On the Martyrs’ Monument in the Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh, it is stated that, between Argyll’s execution and Renwick’s, there “were one way or other murdered and destroyed for the same cause about eighteen thousand.” |Estimated Number of Victims| This estimate is not given upon the original monument, erected in 1706 through the instrumentality of James Currie (Beatrix Umpherston’s stepfather), and now preserved in the interesting and well-appointed Municipal Museum in the Edinburgh Corporation Buildings. That monument was repaired, and a compartment added to it, in 1728 or 1729; and the present monument supplanted it in or about 1771. The estimate has apparently been taken from Defoe’s “Memoirs of the Church of Scotland,” first published in 1717. It therefore includes those who went into exile, those who were banished, those who died from hunger, cold, and disease contracted in their wanderings, and those who were killed in battle, as well as those who were murdered in the fields or executed with more formality. The numbers which he sets down under some of these classes are only guesses, and seem to be rather wild guesses. An estimate approaching more closely to the real number might be made, and would doubtless show a much smaller, though still a surprisingly large, total. But the exact number of those who laid down their lives, in that suffering, or heroic, period of the Church of Scotland, will not be known until the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the Book of Life is opened. Of many of them no earthly record remains.
“The shaggy gorse and brown heath wave
O’er many a nameless warrior’s grave.”
Heroic Sufferers
Not a few of the sufferers endured torments more terrible than death. Some were tortured with fire-matches, which permanently disabled their hands; some had their thumbs mercilessly squeezed in the thumbikins; some had their legs horribly bruised in the boots; and some were kept awake by watchful soldiers for nine consecutive nights. It is not surprising that nervous, sensitive men occasionally shrunk back in the day of trial. The wonder is that so many stood firm.
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