1685: Robert Pollack and Robert Millar, Covenanters
1 comment January 23rd, 2010 Headsman
On this date in 1685, Robert Pollack and Robert Millar (or Pollock and Miller) were hanged in Edinburgh as Covenanters.
An East Kilbride shoemaker and a Rutherglen mason, respectively, they were a tick and a tock in the Killing Time — lost like tears in rain amid the torrent of Presbyterian martyrs.
These adhered to James Renwick‘s subversive doctrine of Scottish presbyter control against the overweening Anglican Episcopacy, a conflict of characteristically comingling religious and political characters.
Since most of the Covenanter-killing was being done summarily by soldiers in the field, these Roberts were actually the rare gallows-birds to be condemned in civil court, for which trouble they strangled at the Gallowlee on the road from Edinburgh to Peith.
Their last testaments can be read here, along with those of many other such martyrs.
Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, and employ your strength in the holding up of the fallen-down standard of our Lord, and if ye be found real in this duty, ye shall either be a temple, which shall be a glorious sight, or else ye shall be transported, and be a member of the Church triumphant; so ye shall be no loser, but a noble gainer either of the ways.
-Robert Millar
Though not up to the fame of having their own statuary, Pollack/Pollock has a place on the Covenanter monument in East Kilbride … where the martyrs’ spiritual descendants recently held the movement’s first open-air Conventicle since the 1680s.
Part of the Themed Set: Resistance and Rebellion in the Restoration.
On this day..
- 1952: Võ Thị Sáu - 2020
- 1945: Angelo Chiappe - 2019
- 1874: Marshall Martin, "an innocent man compared to that woman" - 2018
- 1639: The auto de fe of Lima, Peru - 2017
- 1888: Danny Driscoll, Whyo - 2016
- 1751: Lobsang Trashi and the Lhasa Rebellion leaders - 2015
- 1348: The Duke of Durazzo, all in the family - 2014
- 1985: Vladimir Vetrov, Farewell - 2013
- 1892: Patrick Boyle, bindle bandit - 2012
- 1996: Richard Townes, Jr. - 2011
- 1903: Arthur Alfred Lynch condemned - 2009
- 1945: Nikolaus Gross, Catholic anti-Nazi labor activist - 2008
Entry Filed under: 17th Century,Activists,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,England,Execution,God,Hanged,History,Martyrs,Occupation and Colonialism,Power,Public Executions,Religious Figures,Scotland,Treason
Tags: 1680s, 1685, edinburgh, james renwick, january 23, leith, robert millar, robert miller, robert pollack, robert pollock, the gallowlee
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