Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Peden, Alexander
PEDEN, ALEXANDER (1626?–1686), covenanter, was born in or about 1626, according to some at the farm of Auchencloich, Ayrshire, and according to others in a small cottage near Sorn Castle, Ayrshire. In any case his father was in fairly good circumstances, being on terms of intimacy with the Boswells, lairds of Auchinleck. Peden attended the university of Glasgow; his name spelt Peathine is entered in the fourth class in 1648 (Scot, Fasti Eccles. Scot. i. 765). Some time after this he became schoolmaster, precentor, and session clerk at Tarbolton, Ayrshire, and subsequently was, according to Wodrow, employed in a like capacity at Fenwick, Ayrshire. As he was about to receive license to preach from the presbytery of Ayr a young woman accused him of being the father of her child, but her statement was finally proved to be false. On account of the ‘surfeit of grief’ that the woman then gave him Peden, according to Patrick Walker, made a vow never to marry. The young woman, Walker also states, committed suicide on the spot where Peden had spent twenty-four hours in prayer and meditation regarding the accusation.
In 1660 Peden was ordained minister at New Luce, Galloway; but having refused to comply with the acts of parliament, 11 June, and of the privy council, 1 Oct. 1662, requiring all who had been inducted since 1649 to obtain a new presentation from the lawful patron and have collation from the bishop of the diocese, letters were directed against him and twenty other ministers of Galloway, 24 Feb. 1663, for ‘labouring to keep the hearts of the people from the present government in church and state,’ and he was ordered to appear before the privy council on that day month to answer for his conduct. Failing to do so, he was ejected from his living. He preached his farewell sermon from Acts xv. 31, 32, occupying the pulpit till night, and as he closed the pulpit-door on leaving it, he knocked on the door three times with his Bible, saying, ‘I arrest thee in my Father's name that none enter thee but such as come in by the door as I have done,’ a prohibition which is said to have been effectual in preventing the intrusion of any ‘indulged’ minister, the pulpit remaining vacant until the Revolution.
After his ejectment Peden began to preach at covenanting conventicles in different parts of the south of Scotland, obtaining by his figurative and oracular style of address and his supposed prophetical gifts an extraordinary influence over the peasantry, which was further increased by his hardships, perils, and numerous hairbreadth escapes. On 25 Jan. 1665 letters were directed against him for keeping conventicles, and, as he disregarded the summons to appear before the council, he was declared a rebel and forfeited. He continued, however, to remain in the country, holding conventicles whenever opportunity presented. Patrick Walker states that he joined with that ‘honest and zealous handful, in the year 1666, that was broken at Pentland Hills (on 28 Nov.), and came the length of Clyde with them, where he had a melancholy view of their end, and parted with them there.’ He was excepted out of the proclamation of pardon on 1 Oct. 1667, and in December all persons ‘were discharged and inhibited to harbour, reset, supply, correspond with or conceal’ him and others concerned in the late rebellion. For greater safety he therefore passed over to Ireland; but having returned in 1673, he was in June apprehended by Major Cockburn in the house of Hugh Ferguson of Knockdow, Ayrshire, and sent to Edinburgh. After examination before the privy council on the 26th he was imprisoned on the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. On 9 Oct. 1677 the council ordered him to be liberated from the Bass, on condition that he bound himself to depart forth of Britain, and not to return under pain of being held pro confesso to have been at Pentland. He does not appear to have complied with this condition, but was shortly afterwards removed to the Tolbooth, Edinburgh. While there he on 14 Nov. petitioned the council to be liberated, and permitted to go to Ireland. Instead of granting the request the council in December ordered that he and certain others should be transported to the plantations in Virginia, and be discharged from ever again returning to Scotland. They were therefore shipped from Leith to London; but Peden, according to Patrick Walker, comforted his fellow prisoners by the declaration that ‘the ship was not yet built’ that would take him or them ‘to Virginia or any other plantation in America.’ And so at last it turned out; for the captain of the ship chartered to convey them to Virginia, on learning that they were not convicts of the class to which he was accustomed, but persons banished on account of their religious beliefs, refused to take them on board, and they were set at liberty. Peden returned to Scotland in June of the following year, and went thence to Ireland. He was in Ayrshire again in 1680, and after performing the marriage ceremony of John Brown (1627?–1685) [q. v.], the ‘Christian carrier,’ in 1682, went back to Ireland. He returned to Ayrshire in 1685, and preached his last sermon at Colinswood at the water of Ayr. His privations and anxieties had gradually undermined his health, and, resolving to spend his last days in his native district, he found shelter in a cave on the banks of the river Ayr, near Sorn. Having a presentiment that he had not many hours to live, he one evening left the cave and went to his brother's house at Sorn, where he died on 28 Jan. 1686. Before his death he had an interview with James Renwick [q. v.], and the two became fully reconciled. Peden was buried in the Boswell aisle in the parish church of Auchinleck; but forty days after the burial a troop of dragoons came, and, lifting the corpse, carried it two miles to Cumnock gallows, intending to hang it up there in chains. Finding it impossible to do so, they buried it at the gallows' foot. After the Revolution the inhabitants of the parish of Cumnock, in token of their esteem for Peden, abandoned their ancient burial-place, and formed a new one round the gallows hill.
Peden's fame as a prophet was perpetuated among the peasants of the south of Scotland by the collection of his prophecies, with instances of their fulfilment, made by Patrick Walker. He was the most famed and revered of all the Scottish covenanting preachers. ‘The Lord's Trumpet sounding an Alarm against Scotland by Warning of a Bloody Sword; being the substance of a Preface and two Prophetical Sermons preached at Glenluce, Anno 1682, by that great Scottish Prophet, Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway,’ was published at Glasgow in 1739, and reprinted in 1779.
[The Life and Prophecies of Alexander Peden by Patrick Walker has been frequently reprinted; see also Histories of Kirkton and Wodrow; Howie's Scottish Worthies; New Statistical Account of Scotland; Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. i. 168; Scott's Old Mortality, note 18; Watson's Life and Times of Peden, Glasgow, 1881.]