A life in letters: Brown, John of Priesthill (1627-1685)

What moved me more than anything else I experienced in any school classroom was our Primary 7 teacher Miss Angus reading us the story of the death of one of the Scottish Covenanters, John Brown of Priesthill in Ayrshire during the ‘killing times’. The Covenanters refused to compromise on the values of Presbyterianism and the Scottish Reformation. John Brown apparently had talken no part in the Covenanter’s military rising: it is said that his only crime lay in refusing to go to hear the local Episcopalian curate preach, yet he was shot at the front door of his cottage on 1 May 1685 in the presence of his pregnant wife and young children by government dragoons led by John Graham of Claverhouse. Before his death, the story goes that he turned to his wife, reminded her that when he had proposed marriage to her he had warned her that the time might come when he would be killed for his faith. ‘Are you willing to part with me?’  ‘Heartily willing,’ she replied. ‘This is all I desire,’ he said. ‘I have nothing more to do than to die.’ He then kissed his children, and  Claverhouse himself fired the fatal shot. ‘What do you think of your husband now?’ the dead man’s wife was asked. ‘I aye thocht muckle o’ him, but never sae muckle as I do this day,’ she replied. What affected me so deeply was not so much the Covenanter’s faith and courage, but the sad intensity of the story, and my empathy with the pain of those seeing a loved one killed before their eyes.