196 John Welsh, the Irongray Covenanter. 



Before I resume the story of John Welsh, I must, after the 

 manner of Lactantius, " De Mortibus Persecutorum," tell what 

 became of the persecutor David M'Brear of Newark. I do so in 

 words of the good Kirkton " one David M'Brear in the paroch of 

 Irongray, a landed man, a grievous persecutor, who accused Mr 

 John Welsh, his paroch minister, upon his life before Middleton's 

 parliament, being upon a time hiding himself among his tenants 

 (because he was in hazard of being imprisoned for debt) was 

 providentially encountered by one John Gordon, a merchant in 

 the North, and just such ane one as himself : and because M'Brear 

 looked somewhat sad, Gordon apprehends him to be a Whigge 

 and requires him to go with him to Dumfries, which M'Brear 

 refused to do because he feared the prison for his debt. Gordon 

 suspects him the more strongly, and because he had come south 

 to be agent in the cause of a Northern curate, and had borrowed 

 Chambers, the infamous curate of Dumfries his sword, this sword 

 he draws and presents to M'Brear: the other either resisting or 

 fleeing is presently run through the body by Gordon with Cham- 

 bers' sword. After this he vaunted he had killed a Whigge; but 

 when the country people saw the body, they told him the dead 

 man was as honest a man as himself (and just .so he was) ; where- 

 upon he is carried to Dumfries, and there, by the Earl of Dum- 

 fries and Nithsdale, is condemned to be hanged to-morrow, which 

 sentence was accordingly execute : which made the people of the 

 country say, the Lord made one enemy destroy another, and that 

 it was a curst thing to persecute Whiggs." 



It was probably in February, 1663, that John Welsh was 

 outed from Irongray. He seems to have sought refuge with John 

 Neilson of Corsack, where other outed preachers, Gabriel Semple 

 of Kirkpatrick-Durham and Blackadder of Troqueer also found 

 shelter. Ejected ministers were forbidden to reside within twenty 

 miles of their parishes, six miles of Edinburgh or any cathedral 

 church, or three miles of any royal burgh. " Conditions which," 

 as Wodrow remarks, " the nicest geographer would find hard to 

 satisfy." They were pretty nearly satisfied in Welsh's case. At 

 Corsack Welsh's first wife died. (Wodrow ii., 4, 5, 6, Veitch's 

 Memoirs, Blackadder 24.) It was probably too at Corsack that 

 Welsh penned his pamphlet, " Fifty and Two Directions to Iron- 

 gray." The title from the earliest edition I have come across 

 (1703) is " Fifty and Two Directions, written by that famous and 



