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(this biography by Lawrence Holden)
Andrew McCormick
Born: Scotland, place and date unknown (late 1620s?)
Portrait: none
Ulster connection: Minister of Magherally (above), near Banbridge, Co Down (1655 - 1661)
Died: Battle of Rullion Green, Pentland Hills, 28 November 1666
Memorial: Named on the monument at Rullion Green
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Andrew McCormick’s early life is largely unknown. Born in Scotland and apprenticed to trade as a country tailor, McCormick was employed in his trade as a young man before his call to the ministry. With no family connections to the ministry or elevated social position it was McCormick’s reputation as ‘a great professor of religion’, which led to his eventual admission to university training for the ministry. Already married with a young family McCormick faced financial hardship in pursuit of his education ‘leaving his wife and children in great straits’. Although he passed his trials, the early church historian Patrick Adair commented that it was ‘with little satisfaction… save that they looked on him as an honest man, and thought he might be useful in some remote congregation’.
McCormick entered into Church life amidst the bitter divisions between Protestors and Resolutioners then erupting in the Church of Scotland in the early 1650s. The divisions emanated from resolutions proposed by a Church of Scotland commission to allow royalists into civil and military positions in Scotland, thereby limiting the Covenant, and he would have been party to these heated debates as they effected almost all Synod and Presbytery meetings in Scotland at the time.
Andrew McCormick crossed into Ulster in search of his ‘remote congregation’ during the years 1654 or 1655, at a time when the fledgling Kirk was unmolested by the commonwealth authorities and Scots congregations were actively seeking ministers. The timing of his arrival coincided with fears of the Presbyterian ministers in Ireland that the divisions of the Scottish Kirk were being imported into Ulster. Patrick Adair and the other settled ministers worried that a breach would be caused in Ulster by the settlement ‘of persons so fixed in the protesting way as to found a division’. In order to counter the emergence of a schism in Ulster the Presbytery met at Bangor in 1654 and framed articles aimed at preventing the import of Scottish divisions.
McCormick was ordained as minister of Magherally in 1655 and accordingly subscribed to the Act of Bangor. His congregation was part of the newly constituted Down Meeting, which had emerged in the expansion of the Kirk in 1654. McCormick received £100 per annum from the treasury under the commonwealth, a payment which the Presbyterian ministers had been uncomfortable with but accepted in place of tithes that had already been collected from their people and appropriated to the treasury. After the restoration of Charles II McCormick was eventually deposed in 1661 with many of his fellow Presbyterian ministers on the charge of non-conformity. In his short settled ministry a new meetinghouse was built at Magherally and he stayed amongst his congregation for a short time despite being ejected.
McCormick’s ejection in 1661 was part of a wider campaign of repression against non-conformity in the post-restoration era. McCormick had been deposed along with 61 Presbyterian ministers in Ulster who refused to conform to the established episcopal church. However his reaction to the repressive measures, particularly the repudiation of the Solemn League and Covenant, led to the eventful short period of his life, and ultimately his death, for which he is now remembered.
The majority of ejected Presbyterian ministers adhered to a pragmatic policy of remaining quietly in the locality of their congregations in the hope that such quietude would attain toleration from the authorities. However Andrew McCormick along with John Crookshanks of Raphoe and Michael Bruce of Killinchy preached fearlessly at field meetings in opposition to the breach of the Covenant and persecution of the Presbyterian Church. The conventicles were described as ‘solemn and great meetings’, and despite the fear of the authorities response, the ‘pragmatic party’ within the Presbyterian Church described the preaching as ‘commendable and faithful when rightly managed [and] did exceedingly please most people’.
In 1663 Andrew McCormick was accused of involvement in ‘Blood’s Plot’, an attempt to capture Dublin Castle and overthrow the civil government led by Captain Thomas Blood and involving members of the former Cromwellian regime. McCormick allegedly gave assurances that 20,000 Scots in Ulster would join the revolt, no doubt attracted by the insurgents intended declaration to further the cause of the Covenant. Andrew McCormick was eventually identified in Dublin in May 1663 when he came in disguise ‘to see in what readiness they were for the design’. He fled to Scotland soon after when the plot was uncovered.
It would seem that McCormick stayed in Galloway and along the coast of the west of Scotland in the years after 1663. The authorities in Ireland kept a close watch in Antrim and Down fearing the activities of popular Covenanting ministers such as McCormick. He was well known to government spies in the area and known to wear a disguise when he returned to Ulster as illustrated by the following incident. The ejected ministers Michael Bruce of Killinchy, Henry Hunter of Dromore and William Reid of Ballywalter had returned to preach in the Ards peninsula in 1664, though the authorities could not apprehend them they were aware of their presence through the intelligence of spies in the area who had formerly mistaken Reid for Andrew McCormick because he was ‘in that disguise’.
McCormick was present in the Galloway region two years later along with other Presbyterian ministers from Ulster who had fled persecution in the aftermath of the restoration of episcopacy. Many Scottish Presbyterian ministers in the west had also suffered ejection rather than conformity and their experience mirrored that of their brethren in Ulster. With the intermingling of ejected Ulster and Scottish ministers and ongoing large field conventicles military intervention had become a permanent policy and the brutal actions of government troops led to the beginning of an unplanned and spontaneous Covenanter rising.
The Covenanters marched east from Galloway during 1666 gathering recruits en route to Edinburgh. On the 28th November the Covenanters stood at the southern side of the Pentland Hills and faced the government troops. At the foot of Turnhouse Hill a small Covenanter detachment, which included Andrew McCormick and his brother in the ministry John Crookshanks, came to close quarters with the enemy in a fierce skirmish. Both ministers died at this engagement at the foot of Turnhouse Hill. As the government troops closed with the main Covenanter army they sung the 71st and 78th Psalms, and in the fading winter light they were broken. Andrew McCormick’s body was not recovered, but he is remembered in a small stone memorial on the site where he died. It is inscribed ‘Here and near this place lyes the Reverend Mr John Crookshanks and Mr Andrew McCormack ministers of the Gospel… Killed in this place in their own innocent self defence and defence of the Covenanted work of Reformation…’ McCormick died in the faith that had early marked him out for the work of the ministry. A humble countryman simply recalled by his contemporaries as being ‘usually styled “the good man” on account of his singular piety’.
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• There is a chapter about McCormick in Magherally Presbyterian Church 1656-1982 by Mary Martin (Banbridge Chronicle Press, 1983), which finishes with the following paragraph:
"A successor of the Rev Andrew McCormick, the Rev J D Martin, at the jubilee celebrations of his own ministry in Magherally in 1933 referred to 'the Mother church in whose history I am an incident', and said of its first minister, 'Andrew McCormick wore no martyrs crown, with his good claymore in his hand he fell with his face to the foe giving as good as he got. Fit end to this whirlwind prophet. When all is said, Andrew McCormick with his claymore belongs to that brand of men who have made a great dent in history - justifying the rights and liberties of man. I would stand by the side of Andrew McCormick. Such was the character of the founder of this church, such the type of his congregation. This, men, women and children of Magherally is the pit from whence you are digged, the rock from whence you are hewn. None of you need fear to speak of '56, none blush at the name of McCormick."
• James Seaton Reid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (1837) Vol II p 385 & 386 contains a short footnote about McCormick.
Below: the monument and interpretive plaque at Rullion Green. Click here for the location on MultiMap.
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