05/12/2026
The Wigtown Martyrs, Margaret Maclauchlan and Margaret Wilson, were Scottish Covenanters who were executed by Scottish Episcopalians on 11 May, 1685 in Wigtown, Scotland, for refusing to swear the Oath of Supremacy declaring James VII of Scotland as head of the church.
Today marks the anniversary of one of the most haunting and unforgettable martyrdoms in Scotland’s covenanting history: the death of the Two Margarets at Wigtown, on the Solway coast, on 11 May 1685.
In the little town of Wigtown, four female prisoners are especially remembered. There was Margaret Maxwell, a woman in her twenties; Margaret McLauchlane, an elderly woman of around sixty; and two sisters, Margaret Wilson, aged eighteen, and Agnes Wilson, only thirteen.
Margaret Maxwell was accused of the lesser charge of being a Covenanter sympathiser. Yet even that brought brutal punishment. She was flogged through the streets and forced to stand in the jougs — an iron collar, often chained to church walls — for an hour each day over three days. Examples of these cruel instruments can still be seen today at parish churches such as Fenwick, Sorn, and Dunsyre.
Yet Margaret Maxwell did not shrink in shame. When the hangman offered to shorten her time in the jougs, she answered with remarkable dignity:
“Let the clock go on. I am neither wearied nor ashamed.”
The other three women faced more serious accusations. They were charged with attending field conventicles and with connection to the battles of Airds Moss and Bothwell Bridge — charges especially absurd in the case of the Wilson sisters, who would have been only thirteen and eight years old at the time of those events.
Young Agnes Wilson was eventually released after her father travelled all the way to Edinburgh and paid a bond of £100. But her sister Margaret, only eighteen, remained in the prison dungeon at Wigtown alongside the elderly Margaret McLauchlane.
From that dark and dismal place, soldiers led the two Margarets to the banks of the Bladnoch Burn, where it runs into the Solway Firth. The Solway tide was notorious for its terrifying speed, said to rush in faster than a horse could gallop, sometimes rising like a wall of water.
There, two stakes were driven into the sand. Margaret McLauchlane, the older woman, was tied to the stake farther out. Margaret Wilson was tied nearer the bank, forced to watch as the waters reached the elder saint first.
As the cold tide rose around Margaret McLauchlane, young Margaret Wilson was asked:
“What do you think of her now?”
Her answer was full of faith:
“I think I see Christ wrestling there.”
Then she added words that have echoed through the centuries:
“Think ye that we are sufferers? No. It is Christ in us. For He sends no one a warfare on his own charge.”
As the waters gathered around her own body, Margaret began to sing from Psalm 25:
“My sins and faults of youth,
Do Thou, O Lord, forget;
In loving kindness think on me,
And for Thy goodness great.”
When the water covered her head, the soldiers pulled her out, not in mercy, but to tempt her again. They demanded that she do what, in conscience, she could not do: take the oath and pray for the King on their terms.
She replied that she desired the salvation of all and the damnation of none.
Again they thrust her beneath the water. Again they dragged her up, pleading and pressuring her to yield.
“Oh Margaret, say it,” some cried.
With what strength remained, she whispered:
“Lord, give him repentance, forgiveness, and salvation, if it be Thy holy will.”
But this was not enough for her persecutors. Grierson of Lagg, impatient and enraged, pressed the oaths upon her once more. Margaret’s answer was firm:
“No, no. No sinful oaths for me. I am one of Christ’s children. Let me go.”
At that, a soldier struck her on the head with the butt of his weapon and forced her beneath the water until she drowned.
The Two Margarets were later buried in Wigtown Parish Kirkyard, in the part of the churchyard then reserved for criminals.
