The Stories of Martin MacGillivray
Updated: Oct 4
Martin MacGillivray lived through one of the most turbulent periods in Scottish history. Minister, landholder, Gaelic scholar and, according to family tradition, a man rarely separated from his sword, his surviving records take us into the religious, political and everyday life of seventeenth-century Mull.
These stories are based upon documented events. Where the records fall silent, historical fiction is used to restore the people, places and ordinary moments around them, while a research note and numbered references accompany each story.
The Locked Kirk - Mull, 1631
Historical Background
Scotland in 1631 had been Protestant for more than seventy years, but religion remained unsettled.
The Reformation Parliament of 1560 had rejected papal authority and outlawed the Mass, while the reformed Kirk developed its own structure of kirk sessions, presbyteries, synods and General Assemblies. By 1592 that system had acquired a recognisably Presbyterian form. Yet the settlement did not remain untouched. James VI increasingly sought greater royal control over the Scottish Church and restored bishops to positions of authority, beginning a long struggle over whether the Kirk should be governed through presbyteries or episcopacy. 1
In 1618 James pushed further with the Five Articles of Perth, introducing practices including kneeling to receive Communion. Many Scots regarded such changes with deep suspicion, fearing a return towards forms of worship abandoned at the Reformation. Under James's son Charles I, who succeeded to the throne in 1625, those tensions continued to grow. They would eventually erupt in the resistance to the new Prayer Book in 1637 and the signing of the National Covenant the following year. In 1631, however, that confrontation still lay ahead. 2
The Western Highlands and Islands presented another complication. Protestant reform had never progressed evenly through the Gaelic-speaking west, and Catholic belief continued in parts of the region long after 1560. Irish Franciscan missionaries had begun working in the Highlands and Islands after 1619, while connections between western Scotland and Catholic communities in Ireland remained strong. Modern scholarship identifies Mull among the islands reached by this renewed Catholic missionary activity. 3
Religion in the west could therefore be inseparable from clan, land and political authority. A minister might possess the authority of the established Kirk, but many of those sitting—or failing to sit—before him on a Sabbath were tenants of a local chief. Their homes, grazing and livelihoods depended upon men whose religious loyalties did not necessarily agree with those of the Crown or Kirk.
It was into this unsettled world that Martin MacGillivray had been called to minister at Killean and Killenachane on Mull.
Among the most powerful landholders within his parishes was Murdoch Maclean of Lochbuie, described in the proceedings of 1631 as a Catholic and as landlord to a large part of Martin's congregation. Martin complained that Murdoch was preventing his tenants from attending the established kirk and interfering with his ministry. 4
The disagreement might have remained one more contest between minister and laird.
Instead, on a Sabbath in March 1631, Murdoch Maclean came to Martin's kirk with armed men.
The Locked Kirk
Martin had begun to measure the problem by the empty places.
One family missing from worship meant little. Cattle strayed, children became ill and weather could make a journey across Mull difficult enough without adding questions of conscience. When the same families disappeared Sabbath after Sabbath, however, absence became something else.
He knew their names.
He had visited some of their homes, baptised their children and listened while men explained why the harvest had disappointed them or why another winter might require more meal than they possessed. They were not people who had suddenly ceased to believe in God.
They were tenants of Lochbuie.
Martin closed the kirk door after the congregation had gone and found one of his elders waiting outside.
"You noticed?"
Martin glanced back towards the building.
"I noticed."
"They've been told."
"By Murdoch?"
The elder hesitated before nodding.
"Aye."
Martin began walking down the track. The ground remained wet from rain earlier in the week, and he kept to the firmer grass along its edge.
"And what precisely has he told them?"
"That they're not to come."
Martin stopped.
The elder had apparently hoped they might continue walking.
"Not to this kirk?"
"To either of them, as I hear it."
"And if they do?"
The man looked towards the hills.
"He owns their land, Martin."
There was nothing more that needed saying.
A minister could remind a tenant of his obligations to God, but when that same tenant returned home it was not Martin who decided whether the tack upon his holding would be renewed. A family might endure a minister's displeasure rather more easily than a landlord's.
Martin resumed walking.
"What will you do?"
"Speak to him."
The elder gave him a sideways look.
"You think Lochbuie doesn't know what he's doing?"
"No."
"Then speaking may not alter much."
"Perhaps not."
The elder waited.
Martin looked back towards the kirk, standing alone above the surrounding land.
"But silence certainly won't."
The disagreement hardened during the following weeks.
Martin continued his ministry and the empty places remained. What might once have been dismissed as irregular attendance now carried the unmistakable shape of authority. Lochbuie's authority.
There were other matters too. Teinds were owing, and Martin believed Murdoch was obstructing their payment. The dispute was no longer confined to who appeared at worship. It reached into the practical means by which a minister lived and maintained his charge.
For Martin, the difficulty was not simply personal.
If Murdoch could decide that his tenants should not attend the kirk, then the laird had effectively placed his authority above that of the established Church within the parishes. The issue concerned worship, certainly, but beneath it lay the more familiar Highland question of who possessed the right to command whom.
Martin knew the answer the Kirk would give.
He was less certain that every man living on Lochbuie's land would give the same one.
The Sabbath on which matters finally broke began without drama.
Martin arrived early enough to prepare himself before the congregation came in. His Bible lay open upon the place he intended to use, and the building carried the damp chill common to stone that had stood through a Mull night.
People arrived gradually.
Too few again.
Martin did not allow himself to count them.
He was preparing to begin when movement outside disturbed the quiet.
Several men were approaching together.
Their arrival had a different weight to that of parishioners coming for worship. Conversation within the kirk fell away before anyone had entered, as though those nearest the door already understood what was coming.
Murdoch Maclean appeared first.
The men behind him carried swords and other weapons.
Martin remained where he was.
Murdoch stepped into the kirk and looked around him. Several of those present lowered their eyes. Whatever argument existed between minister and laird, the people seated between them knew which man controlled much of the ground beyond these walls.
Martin rested one hand beside the open Bible.
"Murdoch."
"There'll be no preaching here."
Martin looked past him towards the armed men.
"This is the Sabbath."
"I know what day it is."
"And these people have come to worship."
"They can leave."
Nobody moved.
Martin felt the anger rise, but anger offered little help when the other man had arrived expecting it.
"You may choose whether you hear the Word yourself," Martin said. "You do not choose for every soul upon your land."
Murdoch came farther into the kirk.
"You seem to have mistaken whose land this is."
Martin looked around the building.
"And you seem to have mistaken whose kirk it is."
For a moment nothing happened.
Then Murdoch's men moved.
One took Martin by the arm while another came behind him. The movement was so sudden that his first resistance came from instinct. He pulled free of one grip and immediately felt another seize his coat.
"Take your hands from me."
They did not.
The congregation remained where they were.
Martin saw faces he knew beyond the shoulders of the men forcing him towards the doorway. One woman had drawn her child against her. An older tenant stared down at his knees. None intervened.
Martin could hardly blame them.
The men around him carried steel, and courage was considerably easier to recommend from a pulpit than when a laird's armed retainers stood between a man and his family.
His shoulder struck the doorway.
Then he was outside.
Martin stumbled once before recovering his footing on the wet ground. Behind him came the heavy movement of the door.
It closed.
A moment later he heard the lock.
For several seconds he simply stood there.
Inside were his congregation and his Bible.
Outside stood their minister.
Martin straightened his coat where it had twisted beneath someone's hand. There was mud on one knee and an ache beginning in his shoulder.
Murdoch appeared at the doorway before it was finally secured.
The warning was unmistakable.
If Martin returned, worse would be done to him.
Then the door closed again.
Martin looked at the timber separating him from the people he had come to serve.
An absurd thought occurred to him.
He had spent years learning how to preach.
Nobody at Glasgow had thought to teach him what to do when someone locked him out of the kirk.
The matter could not end there.
On 22 March 1631, Martin brought his complaint before the authorities at Holyrood House.
The language committed to the record was less restrained than anything he might have chosen for himself. Murdoch Maclean, Martin declared, was hostile to the established religion and ministry, controlled most of his parishioners and withdrew both himself and them from hearing the Word.
Then came the account of the Sabbath.
Murdoch and his accomplices had entered the kirk armed with swords and other weapons, had laid violent hands upon Martin and had "thrust him to the doores", locking the church and threatening worse if he returned. 4
Murdoch did not appear to answer the charge and was declared rebel.
Yet a declaration made at Holyrood could not alter the geography of Mull.
Lochbuie remained Lochbuie.
His tenants still required his land. Martin still had parishes in which many of those tenants lived. Both men inhabited an island where quarrels travelled quickly and where an enemy could seldom be placed comfortably beyond sight.
Through the summer the dispute moved from physical force into law.
On 19 July Murdoch found caution of £500 and obtained suspension of the process against him. Then, on 10 August, came a remarkable change.
He entered into a formal obligation to Martin.
The document bound Murdoch, his heirs, vassals and tenants to make proper payment of the teinds due to Martin during his ministry. More importantly, Murdoch undertook that the inhabitants of Killean and Killenachane would obey the discipline of the Kirk, attend worship, hear the Word and participate in the sacraments. 4
Martin read the document more than once.
Only months earlier the same man had forced him from his kirk.
Now Lochbuie's own written obligation required the tenants to return.
There was no explanation of what had caused such a reversal.
Perhaps the threat of legal punishment had been enough. Perhaps £500 possessed powers of persuasion unavailable to theology. Perhaps conversations had taken place behind closed doors which no clerk thought necessary to preserve.
Martin could only deal with what had been put before him.
Murdoch Maclean had given his word.
For the moment, that would have to serve.
When Martin next stood before a fuller congregation, he did not mention the incident.
There were faces before him he had not seen for some time.
A tenant from Lochbuie's lands sat with his wife and children. Two more families had returned. An elderly man who had once found reason to be elsewhere on several successive Sabbaths was now occupying a place close enough to the door that he might still claim caution rather than enthusiasm.
Martin noticed them all.
He said nothing.
People carried enough burdens without requiring their minister to make a public inventory of their courage.
He opened the Bible and looked across the congregation.
Beyond the walls lay the same land as before. Lochbuie remained a man of property and influence, and Martin remained a minister whose authority depended in no small part upon whether ordinary men and women were willing to recognise it.
No document had changed that.
But the people had returned.
Martin found his place upon the page.
Then he began to preach.
Historical Note and Sources
The confrontation at the centre of the story is documented. On 22 March 1631 at Holyrood House, Martin MacGillivray, recorded as Mr Martin M'Ilvray, minister of Killean and Killenachane, complained that Murdoch Maclean of Lochbuie was a Catholic landholder who controlled most of Martin's parishioners and prevented them from attending the established kirk. Martin stated that on the previous Sabbath Murdoch and armed companions entered the kirk where he was preparing to preach, seized him, forced him outside, locked the church and threatened him if he returned. 4
The surviving record does not identify which of Martin's kirks was involved, so I have deliberately left the building unnamed.
Murdoch failed to appear and was declared rebel. On 19 July 1631 he found caution of £500, and on 10 August 1631 he entered into a written obligation to Martin. He agreed to pay the appropriate teinds, require his tenants to do likewise, and ensure that the parishioners attended the kirks, heard the Word and participated in the sacraments. When he appeared before the Council at Perth on 21 September, he could report that he had already reached satisfaction with Martin. 4
The broader religious background is also historically grounded. Scotland had formally adopted Protestant reform in 1560 and a Presbyterian system in 1592, but James VI subsequently reintroduced episcopal authority. The resulting struggle between royal control, bishops and Presbyterian structures continued under Charles I and reached crisis in the later 1630s. 1
Catholicism had by no means disappeared from the Gaelic west. Modern scholarship identifies sustained Catholic missionary activity in the Western Isles during the early seventeenth century, including Mull, particularly through Irish Franciscan connections after 1619. 3
The dialogue, Martin's thoughts, the elder, individual members of the congregation and the physical details of the scene are fictional reconstruction. The expulsion, armed men, locking of the kirk, threat against Martin, legal proceedings and Murdoch's subsequent obligation are taken from the known record.
Reference Guide
Numbered references in the text correspond to the sources below. Web sources accessed 8 September 2026.
1. The Church of Scotland. “History of the Church of Scotland.” Used for the Reformation of 1560, the adoption of Presbyterian structures in 1592, and the changing relationship between Presbyterianism, episcopacy and the Stuart monarchy. Source link
2. Brown, K. M., et al., eds. The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707. Act 1621/6/13, “A ratification of the five articles of the general assembly of the kirk held at Perth in the month of August 1618.” University of St Andrews, 2007–2026. Used for the Five Articles of Perth and their formal parliamentary ratification. Source link
3. Marshall, Peter. “Reformations in Britain’s Islands.” Studies in Church History 61 (2025): 258–283. Cambridge University Press. DOI 10.1017/stc.2024.39. Used for Catholic persistence and the Irish Franciscan missionary campaign in the Western Isles, including Mull. Source link
4. Clan Maclaine of Lochbuie. “Murdoch Mor Maclaine of Lochbuie – 10th Chief of Lochbuie.” Historical account reproducing the 1631 complaint by Rev. Martin M’Ilvray, the armed expulsion from the kirk, Murdoch’s subsequent legal proceedings and his written obligation of 10 August 1631. Source link
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