MARION HARVIE was a servant-maid in Borrowstounness. She says, in her answers before the Privy Council, that her father had sworn the
Covenants, so that, in all probability, she had enjoyed the advantage of a religious education. But she was fifteen before religious teaching produced good effect upon her mind, and it would seem that it was a sermon of Richard Cameron which awakened her to a sense of sin, and led her to the Redeemer. Henceforward she embraced every opportunity of hearing the persecuted preachers. She speaks of having heard Donald Cargill, John Welch, Archibald Riddell, and Richard Cameron.
She was apprehended in November 1680, through means of a scheme intended to entrap Mr. Donald Cargill. James Henderson of North Queensferry, an informer in the service of Middleton, the governor of Blackness, found out Cargill in Edinburgh, and got him persuaded to agrae to come to Fife and preach. Meanwhile, a party of soldiers were lying in wait at Muttonhole, not far from Edinburgh on the way to Queensferry.
James Skene, Archibald Stewart, Mrs. Muir, and Marion Harvie, set out on foot, while Donald Cargill and James Boig were to follow on horseback.
When they came to Muttonhole, they were seized by the soldiers, but, in the confusion, Mrs. Muir escaped. She fled towards Edinburgh, and stopped Cargill and Boig when on the way, so that they both escaped.
Marion Harvie, James Skene, and Archibald Stewart, were brought prisoners to Edinburgh. Henderson, says Patrick Walker, got the price of blood, and bought or built a passage-boat, which he called “The
Katharine;” but many feared to cross the water in her. Henderson, after this, turned miserable and contemptible in the eyes of all well-thinking men, and, some affirm, died cursing, after he got that reward for his treachery.
Marion Harvie was brought before the Privy Council. Her answers to the questions put to her form the first part of her Testimony. There was the same levity in the questions which her enemies put to her, as in the examination of Isabel Alison; and Dalziel, with characteristic ferocity, threatened her with the Boots; yet her demeanor was calm and dignified.
On the 6th of December, she was brought before the Lord-Justice and the Commissioners of Justiciary. The books of the Justiciary Court have preserved the following record of her examination:
“Edinburgh, 6th December 1680. — In presence of the Lords Justice-Clerk and Commissioners of Justiciary sitting in judgment, compeared Marion Harvie, prisoner, and being examined, adheres to the fourth article of the fanatics’ New Covenant, the same being read to her, and disowns the king and his authority, and the
authority of the Lords of Justiciary, and adheres and abides at the treasonable Declaration emitted at Sanquhar, and approves of the same, and says it was lawful to kill the Archbishop of St.
Andrews, when the Lord raised up instruments for that effect, and that he was as miserable and perjured a wretch as ever betrayed the Kirk of Scotland; declares that ministers brought them up to these principles, and now they have left them, and that she has heard Mr. John Welch and Mr. Riddell preach up these principles she now owns, and blesses God she ever heard them preach so, for her soul has been refreshed by them. She approves of Mr. Cargill’s excommunicating the king. Declares she can write, but refuses to sign the same.
“Sic subscribitur,
“MAITLAND.
“DAVID BALFOUR.
“DA. FALCONER.
“ROGER HOG.”
Marion Harvie’s indictment was drawn up from this statement, and she was tried on Monday the 17th of January 1681. “Her discourse before the Justiciary Court” forms part of her Testimony. She was found guilty, but sentence was delayed till the following Friday. Her sentence was, “that she be taken to the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, upon Wednesday next, the 26th instant, betwixt two and four o’clock in the afternoon, and there to be hanged on a gibbet till she be dead, and all her lands, heritages, goods, and gear whatsomever, to be escheat and inbrought to our sovereign lord’s use;
which is pronounced for doom.”
In her Testimony she emphatically condemns her enemies, and leaves her blood upon their heads. The first compilers of the “Cloud,” in a note, remind the reader that such statements are to be interpreted like those of James Skene, as a warning to persecutors rather than as manifestations of a revengeful spirit. The Rev. James Anderson, in his interesting volume,
“The Ladies of the Covenant,” in his notice of Marion Harvie, has very appropriately quoted a passage from a letter of Gray of Chryston, one who suffered much himself during those times, to Wodrow, which quite agrees with the views of the compilers:
“As to their leaving their blood upon their enemies in general, or upon particular persons accessory to their trouble, I could never understand that they meant more by it than the fastening a conviction upon a brutish, persecuting generation, who vainly justified themselves as acting by law, and inferred that not they, but the legislature, were answerable, if any injustice was done.”
Marion Harvie’s Testimony closes with an account of her last moments.
She preserved her faith and hope and confidence to the end. When she came to the scaffold, she and Isabel Alison sang the 64 Psalm, and it is said the tune they sung was the fine old tune, “Martyrs,” verifying the rude lines —
“This is the tune the Martyrs sang When at the gallows tree they stood,
When they were gaan to die Their God to glorify.”
After reading what was said by her and her fellow-sufferer Isabel Alison, Peden’s short but characteristic eulogium on them will be felt to be well merited: “They were two honest, worthy lasses.” No execution of those cruel times seems to have excited more sympathy or a deeper interest throughout the country. In the somewhat coarsely-executed, yet expressive engraving, prefixed to the first edition of Alexander Shields’
“Hind Let Loose,” published in 1687, “Women hanged,” evidently Isabel Alison and Marion Harvie, occupy a place side by side with “The drowned at stakes at sea,” viz., the Wigtown Martyrs, Margaret Wilson and Margaret M’Lauchlan. Fountainhall twice notices their end, and once tries to defend their execution. One of his chronological notes under 1680 is —
“Janet [Isabel] Alison in Perth, and one Harvie in
Borrowstounness, two Cameronian women, were hanged at Edinburgh, 26th January 1681; they called the king and bishops perjured bloody men. There were five other women executed with them for murder of their children.”
In his “Historical Observes” he has this remark, under date — 26th January 1681. — “There were hanged at Edinburgh, two women of
ordinary rank, for their uttering treasonable words and other principles and opinions contrary to all our government; the one was named Janet [Isabel]
Alison, a Perth woman, the other [Marion] Harvie, from
Borrowstounness. They were of Cameron’s faction, bigot and sworn enemies to the king and the bishops; of the same stamp with Rathillet, Skene, Stewart, and Potter; of whom supra, where we debate how far men (for women are scarce to be honored with that martyrdom, as they think it), are to be punished capitally for their bare perverse judgment without acting. Some thought that threatening to drown them privately in the North Loch, without giving them the credit of a public suffering, would have more effectually reclaimed them than any arguments which were used; and the bringing them to a scaffold but disseminates the infection.
However, the women proved very obstinate, and for all the pains taken would not acknowledge the king to be their lawful prince, but called him a perjured bloody man. At the stage, one of them told, so long as she followed and heard the curates, she was a swearer, Sabbath-breaker, and with much aversion read the Scriptures; but found much joy upon her spirit since she followed the conventicle preaching.”
Mr. George Johnston, referred to in the questions, was minister in Newbattle. He was deprived of his charge by the Act of Council at
Glasgow, 1662. In April 1670, he was seized in Edinburgh on the charge of frequently keeping conventicles, and confined to the parish of Borthwick during the Councirs pleasure. In August 1675 his name, along with Donald Cargill, James Frazer of Brea, and many others, occurs in the Letters of Intercommuning issued by the Council. Some time previous to the trial of Marion Harvie he must have accepted the Indulgence. He survived the Revolution.
As to the “rock, cod, and boboons” spoken of in her answers before the Privy Council, the rock was a distaff, the staff around which the flax is arranged, and from which it is drawn for spinning; the cod, i.e., the
pincushion or pillow; and boboons, i.e., bobbins, the small pieces of wood with a head on which the thread is wound, in making lace. The phrase is thus equivalent to spinning and lace-making.
Marion Harvie leaves her testimony on “Andrew Cunningham, that gave me my doom.” The Doomster, or Dempster, was at that time an officer of the Court of Justiciary, whose duty it was to proclaim formally the extreme sentence of the law on the prisoner at the bar. This odious office was usually held by the public executioner, — ED.]
THE LAST SPEECH AND TESTIMONY
OF MARION HARVIE,
Who lived at Borrowstounness, and suffered at Edinburgh the 26th of January 1681.
An Account of her Answers before the Privy Council.
“They asked first, How long is it since ye saw Mr. Donald Cargill?
I said, I cannot tell particularly when I saw him.
“They said, Did ye see him within these three months? I said, It may be I have.
“They said, Do ye own his Covenant? I said, What Covenant?
Then they read it to me; and I said, I did own it.
“They said, Do ye own the Sanquhar Declaration? I answered, Yes.
“They said, Do ye own these to be lawful? I said, Yes; because they are according to the Scriptures and our Covenants, which ye swore yourselves, and my father swore them.
“They said, Yea; but the Covenant does not bind you to deny the king’s authority. I said, So long as the king held by the truths of God, which he swore, we were obliged to own him; but when he
brake his oath, and robbed Christ of His kingly rights, which do not belong to him, we were bound to disown him and you also.
“They said, Do ye know what ye say? I said, Yes.
“They said, Were ye ever mad? I answered, I have all the wit that ever God gave me. Do you see any mad act in me?
“They said, Where were you born? I answered, In Borrowstounness.
“They asked, What was your occupation there? I told them I served.
“They said, Did ye serve the woman that gave Mr. Donald Cargill quarters? I said, That is a question which I will not answer.
“They said, Who did ground you in these principles? I answered, Christ, by His word.
“They said, Did not ministers ground you in these? I answered, When the ministers preached the word, the Spirit of God backed and confirmed it to me.
“They said, Did ye ever see Mr. John Welch [i.e., of Irongray]? I said, Yes; my soul hath been refreshed by hearing him.
“They asked, If ever I heard Mr. Archibald Riddell? I answered, Yes; and I bless the Lord that ever I heard him.
“They said, Did ever they preach to take up arms against the king?
I said, I have heard them preach to defend the Gospel, which we are all sworn to do.
“They asked, If ever I sware to Mr. Donald Cargill’s Covenant? I said, No; but we are bound to own it.
“They said, Did ye ever hear Mr. George Johnston? I said, I am not concerned with him. I would not hear him, for he is joined in a confederacy with yourselves.
“They said, Did ye hear the Excommunication at the Torwood? I said, No; I could not win [i.e., get] to it.
“They asked, If I did approve of it? I answered, Yes.
“They asked, If I approved of the killing the Lord St. Andrews? I said, In so far as the Lord raised up instruments to execute His just judgments upon him, I have nothing to say against it; for he was a perjured wretch and a betrayer of the Kirk of Scotland.
“Then they asked, What age I was of? I answered, I cannot tell.
“They said among themselves that I would be about twenty years of age, and began to regret my case, and said, Would I cast away myself so? I answered, I love my life, as well as any of you do; but would not redeem it upon sinful terms; for Christ says, ‘He that seeks to save his life, shall lose it.’
“They said, A rock, the cod and boboons, were as fit for me to meddle with as these things. Then one of them asked when the assize should sit? and some other of them answered, on Monday.
“Then they asked, If I could write? I answered, Yes.
“Will you subscribe, said they, what you have said? I answered, No. They bade the clerk set down that I could write, but refused to subscribe.
“Then they asked, If I desired to converse with any of our ministers? I said, What ministers?
“They said, Mr. Riddell. I said, What would ye have me to do with him?
“They said, He might convince you of that sin. I said, What sin?
“They said, The sin of rebellion. I smiled, and said, If I were as free of all sin as the sin of rebellion, I should be an innocent creature.
“They asked, If they should bring Mr. Riddell to me. I said, It was an evidence he was not right, since they had him so much at their will. And I told them, I would have none of their ministers. This is all I can remember at this present.”