#covenanter

On 13th May 1685 James Kirko was executed near Dumfries as a Covenanter refusing to swear the oath, one of the last of the wave of deaths of the “Killing Time”.

James Kirk , also spelt Kirka and Kirk, was one of two elders present with Rev John Guthrie of Stirling, who made a petition to Charles II on his restoration in 1660.

The second elder, Andrew Hay of Craignethan, escaped , but Kirk and Guthrie were imprisoned for several months. He was suspected of taking part in the Pentland Rising and was thought to have been at Rullion Green in 1666.

He was much pursued by the military and for three years he left the country to escape them. His house was a well used resting place by the coventicling ministers Blackadder, Welsh and Semple. Kirko became an “intercommuned” person forced to wander in the moors and hills for nearly twenty years.

He was betrayed by an informer and shot on the Whitesands, Dumfries for refusing to take the Abjuration Oath. The story is that he asked for more time to make his peace with God but Captain Andrew Bruce, his captor, rebuked him thus “ Devil a peace ye get more made up ”, and had him shot on the spot.

The monument in the picture is said to mark the spot he was martyred and is in a car park outside the market entrance, Whitesands, Dumfries.

James Kirko is buried in St Michael’s churchyard the same churchyard as Rabbie Burns.