BY ROBERT SIMPSON, SANQUHAR.
WILLIAM HANNAH, the Covenanter, lived in the parish of Tundergarth, in Annandale. It was in this parish that the famous James Welwood labored in the Gospel, for a number of years, with so much acceptance and success. Under his ministry, not a few rare Christians were trained up to bear testimony to the truth in that dark and overbearing age of persecution. Among these, William Hannah was one of the most conspicuous, and one who was subjected to many hardships in following the dictates of his conscience. From the time that Prelacy was introduced, William firmly maintained his principles as a Nonconformist, and no inducement could lead him to resign from the old Presbyterianism of the Church of Scotland, or leave the ministrations of those good men that had been so singularly blessed to his soul, to follow the curates, who neither preached the Gospel nor practiced its morality. This conduct was, of course, grievously offensive to the Prelatists of that day, who sought to lord it over men’s consciences, and to trample the liberties of the people under their feet. William’s residence was near that of the curate, who narrowly watched his movements, as he felt indignant.at his withdrawal from the church; and, therefore, in the year 1678, he resolved to proceed against him with the highest censures of the Church, and actually formed the design of excommunicating him; because, having been cited before the session, to answer for his non-conformity, he had declined to appear. Accordingly, on a given Sabbath, he proceeded to put his purpose in execution; but before he pronounced the sentence his courage failed him, and he desisted from the attempt.
Sometime after this an infant child belonging to William died, and the curate, in order to annoy the good man, appointed some persons to watch the family burying-place, and prevent his friends from digging a grave. Notwithstanding the curate’s opposition, however, some persons came to make the grave, and were proceeding to their work, “when,” says Woodrow, “the curate being informed, came out himself in great fury, and took away the spades and shovels, and told them if they buried the child by day or night he would cause trail it out again, since he knew not if it was baptized; so the men were forced to bury elsewhere.” It was, no doubt, from the fear of some opposition, and from the dread of being apprehended in the churchyard, that numbers of the people in the lone moorlands buried their deceased relatives in the deserts and hence the graves that are occasionally to be met with in the wastes, of which no person can give any account.
On one occasion, when Mr. John Welwood came to Tundergarth, his father’s parish, to preach and hold conventicles, the curate was incensed, and instantly convoked a court, to which the parishioners were summoned, and there ordered to bind themselves not to hear the outed ministers. This, Hannah positively refused, and was prepared to take consequences. After this he found no rest, and was obliged to betake himself to the woods and glens to escape the notice of his persecutors. Hannah and his son endured many hardships in their wanderings and hidings; for it was but on rare occasions that they durst resort to their home. By a circuit held in 1683, he was denounced and declared a fugitive, and, consequently, was in greater hazard than ever, and was under the necessity of keeping himself in still closer concealment. He sometimes narrowly escaped the hands of his enemies; for his neighbor the curate was ever on the watch for him, and on one occasion, knowing that he had secretly ventured home, dispatched a messenger to Dumfries to fetch a party of soldiers to apprehend him. He eluded their grasp, but another gentleman who had been in company with him was caught.
The year 1684 was probably the most severe of any during the long period of the persecution, and the military license, which was in full operation at this time, was exercised with terrible severity by the troopers, who shot the people in scores on the moors and the heights, to which they resorted for safety, but on which their blood flowed profusely. This year, Hannah, being worn out with incessant privations and perils, resolved to remove to the north of England, if, perchance, he might find a little repose. He had not long taken up his abode there, however, till he was seized by Colonel Dacres, who sent him to the Scottish border, where “Sprinkel with his troops,” says Woodrow, “received him and some prisoners, when they were brought to Annan, and next day to Locherbridge, when Queensbury ordered him to be carried to Dumfries, where he lay in irons till the prisoners were carried into Edinburgh and Leith. From Leith he was brought up to the Canon-gate Tolbooth, and cast into a dark pit, where he had neither air nor the least glimpse of light for some days. Here he fell very sickly, and begged the favor to be let out into the guard hall, that he might have the free air, which was refused. The soldier who brought him in his small pittance of meat and drink, when he opened the pit door to let him in, said, Seek mercy from heaven, for we have none to give you. Here he lay nine days without anything charged upon him but nonconformity, and at the end of that period was sent to Dunottar.”
His son William, a pious youth, deserves a special notice here. He endured persecution in company with his father, and abode with him in his wanderings. When he was no more than sixteen years of age, he was forced to flee to England for not attending the curate, where he resided some time. Shortly after, however, he ventured home, when he was seized with the ague—a disease very common in those times, owing to the marshy and uncultivated state of the country. When he was laboring under this affliction he was apprehended by a strolling party of troopers, who came upon him in his place of confinement, and the barbarous men compelled him to trudge along with them, though he could scarcely stand on his feet. They had no compassion, however, but obliged him to go with them three or four days in thus ranging up and down the country. But this was not all—they used him ill, and accosted him in rough and threatening language. In passing through a wild moorland, they came to the grave of a martyr who had been recently shot, and who was sleeping beneath in his gory shroud. In the wantonness of their cruelty they placed young Hannah, faint and staggering with weakness, on the grave, and having covered his face, told him deliberately that they intended to shoot him, and that in a brief space his blood would flow on the turf that covered that grave, unless he promised compliance with their injunctions, which were, that he should attend the curate, and leave off going to conventicles, and other things of like sort. The poor boy, being strengthened by the grace of that God whom he sought and followed, replied with all firmness, that God had sent him into the world, and had appointed the time he should go out of it, but he was determined to take no sinful oaths, and to make no foul compliances, come what might—he was now in their power, and they might do as they pleased. This magnanimity on the part of the youth astonished the soldiers, who saw it in vain to attempt to force his compliance, and they desisted from their threatenings, and carried him to Westerrow, who sent him prisoner to Dumfries. Truly there was a spirit of genuine heroism in the Scottish peasantry in those days, when even women and children, not to speak of firm-minded men, could thus outbrave the scowlings of an armed soldiery, and the very terrors of death.
But the trials of the youth were not yet over. He was sent to Edinburgh, and after many searching examinations, was subjected to the torture of the thumbkins, and afterward laid in irons, which were so tightly applied to his slender limbs, that the flesh swelled over, and covered the iron that girded him. The little money with which his friends had supplied him was stolen, and at another time, he was robbed of eleven dollars—no small sum in those days to a person in his situation. He was detained in prison for a year and a half, and then banished to Barbadoes, where he was sold for a slave. But at length the Lord turned his captivity, and he came home after the revolution, and eventually became a minister in Scarborough.
But the Covenanter’s Bible, what of it? This brings us back to a veritable tradition respecting young William’s father, which contains an incident worthy of notice, and for the introduction of which, the preceding sketch has been given. William Hannah, the father, besides his other retreats, had a hiding place in his own barn. On one, occasion, when he was lying among the straw, reading his Bible, which he always carried with him as his sweetest companion in his solitariness, the house was visited by a party of soldiers in search of him. In his haste to flee from the place, he left his Bible among the straw, and escaped to a distance. The troopers, in the course of their searching entered the barn, every corner of which they pried into, turning everything upside down, and tossing about the straw that had so recently been the bed of him whom they were so eagerly seeking. According to their custom, they thrust their long swords down through the heaps of straw or hay, that lay on the floor, with the view of stabbingany one who might happen to be concealed beneath. In this process one of the men pushed his sword accidentally on the Bible lying among the straw, by which means it received a deep cut, which, doubtless, its owner would have sustained had he been in the same place. The Bible was afterward found, with the recent hack in it, and restored to Hannah, to whom it was now more endeared than ever. The same Bible is still preserved, exhibiting the distinct marks of the dragoon’s heavy sword. It came into the possession of his son William, who afterward was settled in Scarborough, and was uniformly used in the pulpit as the Bible from which he preached, holding it in the greatest veneration, for his father’s sake, who had so often perused it, and derived from it much comfort, in the days of his suffering for conscience’ sake. Mr. Hannah of Scarborough, when, through infirmity, he became unfit to exercise his ministry in that town, returned to his native parish of Tundergarth, and resided in the house of one of his relatives, where he died having both suffered and labored much in the cause of his blessed Master. He brought his father’s Bible with him, and, after his decease, it was retained in the possession of his friends as a relic too precious to be lost.
The congregation of Scarborough, to which Mr. Hannah ministered, became desirous of possessing this Bible as a memorial of their first minister, and on application being made for it, it was found, and purchased by the congregation.
William Hannah died sometime about the year 1725. When, in his youth, he was banished to Barbadoes, it is said that Dalzell proposed that his father should also be banished, and that when the old man entreated that he might be allowed to spend the few short years he had to live, in his own country, as he was too old and infirm to be of any use for manual labor, “No,” said the ruthless man, “you shall be hanged tomorrow.” Before tomorrow came, however, Dalzell himself was in eternity. The old man was afterward set at liberty—returned to his home and ended his days in peace.
Thus lived and died the two Hannahs of Turtdergarth, the father and the son, who, by the grace of God, were honored to bear witness to the truth in the dark and cloudy day of Zion’s affliction. They continued steadfast amidst all the distresses to which they were subjected, that they might maintain a good conscience, and now, delivered out of all tribulations, they have entered into the joy of their Lord.