Facts and traditions collected for a family record

STRUGGLES OF THE COVENANTEES. Ill
the two months the invasion lasted, the damage in the county of Ayr alone was
moderately estimated at £36,000.
In 1679 was the battle of Bothwell Bridge, in which the Covenanters again
suffered defeat, and consequently increased persecution.
Some of the great men who braved all the dangers and preached to the poor
and outcast Covenanters at these conventicles at this period were Richard
Cameron, Alexander Peden, and James Renwick.
Cameron gave his name to the strict Covenanters.* They bore it down to the
Revolution, and afterwards ; and it is being perpetuated at the present time.
Cameron was a remarkable man ; although his management, in the eyes of the
world, was utter foolishness, — the blind frenzy of fanaticism. His whole modes
of thought were drawn from two very old sources, — the Bible, and the standards
of the Scottish Kirk. He could not halt between two opinions. Cameron was,
not merely the preacher of the persecuted remnant ; he was the champion who
first proclaimed that the House of Stuart had forfeited the British throne. In
one of his sermons he thus expounds his views : — ■
' If you would have God be for you, you must cut off this king, and these
magistrates, and make able men be rulers ; men endued with suitable qualifica-
tions, both of body and mind. I know not if this generation will be honoured
to cast off these rulers ; but those that the Lord makes instruments to bring
back Christ, and to recover our liberties, civil and ecclesiastical, shall be such as
shall disown this king and the magistrates under him ! '
In 1680 this was treason ; in 1688 it became the Revolution Settlement."
The following account of the district of Galloway during the last few
years of the persecution, taken from Nicholson's " History of Galloway,"
p. 261, will assist in giving further insight into the miserable state of the
county during the life of John M'Connell in Beoch : —
" The beginning of 1685 presented a dismal prospect to the inhabitants of
Galloway. This unfortunate district of Scotland was now treated as if it had
been a revolted province. It was overrun and possessed by a soldiery composed
of the very dregs of the people ; for the army had become the great recipient of
the profligate, the reckless, and the sanguinary. No place afforded an asylum
from the intrusion of these infamous agents of destruction — these messengers
of death. Sequestered caves of the mountains, and hidden dens of the forest,
* Camernniann, MacMillanites, or Reformed Presbyterians.