Richard Cameron (1648? – 22 July 1680) was a leader of the militant Presbyterians, known as Covenanters, who resisted attempts by the Stuart monarchs to control the affairs of the Church of Scotland, acting through bishops. While attempting to revive the flagging fortunes of the Covenanting cause in 1680, he was tracked down by the authorities and killed in a clash of arms at Airds Moss in Ayrshire. His followers took his name as the Cameronians and ultimately formed the nucleus of the later Scottish regiment of the same name, the Cameronians. The regiment was disbanded in 1968.
Life
Cameron was born at Falkland, Fife in 1647, or 1648, the son of Allan and Margaret Cameron who farmed the estate of Fordell, near Leuchars. St Salvator's College of St Andrews University has a record of his enrolment in the Arts faculty there on 5 March 1662. After graduation he returned to Falkland where he found employment as the parish school teacher and precentor in late 1669 or early 1670. It was some time after this that he began to attend conventicles. On 16 April 1675 he, his brother Michael and his parents were summoned to appear at the local court, charged with "keeping conventicles at the house of John Geddie in Falkland" and "withdrawing from the parish church". The outcome of the case is not known, but it is likely that the accused were fined; and it is known that the entire family moved shortly thereafter to Edinburgh where Michael had married into the family of a burgess. Here Cameron came under the spiritual guidance of an itinerant field-preacher, John Welwood. After a brief period employed as private chaplain to the wife of Sir William Scott of Harden in 1675, Cameron was dismissed from service for refusing to attend the parish church on the Sabbath. With Welwood's encouragement Cameron became increasingly religiously active and was eventually licensed as a field preacher in 1678.
Between 1669 and 1672, two Indulgences were granted in the name of Charles II, intended to bring over 270 dissenters, a third of the ministry, back into the fold of the Church of Scotland. While over 40 outed ministers agreed to the new terms, submitting themselves to the Crown's High Church Anglican form of church governance—which meant accepting episcopacy and the King as head of the church—Cameron remained with those who rejected any accommodation that would compromise their presbyterian principles. He was accused by moderates of fomenting division in the Kirk by declaring his opposition to the Indulgences in his public preaching and formally summoned to appear three times before presbyteries, the moderator urging him to be "circumspect and inoffensive". In early 1679, amid mounting pressure from indulged ministers, Cameron embarked for the Netherlands to join other exiles.
The year 1679 was one of continuing confrontation between the Covenanters and the authorities, culminating in the assassination of Archbishop Sharp, the so-called Rutherglen Declaration and the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge. In late July or early August, Cameron was ordained a Church of Scotland minister at the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam. The Rev. Robert MacWard, who conducted the ceremony, reportedly said prophetically to the onlookers,
"Richard, the publick standard of the Gospel is fallen in Scotland; and, if I know anything of the mind of the Lord, ye are called to undergo your trials before us, and go home and lift the fallen standard, and display it before the world. But, before you put your hand to it, ye shall go to as many of the field ministers as ye can find, and give them your hearty invitation to go with you; and if they will not go, go your lone, and the Lord will go with you. Behold, all ye beholders! Here is the head of a faithful minister and servant of Jesus Christ, who shall lose the same for his Master's interest; and it shall be set up before sun and moon in the public view of the world."
Several weeks later Cameron returned to Scotland, where in the meantime a Third Indulgence had been granted and accepted by a vote in the General Assembly. Hoping to revive the cause of the demoralised Covenanters after their recent defeats, he resumed his field-preaching after reporting in code to McWard, "I was received with more affection and joy than ever before." On 8 December he wrote again in code to Rotterdam,
"I have got a far better market than was expected when I came from you; our wares vend well, both in open markets and in houses through the country."