of the Biographia Scoticana – now much better known as The Scots Worthies – is inscribed ‘J. H. 1783.’ Ten years later, after a long illness, which was induced by too severe study, the moorland writer died at the age of fifty-seven.
(415) Lent by JOHN HOWIE.
OCTAVO BIBLE, strongly bound in leather, with silver clasps, containing the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha. ‘London. Printed by the assigns of John Bill deceas’d, and by Henry Hills, and Thomas Newcomb, printers to the King’s most excellent Majesty. Cum privilegio. MDCLXXXII.’ The present version of ‘The Psalms of David in Meeter,’ printed by Thomas Brown, Edinburgh, 1675, is bound up with it. This Bible is remarkable for the great number of its extremely curious plates.
(444) Lent by IVY CAMPBELL.
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1 Lee’s Memorial for the Bible Societies, 1824, pp. 99-101.
2 This was by far the most popular of Walker’s six very popular chap-books. The first edition was printed in Glasgow, in 1725, by James Duncan, who, seven years before, had introduced the art of type-making into Glasgow. The second and third editions were printed in Edinburgh in 1726 and 1728 respectively. A great many editions have been issued since. The third, being the fullest, was reprinted, in 1817, in the first volume of the Biographia Presbyteriana. The title-page gives a good idea of Walker’s style, as well as a summary of the book:-
‘Some remarkable passages of the life and death of Mr. Alexander Peden, late minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway: Singular for Piety, Zeal, and Faithfulness: but especially, who exceeded all to be heard of in our late Ages, in that Gift of Foreseeing of Events, and Foretelling what was to befal the Church and Nation of Scotland and Ireland, particular Families and Persons; and of his own Life and Death: A few instances, amongst many through his Life, take these that follow.’
3 History of the Sufferings, iv. 396.
4 Ker of Kersland’s Memoirs, 1726, pp.6, 7.
5 Republished in 1887 in Scottish Nationality and other Papers, by the late Rev. John Ker, D.D.
6 Dore’s Old Bibles, 1888, p. 203.
7 Lee’s Memorial, pp. 102-113.
