The Second Sabbath
Morvern and Kilninian, Mull, 1651
Historical Background
By the spring of 1651 the fighting that had convulsed Scotland for more than a decade had changed shape again, but the Church was still reckoning with what men had done during the years of rebellion. The campaigns of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, and Alasdair MacDonald - MacColla - had drawn deeply upon the western Highlands and Islands, where loyalties to king, Covenant, clan and local chief did not always point in the same direction.6
The Kirk treated participation in rebellion as both a political and a spiritual offence. Men who had gone with forces judged to be enemies of the Covenant might later be summoned before a presbytery, required to acknowledge their wrongdoing and ordered to make public repentance before being received again into the ordinary religious life of their communities. The surviving records of Lorn show that such repentance could take many forms. Some offenders were sent from kirk to kirk in sackcloth, barefoot and bare-headed; others were required to appear in their own clothes and confess publicly before one or more congregations.12
Martin MacGillivray understood that process from both sides. Only a few years earlier the Synod of Argyll had deposed him for his own "complyance with the rebells" and familiarity with excommunicated men. His recorded confession described journeys with Sir Lachlan Maclean, three nights among the Royalist army, preaching and praying with an excommunicated chief and other associations that the Synod judged incompatible with his office. In 1649, after the same Synod found what it called "lykely signs of reall repentance", Martin was recommended to the General Assembly so that "his mouth may be opened" once more. The Assembly restored him to ministry.45
By 1651 Martin was serving at Kilninian on Mull, no longer the minister standing before a church court but one of the men entrusted with carrying out its discipline.
On 14 May that year the Presbytery of Lorn recorded the appearance of a man named simply as Lauchlane McLaine - Lachlan Maclean. The minute does not give him a title or identify him more precisely. It says that he had been "in rebellion" and that, having been cited, he appeared before the Presbytery and declared his heartfelt sorrow for breaking the Covenant and "strengthening the hands of the enemies" by going with them in rebellion against God and the Kirk.12
The Presbytery ordered Lachlan to make public repentance on two Sabbaths, dressed not in sackcloth but "in his awin habite" - his own clothes. The first was to be with the Reverend Hector Maclean at Kilcolumkill in Morvern. The second was to be at Kilninian on Mull, where Martin MacGillivray was ordered to receive him.12
The surviving extract records the sentence.
What happened on those two Sundays must be reconstructed.
The Second Sabbath
Lachlan had expected the Presbytery to ask whether he had gone with them, but he had not expected the question to sound so simple. Men sitting at a table could make a journey into a sentence, stripping away the rain, the shouted orders, the uncertainty of what would happen to a house left behind and the knowledge that other men had already decided which side of the road a person stood upon. In the clerk's book there would be only the fact that Lachlan Maclean had gone with those in rebellion, and he did not deny it.
Asked what he had to say for himself, he spoke of sorrow. The words entered into the record were stronger than anything he might have chosen in ordinary conversation: he grieved for his great sins in breaking the Covenant and strengthening the hands of the enemies by going with them in what the clerk called that cursed rebellion against God and His Kirk.12
When he had finished, the Presbytery considered what repentance should look like and ordered him to make public confession on two Sabbaths. The first appearance would be at Kilcolumkill in Morvern with Mr Hector Maclean, and the second at Kilninian on Mull with Mr Martin MacGillivray, both to be completed before the first day of June.1 There would be no sackcloth, for the Presbytery specified that Lachlan was to stand "in his awin habite", clothed as the people around him ordinarily knew him. In some ways that made the punishment harder, because a disguise of repentance could eventually be removed, while the coat he wore before the congregation would still be his when he returned home.
The crossing to Morvern was quiet. Lachlan sat low in the boat while the oars worked steadily through water carrying a light chop beneath a grey sky. He had known crossings in which men talked without stopping, passing stories from one shore to another as naturally as they carried meal, letters and news of marriages, but on this journey nobody seemed eager to fill the silence. Perhaps they knew where he was going, or perhaps the reason for his journey was already sufficiently plain that nobody needed to ask.
Kilcolumkill stood within a landscape that had heard enough confession long before Lachlan arrived. Stone, grass and sea held no opinion of him, and for a little while he was grateful for that. The difficulty began when people appeared along the track towards the kirk and he recognised some of them: one man had traded cattle with a cousin of his, another had once shared a boat with him in weather that had made strangers into friends before they reached shore, while a woman walking with two daughters looked directly at Lachlan and then away again, not with contempt exactly, but with the discomfort of someone who had been given more knowledge of another person's life than she wished to carry.
Mr Hector Maclean met him before the service.
"You know what is required?"
"Aye."
"And you understand that this is not merely standing where you are told?"
Lachlan looked towards the kirk. "I stood where I was told before. That is part of how I came here."
Hector studied him for a moment. The answer might have been insolent in another man's mouth, but Lachlan had not spoken it that way.
"Then perhaps you understand more of it than most."
Lachlan rubbed one thumb against the seam of his sleeve. He had dressed carefully that morning, not because the Presbytery required it but because he could think of no other defence against being looked at by an entire congregation. The coat was the one he would have worn to kirk on any other Sabbath and his shoes had been cleaned, so nothing about him announced penitence except the reason he was there.
"What must I say?"
"The truth would be a good beginning."
"I told the Presbytery the truth."
"Then you have had practice."
For the first time that morning Lachlan nearly smiled, although Hector did not.
"Do not perform sorrow for them," the minister said. "If you have it, speak it. If you do not, the Lord will know before the congregation does."
The people were entering now, their voices quieter as they approached the door, and Lachlan watched them for a moment before saying, "I went because others went."
Hector waited.
"It seemed different then."
"Most things do."
"We were told who the enemy was."
"And now?"
Lachlan looked beyond the kirk towards the water. "Now I know only that men who said they served God killed other men who said the same."
Hector's expression changed slightly, although whether from sympathy or warning Lachlan could not tell.
"That is not the confession the Presbytery ordered."
"No."
"Is it the one you believe?"
Lachlan drew a slow breath. "I believe I went, and I believe there were times I could have turned away and did not. I told myself that because many men were going, the burden belonged to all of us and therefore to none of us."
Hector nodded once. "That may be nearer."
The bell called the last of the congregation inside, and Lachlan followed.
The record does not tell us the words he used at Kilcolumkill, but public repentance depended upon being seen and heard. Whatever Lachlan said, he had to say it before men and women who would remember him after the service had ended. He stood where Hector directed him and faced the congregation, finding the room for a moment more difficult than any gathering of armed men. A person could fear a sword without shame; it was harder to know what to do with the gaze of a neighbour.
Hector spoke first, briefly explaining why Lachlan stood before them, and then the kirk became quiet. Lachlan had imagined this part several times during the crossing. In some versions the words came easily and sounded almost noble, while in others he could not speak at all. The reality was less impressive, because he began badly, stopped, and had to begin again.
"I went with men in rebellion."
A child shifted somewhere near the back of the kirk, but Lachlan kept his eyes ahead.
"I knew what the Covenant required of me, and I went nevertheless. I have said before the Presbytery that I am sorry for it, and I say the same before you."
The words felt small compared with the years from which they had come. He thought of men on the road, of smoke visible from hillsides and rumours travelling faster than armies, and of the strange ease with which a man could become part of something simply by continuing to walk in the same direction as those around him.
"I told myself that I had little choice," he continued. "There may have been days when that was true. There were others when it was only easier to believe it."
A man near the wall lifted his head, and Lachlan recognised the cattle trader. Their eyes met, leaving Lachlan for a moment with the odd sensation that the kirk contained only the two of them.
"I cannot change that I went," Lachlan said. "I can only say that I should not have strengthened what brought harm upon the Kirk and upon other people, and ask forgiveness for my part in it."
He had nothing more to add, and Hector allowed the silence to remain before continuing the service.
Afterwards nobody rushed to speak with Lachlan, which he had not expected them to do. A few men nodded as they passed. The woman with the two daughters gave him the smallest inclination of her head, which somehow felt more generous than a speech would have done, while the cattle trader stopped last.
"You meant it?"
"I meant what I said."
"That wasn't my question."
The man had always been tiresome, and Lachlan found himself unexpectedly grateful for the familiarity of it.
"I meant enough of it to come back for the second Sabbath."
The trader considered this, then held out his hand. Lachlan took it, and there was no declaration of forgiveness because they were Highland men standing outside a kirk in uncertain weather and there were limits to what either could reasonably be expected to say. The handshake was enough.
Martin heard about Lachlan's first appearance before the second Sabbath arrived. News travelled through the islands with its usual disregard for official channels, and by the time a minister received a letter several parishioners had often heard a better version from a cousin who knew a boatman whose brother had been there.
One of Martin's elders mentioned it while they were checking a loose board near the kirk.
"They say he spoke well in Morvern."
Martin kept one hand on the timber while the elder worked the fastening. "Do they?"
"They say he admitted he could have left them."
"Who says?"
The elder paused. "Donald heard it from a man out of Morvern."
"Was the man there?"
"I don't know."
"Was Donald?"
"No."
Martin returned his attention to the board. "Then we have achieved three men and no witnesses."
The elder smiled. "You've been in Presbytery too long."
"Not long enough to stop people reporting what they haven't seen."
The fastening finally caught, and the elder straightened.
"Will you make him do it again?"
"That is what was ordered."
"I know what was ordered. I asked what you'll make him do."
Martin wiped damp grit from his fingers. There was more in the question than curiosity, because the elder knew Martin's history, as most people did at least in pieces. A minister might survive deposition and restoration, but neither event disappeared simply because another Assembly later wrote his name beside the word reposition. Somewhere in the Synod's books remained Martin's own confession: the journeys with Sir Lachlan, the nights among the Royalist army, the prayers offered to an excommunicated man and the awkward question of why rebels had left his goods untouched when other ministers had suffered.4
"I'll receive what the Presbytery ordered him to give," Martin said.
"And if he gives less?"
"Then I'll tell them."
"And if he gives more?"
Martin looked towards the sea. "Then perhaps that's between him and God."
On the second appointed Sabbath, Lachlan came to Kilninian before many of the congregation had arrived, which Martin took as a good sign, although he had learned not to build theology upon punctuality. The morning had cleared after overnight rain; water still sat dark in the ruts of the track, and the grass around the kirk bent beneath droplets that caught what little light came through the cloud.
Lachlan wore the same coat he had worn in Morvern, and Martin noticed because the Presbytery had been precise about that point. He was to appear in his own habit, without sackcloth, bare feet or any costume designed to separate the offender visibly from everyone else. There were offences for which humiliation was meant to carry part of the punishment, but this seemed different. Lachlan's guilt lay in choices made by an ordinary man during extraordinary years, and Martin thought it fitting that he should answer for them dressed as himself.
They met outside.
"Mr MacGillivray."
"Lachlan."
For a moment each seemed to expect the other to say more, until Martin broke the silence.
"You were at Kilcolumkill?"
"Aye."
"And did what was required?"
"I stood before them."
"That wasn't what I asked."
Lachlan looked at him, then gave a faint, reluctant smile. "I was warned ministers did that."
"Who warned you?"
"Another minister."
"Then he has betrayed the trade."
The smile went quickly, but not entirely, and Lachlan looked towards the kirk door.
"I spoke as honestly as I could."
Martin nodded. "Do the same here."
"Is that all?"
"No. But it is enough to begin."
The answer seemed to disappoint him.
"You've no instruction for what I should say?"
"The Presbytery already gave you words enough: sorrow and grief for breaking the Covenant and strengthening the enemies."
Lachlan's face tightened. "They wrote those words."
"You spoke them before they wrote them."
"Something like them."
Martin knew that phrase, because men remembered their own confessions differently once a clerk had made them permanent, and he had done the same.
"You think the record is unfair?"
"I think a page has more room for certainty than a man does."
Martin regarded him for a moment. "On that, we agree."
Lachlan looked surprised, but Martin had already turned towards the kirk.
"Come. People are arriving."
The congregation at Kilninian knew why Lachlan was there, and Martin could see it in the way conversation thinned around him. There was none of the spectacle that would later accompany men standing barefoot in sackcloth for the robbery of Thomas Hamilton's bark. Lachlan looked like any other worshipper, which meant that the difference between him and the congregation depended entirely upon what was known.
Martin began the service as he ordinarily would and did not hurry towards the repentance. There were prayers to say, Scripture to read and a sermon to preach, and he had no wish to make the whole Sabbath revolve around one man's failure. A congregation contained too many private griefs for that. Some had lost people during the wars; others had seen cattle taken, homes threatened or sons return with stories they did not tell twice. There would be those listening who thought Lachlan's repentance insufficient and others who believed the wrong side had won the right to define the word rebellion. Martin had learned to be cautious whenever men claimed that history had made morality simple.
When the time came, he called Lachlan forward. The movement through the kirk seemed longer than the distance required, and Lachlan stood where Martin indicated before facing the people.
"You appeared before the Presbytery of Lorn and acknowledged your sorrow for going in rebellion, contrary to the Covenant and to the peace of the Kirk."
Lachlan nodded.
"You were ordered to make public repentance on two Sabbaths, the first in Morvern and the second here."
"Aye."
"You have made the first?"
"I have."
"And now you stand before this congregation of your own will?"
Lachlan hesitated, and the hesitation passed through the kirk like a small change in wind. Martin waited until Lachlan finally said, "I came because I was ordered."
Somebody shifted on a bench, but Lachlan continued before Martin could speak.
"But I could have stayed away."
Martin held his gaze. "Aye."
"I've done that before," Lachlan said. "Told myself that because another man gave the order, the choice belonged to him."
The words were not the language of the Presbytery, but Martin thought they might be more useful. He stepped back slightly, leaving Lachlan room to speak to the congregation rather than to him.
Lachlan told them that he had gone with men in rebellion and that, whatever pressures had stood behind the decision, his feet had still carried him. He spoke less fluently than a minister and with more pauses than the clerk would ever have tolerated in a minute, yet nobody in Kilninian seemed troubled by the gaps.
Martin listened and thought, unwillingly, of another room and another set of questions. He remembered explaining that Sir Lachlan had compelled him, remembered the Synod asking why Royalist men had spared his home and goods, and remembered offering God's providence as the answer. He still believed it, but he also knew that belief had not made the Synod's question foolish. A man could be pressured and still make choices, could regret an act without agreeing with every judgement made upon it, and could be punished sincerely by a church that nevertheless understood only part of what had happened. None of those truths cancelled the others.
Lachlan reached the end of what he had prepared.
"I ask forgiveness," he said, "for the part that was mine."
Martin let the silence remain. There were forms for these things, but forms worked best when they did not crush whatever truth had managed to find its way into them.
"You have heard him," he said to the congregation, before turning back to Lachlan. "And I have heard you."
The Presbytery had ordered Martin to receive him, a phrase that had seemed straightforward on paper. Standing there, Martin understood that receiving a man's repentance did not require pretending that the past had become simple; it meant accepting that confession and consequence were allowed an ending.
"You have done what was required of you here," Martin said. "Walk differently from what brought you to it."
Lachlan swallowed and nodded. When Martin offered his hand, Lachlan stared at it only for a moment before taking it.
After the congregation had gone, Martin remained inside the kirk gathering his papers until one of the elders returned for a glove he had left upon the bench.
"Well?"
Martin looked up. "Well what?"
"Was he repentant?"
"You were sitting twenty feet away."
"I know what I heard."
"Then why ask me?"
The elder retrieved the glove. "Because you're the minister."
"That has never improved my ability to see inside another man."
The elder leaned against the end of the bench.
"Presbytery will want an answer."
"They'll get one."
"What will you tell them?"
Martin considered. "That he appeared and made his public repentance."
"Nothing about whether you believed him?"
"They didn't ask me to measure his soul."
The elder smiled. "Probably fortunate. You'd need a larger book."
Martin looked at him. "Go home."
The man did, still smiling, while Martin remained a little longer. Through the open door he could see the wet track and, beyond it, the land falling away towards the water. Somewhere along that track Lachlan was returning to an ordinary life in which there would be cattle, weather, family obligations and neighbours who now knew exactly what he had confessed in two different kirks.
Martin understood the peculiar mercy of ordinary work. A man might stand publicly before a congregation on Sunday and still have a fence to mend on Monday, because shame could not remain ceremonial forever when life required hands for other purposes.
He closed the book and thought of how little of any life survived upon a Presbytery page. Lachlan's offence and repentance would occupy only a few lines: that he had been in rebellion, that he had expressed sorrow, and that two Sabbaths of public repentance had been ordered. The record would not preserve the silence before he spoke, the faces that looked away to spare him, or those that did not; nor could it say whether repentance had begun in Morvern, at Kilninian, before the Presbytery, somewhere on the road with the rebels, or years later when memory finally ceased finding excuses.
Perhaps no clerk could have written that.
Martin gathered his papers and stepped outside, knowing better than most that a church record could preserve a man's judgement while still failing to preserve the man.
Historical Note and Sources
The documentary foundation for this story is a 14 May 1651 entry from the Presbytery Records of Lorn, preserved in a reference file of extracts and transcriptions held by the Mull Museum, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, under the reference CHURCH 01-001.1
The entry records that "Lauchlane McLaine being in rebellionn and being citet did compeir before the presbitrie" and declared his "heartie sorrow and greiff" for his sins in breaking the Covenant and "strenthening the hands of the enymeles" by going with them in rebellion against God and the Kirk. The Presbytery ordered him to make public repentance on "twa severall sabbothes" while dressed "in his awin habite". The first was to be with Mr Hector McLaine at Kilcolumkill in Morvern and the second with Mr Mairtelne Mcillevray - Martin MacGillivray - at Kilninian on Mull. Martin was expressly ordered to receive him. The penance was to be performed before 1 June 1651.1
The same passage was published by the Reverend Adam E. Anderson in his paper "Notes from the Presbytery Records of Lorne", delivered to the Gaelic Society of Inverness in 1931 and published in volume 36 of its Transactions. Anderson's transcription substantially corroborates the Mull Museum reference file and prints the two-Sabbath order on page 118.2
The original Presbytery of Lorn records for 1651–1681 are held by the National Records of Scotland under CH2/984/1.3
The surviving extract does not identify this Lachlan Maclean more fully. It does not call him Sir Lachlan, give him an estate designation or state his relationship to the chiefly Maclean family. For that reason this story deliberately refers to him simply as Lachlan Maclean and does not assign him a rank or genealogy that the record itself does not provide.
Nor does the 14 May entry name the rebel force with which Lachlan had gone. The wider ecclesiastical records of Argyll during this period repeatedly concern participation in the Royalist rebellion associated with James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, and Alasdair MacDonald, and Martin MacGillivray's own 1648 proceedings name those men explicitly.46 However, because Lachlan's particular minute does not do so, the story does not claim that he personally marched under either commander.
The record establishes that the two acts of public repentance were ordered. The extract available to the author does not contain a later certificate or minute proving that Lachlan actually completed both appearances. The scenes at Kilcolumkill and Kilninian, the dialogue with Hector and Martin, the wording of Lachlan's public confessions, the reactions of the congregations and Martin's private reflections are therefore fictional reconstruction based upon the sentence imposed. The distinction is important: the order is documented; the human experience of carrying it out is imagined.
Martin's own thoughts about church discipline are informed by his documented experience. The Synod of Argyll had deposed him in 1648 for "complyance with the rebells" and later recorded signs of repentance before recommending his return to ministry so that "his mouth may be opened". The General Assembly restored him in 1649.45 That history makes Martin's role in receiving Lachlan's repentance particularly striking, but no surviving source records what Martin personally thought about the parallel.
Reference Guide
Numbered references in the text correspond to the sources below.
1. Mull Museum Archives, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, reference file CHURCH 01-001, 'Notes from the Presbytery Records of Lorn', entry dated 14 May 1651. The file contains the transcription of Lachlan Maclean's appearance before the Presbytery and the order for two Sabbaths of public repentance, the second before Martin MacGillivray at Kilninian.
2. Rev. Adam E. Anderson, 'Notes from the Presbytery Records of Lorne', Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, vol. 36 (1941), pp. 112–138, especially p. 118. The paper was originally presented to the Society on 10 April 1931 and reproduces the 14 May 1651 entry concerning Lachlan Maclean. Source link
3. National Records of Scotland, CH2/984/1, Records of the Presbytery of Lorn, 1651–1681. This is the archival series from which the seventeenth-century Presbytery material derives. Source link
4. National Records of Scotland, CH2/557/1, Argyll Synod Minutes, 1639–1651, manuscript pp. 150–153 and 178. These entries document Martin MacGillivray's confession, deposition for compliance with rebels, and the later recommendation for his restoration. Source link
5. Acts of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland, 1638–1649, Index of the Unprinted Acts of the Assembly, 1649, Session 34: 'Reposition of Mr. Marten Makilwrae', with recommendation to the Synod of Argyll to settle him in a ministerial charge. Source link
6. Andrew Lind, 'Bad and Evill Patriotts? – Royalism in Scotland during the British Civil Wars, c.1638–1651', PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2020. Used for the wider context of Royalism, clerical discipline and the western Highland campaigns. Source link
Archive Acknowledgement
I am particularly grateful to the Mull Museum, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, for preserving and making accessible the reference file CHURCH 01-001, containing extracts and transcriptions from the Presbytery Records of Lorn. That file provided the starting point and central documentary evidence for this story.
I am also grateful to the National Records of Scotland for preserving the original records of the Presbytery of Lorn and the Synod of Argyll, and to Scotland's People for providing digital access to the Synod material used to reconstruct Martin MacGillivray's own disciplinary history.
The published transcription by the Reverend Adam E. Anderson in the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, made accessible online through Am Baile, has been used as an independent comparison for the 1651 Presbytery entry.
As with the other stories in this series, documentary fact and historical fiction are deliberately kept separate. The records provide the people, dates, accusations, judgements and orders. Fiction is used only to restore the silences between them: the weather, the journeys, the conversations and the private responses that no clerk recorded.
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