It was sent to me by an equally nameless
benefactor.
[50] Napier, iii. Appendix 3, and his "Case for the Crown": Blackwood's
Magazine, December 1863. On the other side see Barton, vii. 255:
Macmillan's Magazine, December 1862; and a pamphlet by the Rev.
Archibald Stewart, "History Vindicated in the case of the Wigtown
Martyrs," 2nd ed. 1869.
[51] According to "The Cloud of Witnesses," first published in 1714, the
epitaph ran as follows:
"Murdered for owning Christ supreme
Head of his Church, and no more crime
But her not owning Prelacy,
And not abjuring Presbytery.
Within the sea, tied to a stake,
She suffered for Christ Jesus' sake."
The stone on which these lines were inscribed covered, according to the
same authority, "the body of Margaret Wilson, who was drowned in the
water of the Blednock upon the 11th of May, 1684 [5], by the Laird of
Lagg."
[52] In Colonel Fergusson's most entertaining chapter of family history,
"The Laird of Lagg," he mentions an old lady, still alive in 1834, who
remembered her grandfather's account of the execution, which he declared
he had himself witnessed: "There were cluds o' folk on the sands that
day in clusters here and there, praying for the women as they were put
down."
[53] Charles Kingsley, for example, wrote in "Alton Locke" of "the
Scottish Saint Margaret whom Claverhouse and his men bound to a stake.
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