(this biography by Jack Greenald)
Michael Bruce
Born: Scotland, 1635
Portrait: none
Ulster connection: Minister of Killinchy, Co Down (October 1657 - 1661; returned April 1670 - 1688, during which time he made many visits to Scotland)
Died: Anwoth, Scotland, 1693
Memorial: None (his three children are all buried at Killinchy)
Autobiography: see below
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Michael Bruce was born in Scotland in 1635, and was said to have been the great-grandson of the Rev Robert Bruce, a prominent Edinburgh minister who had been ordained in 1587. He was educated at Edinburgh University graduating with his MA in 1654.
In 1657 Bruce became the minister at Killinchy, County Down, on the recommendation of a previous minister of the church, the Rev John Livingstone, who ‘sent with him an ample recommendatory letter, dated Ancrum, July 3 1657, and directed to Captain James Moore of Ballybrega, to be communicated to the congregation’. Bruce was publicly ordained in the church of Killinchy in October.
Of Bruce’s time in Ulster, Patrick Adair in his history of the Irish Presbyterian Church wrote: ‘For at this time [1661] there were two or three young men who had come from Scotland, and had been but lately ordained by the Presbytery here, and who, intending to return to Scotland and put themselves out of the bishop’s reverence in this country, resolved to do some good before they went. They therefore called the people to solemn and great meetings, sometimes in the night and sometimes in the day, in solitary places, whither people in great abundance and with great alacrity and applause flocked to them. There they spoke much against the bishops and the times. This matter of preaching (as it was in itself commendable and faithful when rightly managed), did exceedingly please most people. These men were cried up as the only courageous, faithful and zealous ministers by the common sort of people, and by those who had great zeal, but little judgement and experience; though not approved of by the more serious, prudent, and experienced Christians ... I am persuaded of one of them, Mr Michael Bruce, who was most noticed, and indeed did most good at that time, that he was a person singularly gifted, truly zealous, and faithful, and also peaceable and orderly in his temper and conversation with his brethren, and in his whole way a very Nathaniel – of all which he hath given proof in the church of Christ for many years since that time’.
In the early 1660s, Bruce fled to Scotland in consequence of his outspoken preaching, Ormond had ordered the apprehension of ‘all the Scottish silenced ministers in the North who are a dangerous artillery; what I shall doe with them I know not, only I take it to bee reasonable that if they trouble mee a great deale I may trouble them a little’.
In January 1664 Bruce, and two other ministers, Henry Hunter and James Campbell, returned to Ulster from Scotland urging their followers to petition Ormond on their behalf, they wanted to be tried by a judge of assize rather than an ecclesiastical tribunal if they were accused of an offense. Bruce didn’t stay in Ulster long. On the 23 June 1664, Bruce and Crookshanks were summoned before the Scottish Council as ‘pretended ministers and fugitives from Ireland’, and in 1665 Archbishop Sharp of St Andrews was most concerned at a report that Michael Bruce was keeping a conventicle within six miles of St Andrews, in the neighbourhood of a conforming minister.
After many escapes in Scotland, Bruce was taken prisoner near Stirling in 1668, and in July following was sentenced by the Scottish council to be banished out of the three kingdoms. In September he was sent by sea to London to await his majesty’s pleasure, and was imprisoned in the Gatehouse, Westminster, where he was shortly afterwards condemned to go to Tangier in Africa. His wife followed him to London; when there, she found means to interest some of the courtiers in his favour, and Charles, unwilling formally to reverse the sentence of banishment, was prevailed on to give him the privilege of naming the place of his exile. Mr Bruce, it is said, immediately chose ‘Killinchy Woods’ a writ of nolo prosequi was obtained for him, and in April 1670 he once more settled in his favourite parish of Killinchy.
Bruce has been described as a man of ‘great genius, and a liberal education – of extra-ordinary zeal for the glory of God and the good of souls – much given to meditation and secret prayer – a thundering, broken-hearted, and most affecting preacher’. One of his opponents described him as ‘a fierce & pernicious Zealott’.
In 1688 he fled from Ireland during the turmoil of the Glorious Revolution, and went to Scotland where he became the minister at Samuel Rutherford’s old church at Anworth until his death in 1693.
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• Bruce's sermon "The Rattling of the Dry Bones", 1672, has been included in the recent "Ulster-Scots Writing, an Anthology" edited by Frank Ferguson.
• See the booklet "The Seven Bruces" by Braid Books and Moyola Books (c/o Graham Mawhinney, Labby, Draperstown, Co Londonderry BT45 7BE), a reprint of Classon Porter's series in "The Northern Whig" newspaper, 1885
• "Sermons Delivered in Times of Persecution in Scotland" by John Howie, 1779, includes a four page "biographical notice" on Michael Bruce and three of his sermons, one of which was preached after the Battle of Rullion Green in 1666
