(published in the October 2008 edition of “The Ulster-Scot” newspaper by the Ulster-Scots Agency)
Article by Dr William Roulston. With thanks to Rev Robert McCollum, Rev Harry Coulter, Dr Lawrence Holden and Mark Thompson for their ongoing guidance and support.
~~~~~~~~~
In the aftermath of the Killing Times, and the disappointment of King William III’s “Revolution Settlement”, the Covenanters of Ulster remained resolute and by the beginning of the nineteenth century had changed from being a scattered remnant to an organised denomination
~~~~~~~~~
When David Houston died in 1696 the Covenanters in Ulster were left without a pastor, a situation that was to continue for over 60 years. In Scotland, too, there were no Covenanter ministers. Neither were there any meeting-houses and instead services were held in private homes or in the open air. The Covenanters there were able to maintain a structure through the United Societies and close links continued with Irish Covenanters. Occasionally large conventicles reminiscent of earlier times were held.
Daniel Defoe, in his Tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain (1724-7) witnessed the such a gathering near Drumlanrig, between Dumfries and Sanquhar:
Here we were surprised with a sight, which is not now so frequent in Scotland as it has been formerly, I mean one of their field meetings, where one Mr John Hepburn, an old Cameronian, preached to an auditory of near 7,000 people, all sitting in rows on the steep side of a green hill, and the preacher in a little pulpit made under a tent at the foot of the hill; he held his auditory, with not above an intermission of half and hour, almost seven hours; and many of the poor people had come fifteen or sixteen miles to hear him, and had all the way to go home again on foot.
In 1706 the Reverend John Macmillan, whose support for the Covenants had brought him into conflict with the established church authorities, defected from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland to the United Societies. He was their only pastor for 37 years. In 1743, following the defection to the United Societies of a second minister, this time a pastor from the Associate Presbytery, the Reformed Presbytery was organised in Scotland.
Ulster Covenanters in the early 1700s
At the final meeting of the Reformed Presbytery of Ireland, held at Maghera, County Londonderry, on 7 November 1810, a suggestion was made that a history of the rise and progress of the Covenanter church in Ireland ought to be written. Rev. William Stavely was asked to prepare something on this. Whether Stavely ever got round to writing this history is unclear; certainly nothing has survived to show that he did. Had it our understanding of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in its formative years would be much greater than it is now. As it is, our knowledge of the Irish Covenanters in the first half of the eighteenth century is limited in the extreme.
In Ulster the Covenanters were widely scattered across those areas where Scottish settlement was strongest. Contact was maintained with the Scottish Covenanters through correspondence and the exchange of delegates. In 1707 Rev. John Macmillan visited Ireland. In 1712 when Macmillan renewed the Covenants at Auchinsaugh, Covenanters from Ireland were represented. Occasionally Covenanters in Ireland crossed from Donaghadee to Portpatrick to have marriages solemnised and children baptised.
Years of difficulty - The 1704 Test Act
This was a time when Presbyterians in general were disillusioned with the establishment. The aftermath of the Williamite War had been a disappointment for them. Whereas in Scotland Presbyterianism was established as the state church, in Ireland Presbyterians continued to operate under various disabilities. For example, in 1704 a law was passed that required persons holding public office to produce a certificate showing that they had received communion according to the rites of the Church of Ireland; this became known as the Test Act and was a particular source of frustration for Presbyterians. Covenanters felt especially aggrieved with the general situation and were in an even more awkward position as they were a minority within Presbyterianism and even viewed with disdain by other Presbyterians. Disparagingly they were known as the ‘Mountain Men’.
There are a few references to Ireland in the minutes of the General Meeting of Societies in Scotland, though these are of a fairly broad nature. In August 1723 it was agreed that ‘for the encouragement of our friends in the Kingdom of Ireland, some two of our number go over and correspond with them at such time and place as their commissioners shall direct’. In January 1735 in setting out the reasons for a fast, one of the motives was to ask God’s blessing on ‘his poor suffering remnant in our neighbouring Covenanted kingdom of Ireland’. Soon after the formation of the Scottish Reformed Presbytery in 1743 two delegates from Scotland, Rev. Thomas Nairn and Alexander Marshall, visited Ireland. They did so at the request of the Irish Covenanters, 146 of whom had signed a petition asking for ‘a faithful minister to dispense Gospel ordinances among them’. In 1744 the Irish Covenanters were taken under the supervision of the Scottish Reformed Presbytery.
1757 - 1763: The first ordinations
On 2 July 1757 the first ordination of a Reformed Presbyterian minister in Ireland took place. The ordinand was William Martin. He had been born at Ballyspallen, near Limavady, in 1729 and was educated at Glasgow University, graduating in 1753. He then studied theology and in 1756 was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Scottish Reformed Presbytery. At this time it was agreed that his field of service should be Ireland. The venue for his ordination was at a place known as The Vow, a site marked by an ancient graveyard. Here was a ferry over the River Bann, making it a convenient meeting place for Covenanters in counties Antrim and Londonderry. A memorial stone was erected here in June 2007 to commemorate this important event.
To begin with Martin ministered to Covenanter societies scattered from Donegal to north Down. In 1760 the Covenanters in Ireland were divided into two congregations. Martin chose the Antrim congregation and based himself at Kellswater, near Ballymena. It was here that the first Covenanter meeting-house was built. As there was no minister for the other congregation, covering Donegal, Londonderry and Tyrone, he was asked to give what help he could to Covenanters living in these counties.
Martin’s most important assistant at this time was a man named Matthew Lynn. He was from Larne and like Martin had been educated at Glasgow University, graduating in 1760 at the age of 29. While a student he had been actively involved with the Scottish Reformed Presbytery, serving at one time as its clerk. He was licensed at Carnaughts near Ballymena on 26 July 1761. He spent the next two years as an itinerant preacher, but on 26 July 1763 was ordained minister of the newly formed Bannside congregation. His ministry covered most of County Londonderry and he seems to have been particularly active in the south-eastern part of the county in the Bellaghy and Magherafelt areas.
1763-1779: Irish Reformed Presbytery
Now that there were two ordained ministers in Ireland, the Covenanters were in a position to form an Irish Reformed Presbytery. It was at this time that the church acquired its official name, the Reformed Presbyterian Church. This Presbytery lasted until 1779 and in this time several more ordinations took place: William James at Bready in 1765; Daniel McClelland at Laymore near Ballymena also in 1765; Thomas Hamilton at Faughan in 1770 and William Stavely at Conlig, near Newtownards, in 1772.
The first Irish Reformed Presbytery was dissolved in 1779. Its collapse was the result of several factors. The first was the emigration to America of several of its ministers. These included both of the original ministers, William Martin and Matthew Lynn in 1772 and 1773. In 1779 William James of Bready and Thomas Hamilton of Faughan both died. With a depleted ministry the church decided to transfer its official administration to the Scottish Reformed Presbytery and a standing committee took care of local matters in Ireland. The willingness of the Irish Covenanters to forgo their independence indicates a desire on their part to maintain a regular presbyterial system of church government rather than continue in a somewhat haphazard fashion.
Despite losing its independence the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland continued to grow. In 1780 the Scottish Reformed Presbytery sent a Mr Thorburn to Ulster to investigate the state of the societies and congregations in the south and west of the province. His tour took in Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, Donegal and Londonderry. He preached at Ballybay, County Monaghan, and preached and baptised some children at Carnteel (Aughnacloy), County Tyrone. In his report to the Scottish Presbytery he commented that he had found the people ‘in those remote parts sensible and better established in the principles of the Presbytery’s testimony than could be expected’.
William Stavely
The dominant figure within the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the late eighteenth century was William Stavely. He had been born into a Covenanter family at Fernisky near Kells, his great-grandfather having moved from Yorkshire to County Antrim in the 1630s. From his base at Knockbracken Stavely ministered over a vast area stretching from Donaghadee to County Cavan and was responsible for organising a further five congregations, earning himself the epithet ‘The Apostle of the Covenanters’. In 1786 William Gamble was ordained at Ballygey, near Letterkenny, the first Covenanter minister to have a settled ministry in County Donegal. In December 1792, with six ministers and twelve congregations, the Irish Reformed Presbytery was reorganised.
The increasing support for the Covenanters was giving cause for concern to some within the Presbyterian Church and this unease was given expression in published literature. One unjustifiably critical pamphlet on the Reformed Presbyterians was An address to the people of Connor containing a clear and full vindication of the Synod of Ulster from the aspersions of the people called Covenanters (1794), which though ‘written in the name of Sanders Donald late sexton of Connor’ was the work of Rev. Henry Henry [sic], Presbyterian minister of Connor.
The Church in the 1790s
The reorganisation of the Irish Reformed Presbytery came at a time of unrest in the north of Ireland. The previous year the United Irishmen had been founded in Belfast by radical Presbyterians influenced by the American and French Revolutions. Many within the Reformed Presbyterian Church found it impossible to, as one historian has put it, ‘escape the revolutionary contagion’. In 1793 Rev. James McKinney of Dervock and Kilraughts preached a sermon on the ‘Rights of God’ that was denounced as treasonable and was forced to flee to America to escape arrest.
Another to go into exile was Rev. William Gibson of Kellswater and Cullybackey who preached to large crowds in County Antrim, reputedly prophesying the ‘immediate destruction of the British monarchy’. [When he left for America in 1797 Gibson was accompanied by two students for the ministry, John Black and Samuel Brown Wylie. The following year they met up with McKinney and established a presbytery in Philadelphia marking the formal beginnings of what is now the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America.]
The Covenanters, United Irishmen and The 1798 Rebellion
Undoubtedly for some it seemed that the years of active state persecution had returned. In Maghera a young man of the Reformed Presbyterian Church was executed after information against him had been given by the Church of Ireland minister. Another Covenanter who met the same fate was Daniel English who was put to death at the Bridge of Connor on what was generally believed to be fabricated evidence. The circulation of Life and Prophecies by Alexander Peden, a Covenanter preacher from the ‘Killing Times’, which prophesied an invasion of the British Isles by the French heightened tensions still further.
Even more so than any of his ministerial colleagues, Rev. William Stavely was drawn into the political and revolutionary intrigue of the time. Stavely was initially involved with the United Irishmen. However, when he saw the direction it was taking he withdrew from it.
In October 1796 a notice appeared in the press entitled ‘A seasonable and necessary information’. Issued in the name of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and believed to be largely the work of Stavely, it declared:
...we hold in the highest abhorrence and detestation all tumultuous or disorderly meetings and we utterly disclaim all connection with such whether publicly or privately held, where anything is said or done that is prejudicial to the peace, the safety or property of any individual or civil society...
To the authorities, however, Stavely remained a figure of suspicion. A Sabbath service in Knockbracken in June 1797 was interrupted when a detachment of troops arrived to arrest Stavely on the grounds that he had hidden arms in the meeting house. He was a prisoner for two months on this occasion. In October 1797 he accompanied the United Irishman William Orr to his place of execution in Carrickfergus and, in the minds of many, publicly identified himself with the revolutionary cause. In June 1798 soldiers returning from the Battle of Ballynahinch burned his house and carried him a prisoner to Belfast. There he was ill-treated by the guards who ‘threatened to hack me, hang me, burn me’. He was then transferred to a prison ship in Belfast Lough and eventually released, again with no charges proven against him.
Though vindicated, Stavely’s relationship with his congregation at Knockbracken had been pushed to breaking point by recent events, and in 1800 he moved to the joint congregation of Cullybackey and Kellswater. This was where he had been born and raised and it provided him with an opportunity to make a fresh start after the difficulties of the 1790s. Here he enjoyed a successful ministry until his death in 1825.
1811: The Establishment of a Synod
By 1800, although the number of congregations had increased to nearly thirty, there were only three ministers, each of whom had a very heavy workload.The work of these ministers was somewhat alleviated by the ordination of ten new ministers between 1802 and 1809. One of the most significant ordinations was that of Josias Alexander, the first minister of a congregation in Belfast. Hitherto nearly all Reformed Presbyterian congregations had been in rural areas or small towns.
With the increase in the number of congregations and ministers, the Irish Reformed Presbytery decided at a meeting in Maghera on 7 November 1810 to divide the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland into four presbyteries, to be called simply the northern, southern, eastern and western presbyteries, and to form a synod which would have oversight of the presbyteries. The first synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church was formally constituted at Cullybackey on 1 May 1811 under the moderatorship of Rev. William Stavely. It is this same structure that continues today. In the words of Professor Adam Loughridge,
It was fitting that William Stavely, upon whose shoulders there had rested so long the burden of leadership in the Church, should be the first moderator of Synod. He had served the Church well when it was in a disorganised state from 1779 to 1792. Now he saw his work crowned with a programme of expansion and organisation that reached its climax with the constitution of the Synod.
From being a scattered remnant in the late 1690s, the Covenanters had now established themselves as a recognised denomination in the early 1800s. It had been quite a transformation, and one the Covenanters acknowledged had only been possible through the grace of God.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Execution of Daniel English
“...The execution of a Covenanter named Daniel English made a deeper impression than most of the hangings of that dreadful period, and the memory of it still lingers in local tradition. English was marched four long miles from the guard house at Ballymena to the gallows on the bridge of Connor, dressed in his graveclothes and attended by a great company of his co- religionists, who, as the procession wended its way amongst the hills, joined together in singing the 119th Psalm...”
(from Ulster and Ireland by JW Good, 1919). Daniel English was executed in 1798, just opposite Kirk Hill, Connor, - where the Covenanter minister David Houston had been buried in 1696.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William Stavely Grave, Kellswater
William Stavely’s grave is at Kellswater Reformed Presbyterian Church in Co Antrim. It is surrounded by wrought iron railings, right beside the church door. Kellswater was the first Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland and is also the location of the Houston Memorial Lecture Hall, named after Covenanter minister David Houston.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
READ: The Covenanters in Ireland by Professor Adam Loughridge
This book, first published in 1984, is acknowledged as the best summary of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Beginning with the arrival in Ulster of the Scottish settlers of the early 1600s, it provides an excellent overview of the church’s history in short chapters, and concludes with a chapter on “The Church in the 20th Century” Available from the Covenanter Bookshop.
> Tel: 028 9081 4110
> Email: bookshop@rpc.org
> Website: www.covenanterbooks.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
READ: The Weaver Poets and the Covenants:
In the late 1700s Robert Burns wrote his poem “Solemn League and Covenant”. Ulster poets of the same era also demonstrated a regard for the Covenants.
Donegore Hill by James Orr
James Orr’s epic poem Donegore Hill - an account of the failed 1798 Rebellion in which he was involved -
begins with a poetic Ulster-Scots reference to Psalm 78 v 9:
Ephie’s base bairntime, trail-pike brood, Were arm’d as weel as tribes that stood; Yet on the battle ilka cauf, Turn’d his backside, an’ scamper’d aff
Orr referred to the Psalm (the Biblical story of the well armed tribe of Ephraim running away from battle) as a precedent for the failure of the Rebellion at Donegore in 1798. The next verse of the Psalm explains why the men of Ephraim failed, and might reveal Orr’s view on the men of 1798 - “They kept not the covenant of God”.
The Carnmoney Inscription by Samuel Thomson
Samuel Thomson was one of the most famous Ulster-Scots “Weaver Poets”. In 1806 he wrote a short inscription for the then-new Reformed Presbyterian meeting house at Carnmoney, which read as follows:
To show the world that God respects His covenant, full dear, The Reformation Church erects this Ebenezer here “Hitherto hath the Lord help’d us”
Sadly the inscription stone was plastered over many years ago. The building is still there but is now closed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VISIT: Rev William Martin memorial, The Vow, Ballymoney
In 2007 a memorial stone was erected at The Vow, at the entrance to the old graveyard, to mark the 250th anniversary of the ordination of Rev. William Martin, the first Reformed Presbyterian minister to be ordained in Ireland. In 1772 he led a large number of families, many of them Reformed Presbyterian, to South Carolina. Martin was a major figure in the early Reformed Presbyterian Church in America. When in 1782 several Covenanter ministers joined with the Seceders to form the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church Martin stood apart from them and alone ‘kept alive the Covenanter Church in America’.
Comments