on
to it, remained for upwards of a century and a half the fixed opinion
of all writers and readers of history. The women were sentenced on April
18th, 1685: the remand is dated April 30th, but the period for which it
was to run has been left blank, pending the result of a recommendation
for full pardon with which it was accompanied: the sentence was executed
on May 11th--in Wodrow's words, "a black and very remarkable day for
blood in several places."

It will be sufficient to indicate where the arguments employed to
discredit this affair may be found.[50] They do not practically amount
to more than this--that as a reprieve was certainly granted in the
Council Chamber at Edinburgh, the execution could not possibly have
taken place on the sands of the Solway. The case is indeed one which
those who will accept nothing that cannot be proved with mathematical
certainty will always find reasons for doubting; but at least they must
have read the history of those times to little purpose if they can
accept such an argument as conclusive. For the rest, it will be enough
to say that the story first found its way into print in 1687, and that
it was more circumstantially repeated in 1711, when the records of the
Kirk Session of the parish of Penninghame were published by direction of
the General Assembly. At that time Thomas Wilson, a brother of the
younger sufferer, was still alive, with many others to whom the
Killing-Time was something very much more than a tradition. In 1714
(possibly to a later date, but certainly in that year) a stone in
Penninghame churchyard still marked the grave of Margaret Wilson, and
told the story of her death.[51] The ruins of the church may still be
seen, but the stone has long ago gone to join the dust that was once the
bones of Margaret; and an obelisk, raised within our own times on the
high ground outside the busy little seaport, now serves in statelier, if
less vital, fashion to recall to the traveller the memory of the Martyrs
of Wigtown. It is difficult to believe that a story so well and widely
recorded, and so firmly implanted in the hearts of so many generations
of men, can have absolutely no foundation in fact.[52] It is indeed
possible that time has embellished the bald brutality of the deed,
though the graphic narrative of Macaulay is practically that which
Wodrow took from the records of Penninghame. But that the two women
were drowned in the waters of the Blednock on May 11th, 1685, i