John Hunter's Grave

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Mon, 03/11/2025 - 00:00

Back in August when I was in Scotland, I called at the beautiful-looking but infamous-sounding Devil's Beeftub. It was the dramatic scene of the murder of John Hunter, who was killed for the sake of the gospel back in 1685. It was my privilege this autumn to return and pay court to that great man’s place of rest at the beautiful Kirk of Tweedsmuir in Peeblesshire. The ground was wet and the water had infiltrated my trainers, but as I wandered about the stones, I found it. Inscribed a few decades after his death, the long but rather charming doggerel reads:

Here lyes

The body of John Hunter

Martyr who was cruelly

Murdered at Corehead

by Col James Douglas an

his party for his adherance

To the Word of God and

Scotland's covenanted

Work of Reformation

1685

Erected in the year 1726.

And on the reverse:

when Zions King was robbed

of his Right

His witnesses in Scotland

put to flight

When popish prelates &

Indulgancie

Combin’d gainst Christ

To Ruine presbterie

All who would not unto

their idols bow

They socht them out &

and who they found they slew

For owning of Christ's cause

I then did die

My blood for vengeance on

His en'mies did cry.

Furthermore, a memorial from 1910 was also placed closer to the kirk’s door, which reads:

John Hunter a Tweedsmuir lad

was accidently visiting a

sick friend at Corehead when

timely in the morning he was

surprised with Douglas and

his dragoons. He fled to the

hill a great way, but one

named Scott, being well horsed, compassed

him and came before him

He was most barbarouslie shot through the body,

felled on the head with the neck of a gun,

and casted headlong over a high steep craig.

There is something deeply moving as one stands by a Christian martyr's grave. Before we succumb to cloying sentiment, however, let us leave the bonny valleys of Scotland and consider the sultry hills of Nigeria. 4,776 believers have already been butchered there in 2025. On average, a dozen of Christ's precious people are murdered every 24 hours, mainly by devotees of the Religion of Peace.

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? Revelation 6:10