1'.'4 John Welsh, the Irongray Covenanter. 



Welsh was carried to Edinburgh, but allowed to live in 

 private lodgings instead of being incarcerated in the Tolbooth. 

 His libel was pursued before the Lords of the Articles, but 

 owing to the testimony of the witnesses not agreeing, he was dis- 

 missed, and returned to the parish in June, 1662. 



While Welsh was being tried at Edinburgh, Parliament had 

 fully restored Episcopacy and lay-patronage. It enacted that 

 all ministers should before September 20, 1662, receive presenta- 

 tion from their lawful patrons and seek collation from their 

 bishops or demit their cure. The order was not obeyed, and 

 therefore the Privy Council sitting at Glasgow on October 1, 

 ordained that if ministers did not obey by November 1, 

 parishioners shotild cease to acknowledge them as their ministers 

 and refuse to pay stipend. It was believed that most ministers 

 would obey rather than sacrifice their livings. As a matter of 

 fact, one-third of the ministers refused. The obstinacy or the 

 consciousness of so many made the Council pause, and they 

 extended the day of grace from November 1 till February 1, 

 1663. 



Whatever other ministers might do, the grandson of John 

 Welsh, of Ayr, and the great-grandson of John Knox, was not the 

 man to seek collation from a Bishop ; and if, as I believe, David 

 M'Brear of Newark was the lay-patron of Irongray, could Welsh 

 have gone to him to ask the living, or would he have received 

 it had he asked ? Welsh was outed like Blackadder of Troqueer 

 and Gabriel Semple of Kirkpatrick-Durham. 



A curate, Bernard Sanderson, was appointed to succeed him, 

 but his settlement was effected not without strenuous opposition 

 on the part of the parishioners. " A party of messengers was 

 sent to intimate that the said Mr Bernard was to enter that Kirk 

 for their ordinar. Some women" of the parish (headed by one 

 Margaret Smith), hearing thereof, placed themselves in the Kirk- 

 vard with their ordinary weapons of stones, whereof they had 

 gathered great store ; and when the messengers and party of 

 rascals with swords and pistols came, the women maintained their 

 ground, defending themselves under the kirk dyke, that after hot 

 skirmish the curate messengers and party of soldiers, not pre- 

 suming to enter, did at length take themselves to retreat, with the 

 honourable blae marks they had got in that conflict." Not only 

 the women, but two of the heritors, signalised themselves in the 



