Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wilson, Margaret
WILSON, MARGARET (1667–1685), the ‘martyr of the Solway,’ elder daughter of Gilbert Wilson (d. 1704), a yeoman of Penninghame, Wigtownshire, was born at Glenvernock in that parish in 1667. Though her parents conformed to episcopacy, Margaret and her younger sister Agnes refused to do so. On 18 April 1685 the sisters, together with a much older person, Margaret MacLachlan (aged 63), were tried at Wigtown assize, before the sheriff-depute, David Graham (brother of Claverhouse), and three other judges, upon a charge of rebellion and attendance at field conventicles. All three having refused the abjuration oath, they were sentenced to be tied to stakes fixed within the flood-mark in the water of Bladenoch, where the sea flowed at high water, so that they should be drowned by the incoming tide. The prisoners were confined in the tower of Wigtown church. Agnes, who was but thirteen, was bailed out by her father upon a bond of 100l. (duly exacted upon her non-appearance), but on the other two sentence was carried out on 11 May 1685. Major Windram guarded them to the place of execution, whither they were attended by a throng of spectators; Margaret appears to have taken the lead throughout. ‘The old woman's stake,’ says Wodrow, ‘was a good way in beyond the other, and she was the first despatched …’ but Margaret ‘adhered to her principles with an unshaken steadfastness.’ After the water had swept over her, but before she was dead, another chance of taking the oath was afforded her. ‘Most deliberately she refused and said, “I will not. I am one of Christ's children: let me go.” Upon which she was thrust down again into the water, where she finished her course with joy. She died a virgin-martyr, about eighteen years of age.’ An elaborate effort has been made (NAPIER, Case for the Crown) to show that the sentence was never really executed, but that a recommendation to pardon, made by the lords of the privy council (which appears in the council registers), was carried into effect. Wodrow himself refers to the signature of a letter of reprieve, but there is abundant evidence to prove that the death sentence was carried out in all its barbarity—probably before the notice of remission had time to be conveyed from Edinburgh to Wigtown. A horizontal slab, upon which Margaret's name and seven rude couplets were inscribed, was set up in Wigtown cemetery early in the eighteenth century, and a monumental obelisk was erected on Windy Hill to the memory of the martyrs in 1861. Millais's well-known picture, ‘The Martyr of the Solway’ (1871), was purchased by Agnew for 472 guineas, and was subsequently given by Mr. George Holt to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (1895). A statue of Margaret Wilson was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1889 by C. B. Birch, A.R.A.
[Wodrow's Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, 1830, iv. 248; Stewart's History vindi- cated in the Case of the Wigtown Martyrs, Edinburgh, 1867, 2nd edit. 1869 [affording a complete answer to] Napier's Case for the Crown in re the Wigtown Martyrs, proved to be Myth, 1863; Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, 1847, p. 237; Macaulay's History, chap. iv.; James Anderson's Ladies of the Covenant, 1851, pp. 427–48; Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland s.v. ‘Wigtown;’ Notes and Queries, 4th ser. v. 540; see also art. Graham, John, Viscount Dundee.]