Margaret Wilson

Margaret Wilson was the eldest of three children and her father, Gilbert, was a tenant farmer at Glenvernock in the parish of Penninghame to the north of Newton Stewart. Her parents said that ‘they were more than happy to worship the way the King wants’. But the three children (Margaret 16 years old; Thomas 14 and Agnes only 11) Agreed that the King was wrong. Two years later, the siblings ended up living in the hills with other Covenanters all through the winter of 1684-85. Whenever they could, they attended conventicles where to hear the Bible preached faithfully.

While Thomas stayed up on the snowy hillside and awaited their return, Margaret and Agnes decided to risk a secret visit to friends in the small town of Wigton. There they saw Bailie Patrick Stewart, their father's friend, who invited them to his home. They accepted, not knowing that Stewart was strongly against the Covenanters and all they stood for. He deliberately toasted the king at the meal and, when the girls remained silent, he betrayed them to the authorities and they were imprisoned in the Thieves’ Hole, in the same cell as a sixty-three year old widow woman, Margaret MacLachlan.

The girls were there for seven long weeks. On the 13th of April, Margaret and Agnes Wilson, Margaret MacLachlan and a servant girl stood on trial. The verdict was pronounced guilty. The two Margarets were sentenced "to be tied to palisades fixed in the sand, within the flood mark of the sea, and there to stand until the flood overflowed them and drowned them.” The date of the execution was set for the 11th of May. During the month of waiting, Mr Wilson journeyed to Edinburgh (over 100 miles away) and gained the reprieve of Agnes, on payment of £100 (a huge sum in those days) and she was released.

There was a crowd of several hundred on the shore near the mouth of the Bladnoch Burn that day to stand witness to Margaret's death on a lovely May morning. The stake to which she was tied was close enough for people to speak to her - and many tried to persuade her to swear
the Abjuration Oath – just to "say the words". But Margaret remained firm and it was remarked on how cheerful her voice sounded. As she watched the older Margaret drown, she began to sing Psalm 25 and afterwards to repeat the wonderful verses from Romans 8: 35-39.

The persecution of her parents continued after Margaret's death and the imposition of fines and the weekly journeys to pay them eventually ruined her father and he lost the farm and died in utter poverty. Her mother had to be cared for by friends. Thomas joined the army of William of Orange, but when he at last came home, there was nothing left for him.