James
Ure of Shergarton

Cited in
Hewison`s The Covenanters etc

The Rev.
Robert Wodrow, the historian of the Covenanters, gives a
credible account of the hardships endured by James Ure of
Shargarton, in the parish of Kippen, in Stirlingshire, a
centre of nonconforming disaffection.’ From 1670 Ure was
leading the disorderly life of a dissenter, having his
children baptized by outed ministers, now skulking in the
Wood of Balwhan, anon in Ireland, and again an
intermittent visitor at home. He was foremost among the
braves who held the Bridge of
Bothwell.  When the trial of the fugitive came off on
9th January 1682, all the political crimes of the day, as
well as ` throwing off the fear of God,’ were charged
against him, and the traitor’s doom and forfeiture were
accorded him. The soldiery exhausted his estate. This
severity merely confirmed the faith of his family, his
septuagenarian mother was captured at a conventicle at the
Gribloch and was one of a crowd marched down to Glasgow
Tolbooth, which was overcrowded. Her petition to be
allowed out on bond, ‘at least to win to the prison doors
for air` – those able to jostle took their turn at the
chinks-was refused, so that the pestilential ward killed
the old lady.  Among the prisoners was Margaret
Macklum, wife of Arthur Dougall, miller at New Miln,
Kippen, a non-churchgoer, who was apprehended in April
1681 and liberated on a bond.’ Some of these prisoners
were sent to Dunnottar and others were banished The offer
of.£100 reward for information regarding the hiding-places
of Ure did not tempt those in on the secret. For
intercommuning with her husband, Ure’s wife, with a baby
at her breast, was carried off first to Stirling, then to
the Canongate Tolbooth, to be examined by the Council.
After four weeks’ detention she was released and returned
to her devastated home in which her husband spent only
three nights during nine years of wandering. The gallant
laird, however, survived to become a potent factor at the
Revolution, to get a commission in Argyll’s regiment, to
have his forfeiture rescinded by Parliament, and to see
the extinction of the Jacobite Rising. Ure’s neighbour,
John Flockhart in the Hole of Kippen, another
conventicler, who was married by a nonconformist, was
punished by the quartering of seventy troopers, under
Bruce of Clackmannan, and by condemnation to prison for
several months.’