This is not abstract history. This is blood on the page. James Aikman, writing in 1842 but drawing on contemporary accounts and documents, reconstructs the brutal decades when Scotland's Presbyterians chose between their conscience and the crown. Beginning with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Aikman traces the systematic crushing of the Presbyterian Church: the enforcement of Episcopacy, the ejection of ministers from their pulpits, the torture of covenanters in the Bass Rock, the executions at the Grassmarket. The Marquis of Argyle and generations of clergymen and common people alike faced imprisonment, death, or exile for refusing to bow to royal authority on matters of faith. Aikman writes as a man who believes these martyred Scots deserved remembrance, and his indignation gives the prose an urgency that transcends mere chronicle. For readers drawn to the deep history of religious liberty, or to the question of how ordinary people resist tyrannical states, this book offers the original testimony. It is dense, committed, and unapologetically partisan in favor of the persecuted. Those who persist will find a narrative of extraordinary courage and terrible sacrifice.
