The Zealot and the Two Marys

   

    Religion has played a strong part in the turbulent past of Scotland. In modern day society there is no place for bigotry, but I'm afraid that there are sporting occasions when it still does rear its ugly head.

    However,  thankfully we no longer take those who disagree with the majority on the day and execute them. This is what happened to two women from Wigton, Scotland in the seventeenth century, who refused to recognise that the then monarch, King James VII, as the head of the church.

    Found guilty of treason eighteen-year-old, Margaret Wilson and sixty-year-old Margaret McLachlan were sentenced to death by drowning. The two women met their fate on the Solway Firth, England, where they were tied to a stake and drowned by the incoming tide.

    While the two Margaret's have no connection to Stirling a local farmer and business man wanted to commemorate, Presbyterian martyrs and a monument was erected in memory of them in the, Old Town Cemetery, Stirling in the nineteenth century.

    It's an amazing monument and when I came across it the other day, I could hardly take my eyes off it. The angel watching over the two women, makes a powerful statement.