The Sanquhar Declaration

Richard Cameron

Hutchison writes that Richard Cameron’s father “was a merchant in the old Fifeshire town of Falkland”. Cameron came to attend the field-meetings of the ministers who had refused the King’s Indulgence, and about 1677, while a tutor in Roxburghshire, he met John Welch of Irongray, “who urged him to accept license and join the band of faithful witnesses”. He “was licensed by Welch and Sempill”. Later, in Holland, the exiled ministers Brown and M’Ward “urged him to accept ordination and return to labour with the persecuted party”.¹

The Reformed Presbytery’s Testimony of 1761 tells the same years in its own words. After the defeat at Bothwell Bridge left the remnant “as sheep without a shepherd”, it says, Christ “raised up those two faithful ministers and zealous contenders for the faith once delivered to the saints, Messrs. Richard Cameron and Donald Cargill, to come forth for the help of the Lord against the mighty, and to jeopard their lives along with his people in the high places of the field”.²

Three weeks before Sanquhar, on 3 June 1680, soldiers surprised Cargill and Henry Hall of Haughhead at Queensferry. Hall was mortally wounded, and on him was found an unsigned paper, the “Queensferry Paper”. Hutchison calls it “only a rude draft of a Declaration”, never adopted by anyone, and writes that the Queensferry Paper and the Sanquhar Declaration “are identical” in “scope and intention”.³

At the market cross, 22 June 1680

Hutchison describes the day: “On the 22nd of June, 1680, a party of about twenty horsemen, led by Cameron, rode into the ancient burgh of Sanquhar, in Upper Nithsdale.” At the market cross “one of their number dismounted and engaged in prayer; after which another read a document”. “Having affixed a copy of the document to the burgh-cross, the horsemen quietly left the town.” Kerr also writes that “twenty horsemen rode into the burgh of Sanquhar, and at the market cross read their declaration”.⁴

The sources differ on who read it. Kerr’s note says that “this Declaration was read by Richard Cameron at Sanquhar”. Herkless writes that Cameron led the twenty men, and that after they had sung from the Psalms “Michael Cameron stepped forward and read aloud a Declaration, which he afterwards affixed to the market-cross”. Herkless also notes that the day was “the first anniversary of Bothwell Bridge”.⁵

What the Declaration said

The Declaration begins: “It is not amongst the smallest of the Lord’s mercies to this poor land that there have been always some who have given their testimony against every course of defection …” It finds “one of the Lord’s great controversies against us, that we have not disowned him and the men of his practices”, meaning the King, who “hath so far deborded [strayed] from what he ought to have been, by his perjury and usurpation in Church matters, and tyranny in matters civil”.⁶

Its central sentence reads: “Therefore, although we be for government and governors such as the Word of our God and our Covenant allows, yet we for ourselves and all that will adhere to us as the representatives of the true Presbyterian Kirk [Church] and Covenanted nation of Scotland … do by thir [these] presents disown Charles Stuart, that has been reigning (or rather tyrannizing as we may say) on the throne of Britain these years bygone, as having any right, title to, or interest in, the said Crown of Scotland for government, as forfeited several years since, by his perjury and breach of covenant both to God and His Kirk … and by his tyranny and breach of the very leges regnandi [laws of ruling] in matters civil.”⁷

It goes on: “we, being under the standard of our Lord Jesus Christ, Captain of Salvation, do declare a war with such a tyrant and usurper, and all the men of his practices”. It owns “that testimony given at Rutherglen, the 29th of May, 1679”, and disclaims “that Declaration published at Hamilton, June, 1679, chiefly because it takes in the king’s interest”. It says, “we disown, and by this resent the reception of the Duke of York, that professed papist”, and protests “against his succeeding to the crown”. It is dated “Given at Sanquhar, June 22nd, 1680.”⁸

Hutchison reads its grounds as “threefold — perjury, usurpation and tyranny”, and writes that “the act itself was essentially civil or political”. In his view “a fresh separation among the Covenanters was signalized by the publication of this Declaration”: many of the non-indulged Presbyterians disowned it, and those who held to it “refused fellowship with those who did not”.⁹

Airsmoss

Herkless writes that a magistrate of Sanquhar carried the Declaration to the Privy Council, and that “On the 30th of June a warrant was issued for the apprehension of Richard and Michael Cameron, Cargill, Douglas and others”, with “Five thousand merks [Scots money]” offered for Richard Cameron, “dead or alive”.¹⁰

Hutchison writes that for a few weeks Cameron “moved about with a bodyguard of sixty horsemen”. His last sermon was preached three days before his death, and at Airsmoss his party “were surprised by a troop of dragoons, and in the conflict that followed, Cameron along with his brother Michael fell mortally wounded”. His head and hands were cut off and carried to Edinburgh. Herkless counts the dead: “Nine of them lay dead, and one was Richard Cameron.” The Testimony says Cameron “did honorably and bravely finish his course, among many others of Zion’s true friends, in the defeat they again sustained at Airsmoss”.¹¹

Cargill, Hutchison continues, “thoroughly sympathized with Cameron in the step that separated them from the other non-indulged Presbyterians”. Two months after Cameron’s death he excommunicated Charles II at Torwood, and in July 1681 he was executed.¹²

The Societies own the Declaration

Left without ministers, the Testimony says, the scattered people “resolved, under divine direction, to gather themselves together into a general meeting, for advising and informing one another anent [about] their duty”. Michael Shields, “clerk unto these general Societies”, records that “the first of these General Meetings was kept upon the 15th of December, 1681, at the Logan house, in the parish of Lismahagow and shire of Clidesdale [Clydesdale].”¹³

That first meeting revised a new Declaration, “wherein, after they have related how the late deceast [deceased] tyrant, Charles the II, was legally cast off by the Declaration published at Sanquhar, they give reasons of their revolt from, and disowning of his authority; and in the end they shew [show] their adherence to the Rutherglen and Sanquhar declarations”. It was published at Lanark on 12 January 1682.¹⁴

In 1761 the Reformed Presbytery declared “their adherence to the Rutherglen, Sanquhar and Lanerk [Lanark] declarations, annis [in the years] 1679, 1680, 1682”, together with the later declarations published at Sanquhar.¹⁵

Hutchison writes: “In Richard Cameron and his associates we see the founders of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and the Sanquhar Declaration was the first public announcement of its separate position.” His contents call it the “Starting Point of the Reformed Presbyterian Church”.¹⁶