Why the Martyrs Still Matter
Part 25 — The Two Margarets: When the Tide Became an Executioner
Part of an ongoing 52-week Thursday noon essay series exploring the lives, deaths, convictions, and witness of Christian martyrs throughout church history.
One was young.
One was old.
One had most of life seemingly ahead of her.
The other had already lived much of hers.
On a cold day in 1685, both were led toward the same water.
Margaret Wilson was about eighteen.
Margaret McLachlan was around sixty.
Scottish history remembers them together as the Wigtown Martyrs.
Their deaths came during the closing years of a period Covenanter memory would call the “Killing Times.”
For decades, the Stuart monarchy had attempted to impose royal control over the Church of Scotland.
Many Presbyterians resisted.
They had entered into covenants affirming Christ’s headship over His Church and rejected attempts by the Crown to dictate its worship and government.
The conflict intensified.
Field meetings were outlawed.
Ministers were expelled.
Soldiers searched the countryside.
Suspected Covenanters were questioned and pressured to swear loyalty oaths.
Refusal could bring imprisonment or death.
Margaret McLachlan had lived long enough to see years of this turmoil.
She was a widow.
According to Covenanter accounts, she had sheltered persecuted ministers and sympathized openly with their cause.
Margaret Wilson belonged to another generation entirely.
Yet the same confession joined them.
Christ was Head of His Church.
No earthly ruler could take His place.
Both women were arrested.
Both were tried.
Both were sentenced to die.
The manner of execution was designed to break the will as much as destroy the body.
They would be drowned by the incoming tide.
According to the traditional narrative, two stakes were driven into the tidal flats near Wigtown.
The older Margaret was tied farther from shore.
The younger Margaret was tied closer.
There was a reason.
The younger woman would be forced to watch the older woman die first.
Perhaps terror would accomplish what interrogation had not.
The tide came in.
Slowly.
There is something uniquely horrifying about such a death.
A sword falls quickly.
A bullet arrives suddenly.
Even a fire, as terrible as it is, can sometimes overwhelm its victim rapidly.
But a tide announces itself.
You can watch it approaching.
You can feel the water rising.
Inch by inch.
Minute by minute.
The older woman disappeared first.
Margaret McLachlan drowned.
Then the water continued toward Margaret Wilson.
Those overseeing the execution reportedly demanded that the younger woman reconsider.
She would not.
She was willing to pray for the monarch.
But she would not acknowledge an authority over Christ’s Church that she believed belonged to Christ alone.
The distinction cost her life.
The water rose.
And Margaret Wilson died too.
There has been historical debate over details of the Wigtown martyrdoms, including surviving government records and later Covenanter accounts. Historical care requires acknowledging that debate.
But the story of the Two Margarets endured because it captured something unquestionably real about the era.
Christians suffered.
Families were divided.
Ministers were hunted.
Believers were imprisoned.
And some paid for their convictions with their lives.
The Two Margarets represent something else worth remembering.
Faithfulness has no age requirement.
One woman stood near the beginning of adulthood.
The other near the end of life.
Both faced the same question.
Who owns the conscience?
Every age eventually asks that question.
Sometimes it is asked by an emperor demanding incense.
Sometimes by a church council demanding recantation.
Sometimes by a monarch demanding an oath.
Sometimes by a culture demanding silence.
The language changes.
The fundamental temptation does not.
Give to man what belongs to God.
Christians must be careful here.
Scripture does not teach rebellion for rebellion’s sake.
Christians are commanded to honor rulers.
To pray for kings.
To obey lawful authority.
But precisely because all earthly authority comes from God, no earthly authority is God.
There is a boundary.
Peter and the apostles stated it plainly:
“We must obey God rather than men.”
The martyrs lived in that sentence.
And sometimes they died in it.
The Two Margarets did not possess armies.
They did not overthrow a government.
They did not win a political campaign.
They simply refused to surrender their consciences.
That was enough to make them dangerous.
The tide that killed them eventually went back out.
Every tide does.
The Stuart persecution also receded.
The rulers who demanded submission died.
The laws changed.
The soldiers disappeared.
But the question remains for every generation of Christians:
When obedience to earthly authority collides with obedience to Christ, whom will we obey?
For one old widow and one young woman on the Scottish coast, the answer was settled before the water ever reached them.
The tide could have their bodies.
The King could have their souls.
And they knew the difference.
Soli Deo Gloria
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