The Radical Rising by Peter Berresford Ellis

Author:Peter Berresford Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

Although our number at one time amounted to nearly one hundred, by the time the sun rose on the morning of the 6th, we could scarcely muster twenty-five; the wetness of the night, the sagacious advice of friends, and the report that all was quiet in Glasgow, will account for the desertion of three-fourths of our number; the rest of us, however, were firmly resolved to join the division which Shields positively assured us were to rendezvous on Cathkin that morning.

John Morrison, William Steel, Robert Hamilton, Andrew Steel, James Russell, William Robertson, William Howatt and William Hamilton were sent to the village of Glassford, two miles from Strathaven, but the Glassford Radicals would not contribute a single man to the venture. At 7 a.m. the Strathaven party mustered, and although Wilson was ‘as affable and good natured as ever’, he was visibly shaken by the desertions during the night. The Radicals had counted on at least 200 men marching to Cathkin. William Watson took the flag, one which the Radical Committee had made especially for the occasion, which bore the words ‘Scotland Free – Or A Desert!’ The Radicals formed up outside Wilson’s house and, with Watson and the flag at their head, they marched off in the direction of Glasgow. Wilson, wearing a sword in a scabbard, followed in the rear, keeping his eyes open for it was feared that the Tories, seeing the Radical force now reduced to only twenty-five men, might attack them from behind.

As the column reached Coldstream, Wilson halted them and told them he knew Gavin Cooper had some guns, but the old man, seeing the Radicals coming, had hid them and the Radicals could not waste time for a thorough search of Cooper’s house. The column had marched seven miles along the road when they met two men in a gig who informed them that the ‘fighting was over and the Glasgow Radicals had given up the unequal contest’. If there was an encampment on Cathkin the two men said they had not heard of it. ‘This was blighting intelligence,’ comments Stevenson, ‘but we had staked so much on the Radical side that nothing short of actual proof would convince us.’ Wilson, however, felt sure that the Strathaven men had been betrayed. Shields, who had slept the night at William Watson’s house and was marching with the Strathaven men with a musket and fifty rounds of ball cartridge, assured them he was not the betrayer. He said he had acted in good faith and if the Strathaven men were to go to Anderston and contact King the ‘committee’ would vouch for his honesty. It still had not occurred to anyone that the ‘committee’ itself was the agent provocateur. ‘I have not exceeded my instructions,’ claimed Shields, ‘and, if you have by acting on these instructions, involved yourselves in difficulties, I am sorry for it, but you must be sensible that I am exactly in the same situation.’ Stevenson said that the Strathaven men felt

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