More Cumnock CovenantersThe hard core of the Covenanting movement was in the radical south-west of Scotland. A number of Cumnock men were involved in the Pentland Rising - the Covenanting march from Dumfries via Mauchline, Ochiltree and Cumnock to the debacle of a battle at Rullion Green in 1666. This was followed by repression, and two local men were amongst those who paid for insurrection. Patrick MCNAUGHT was indicted in 1667, and George CRAWFORD, a Cumnock weaver, was executed in December 1666.
Unrest in 1678 brought a billeting of some of the Highland Host in the parish. An armed uprising followed, which ended disastrously with the Covenanters` defeat at the battle of Bothwell Brig. Two Cumnock men, John GEMILL and James MIRRIE, were taken prisoner, incarcerated in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, sentenced to transportation to the American Colonies and drowned - with many others - when their prison ship, The Crown of London , went down off the coast of Orkney.
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