Life of John Welsh,
Minister of Ayr.
By Maurice Roberts
[Reprinted from The Banner
of Truth Magazine, no. 174, March 1978,]
John Welsh [or Welch], minister of the gospel at Ayr, and
grandfather of John Welsh of Irongray, the Covenanter, was born of an ancient
and well-to-do family in Dumfriesshire about the year 1568. His early life gave
to his family little prospect of his future greatness as a minister of Christ
and son-in-law to Knox himself. He was a riotous youth who frequently played
truant at school and, when a young man, he joined himself to a gang of border
thieves who lived by robbing the people of both nations.
These unhappy
escapades brought him to extreme poverty and, in the overruling providence of
God, had the effect of humbling him to true repentance.
After obtaining his
father's pardon Welsh entered the newly-formed University of Edinburgh to
prepare for the ministry of the Scottish Church. The University was still in
its infancy, having been opened in 1583 by its distinguished Principal, Robert
Rollock. Scotland was enjoying a revival of letters at this time and the study
of theology was being earnestly pursued by persons of all ranks.
Welsh
abounded in industry and ability, and was not slow to gain a mastery of Latin
[the language of theology in that age] and a competent knowledge of Greek. But
it was Divinity, rather than the Humanities, which must have made the deepest
impression on the young mind of Welsh. In these halcyon days of the Scottish
Reformed Church, the 'College of Edinburgh' was not the secularised institution
it has since become, but rather a model Reformed Theological Seminary, as good
perhaps as any in Europe. The supreme aim and end in view of the University
curriculum was for students to be grounded in the glorious truths of the Word
of God. Edinburgh University was a well of pure Calvinism, the streams of which
were to inundate the entire nation and beyond.Welsh had the noteworthy
distinction of being the very first Edinburgh graduate to be ordained to the
ministry. He completed the M.A. degree in August 1588, and proceeded to the
charge of Selkirk, a town some thirty-eight miles south of Edinburgh. Selkirk
was hard ground in which to sow the gospel seed. The inhabitants were ignorant
and uncouth. The only spiritual teaching to reach them before Welsh had come
through the labours of a few pious men whose office it had been to read there
the Scriptures and Knox's Liturgy. Welsh was here for about six years, living
in lodgings because there was no manse. His whole time was taken up in
spiritual exercises, preaching daily and praying without ceasing. Indeed, his
prayerfulness was from the very start remarkable. When he went to bed at night
he laid a Scotch plaid over the bed-clothes. During the night he would cover
himself with this from the cold as he agonised with God in prayer. From the
beginning to the end of his ministry he is reported to have spent seven or
eight hours in prayer each day!(2)
However the gospel light brought by
Welsh was far from welcomed by the people of Selkirk. It appears that they
preferred their former darkness to Christ's gospel. No very considerable fruits
were evident, and the hostility there was such that one of the local gentlemen,
Scot of Headschaw, even cut off the rumps of the two horses which Welsh used
for his preaching excursions into the surrounding countryside. Hence, when a
call was addressed to him by the people of Kirkcudbright [in the South-West of
Scotland] he acquiesced and took up his post there in 1595.
Before he left
Selkirk, however, Welsh had married the third and youngest daughter of John
Knox by his second wife, Margaret Stewart, daughter of the second Lord
Ochiltree [in Ayrshire]. The date of the marriage is uncertain, but it must
have been at some time prior to 1596.
Elizabeth Knox and her two elder
sisters had been brought up near Abbotsford in that part of the Borders now
associated with Sir Walter Scott. For when Knox lay dying he had urged his wife
to attend carefully to the education of the girls. Hence when Mrs Knox
remarried, two years after the Reformer's death, to Ker of Faldonsyde, she had
taken pains to bring up the girls in the principles of the Christian religion.
Welsh's first charge at Selkirk was not far from Faldonsyde and it is not
difficult to understand how he met his future bride. As King James VI would
have it in a conversation much later, 'Knox and Welsh - the devil never made
such a match!' But we have every reason to see the hand of a gracious and wise
God in this union. Elizabeth Knox was to prove a worthy helpmeet for her
husband in all his sufferings for the gospel's sake.
Welsh's removal to
Kirkcudbright was not motived by thoughts of comfort. Kirkcudbright in those
days was a hot bed of Catholicism. As such it might prove convenient at any
time as a harbour for Spanish warships sent to crush the Reformed faith out of
existence. David Blyth, the previous minister of the place had in fact been
murdered. Blyth's name first appears in the town's records in the year of the
Spanish Armada. He was an able and energetic man who had studied at Glasgow
University under the Presidency of the renowned Andrew Melville. Melville had
selected him as one of his coadjutors when he himself had transferred to the
University of St Andrews. Blyth's assassination was unquestionably owing to his
loyal struggle against the Popish faction at Kirkcudbright. It was to his
pulpit that the young John Welsh now went, wearing gospel armour and wielding
the sword of the Spirit.
He remained at Kirkcudbright about four years and
was gladdened by a small harvest of converts through his ministry. Later on
these spiritual children of Welsh frequented the preaching of
Samuel Rutherford at Anwoth -
truly an apostolic succession!(3) An anecdote relating to the removal of Welsh
from Kirkcudbright to Ayr in 1600 is remarkable. It seems that he met at
Kirkcudbright a gaily dressed young man called Robert Glendinning, who had
recently returned home from his travels. To this unlikely youth the prophetic
Welsh addressed the counsel that he should change his dress and turn from his
frivolities to study the Word of God, because he would be the next Reformed
preacher at Kirkcudbright! The prediction was fulfilled. Glendinning's name
comes up for honourable mention in the correspondence of Rutherford.
This was a time of renewed blessing and outpouring of the Spirit in
Southern Scotland. Welsh must have retained vivid impressions of the spiritual
power evident at the 1596 General Assembly at which he sat in Edinburgh as
commissioner with over four hundred men. As at the
Disruption
period much later, so in 1596 the great business of the Assembly was prayer and
the confession of ministerial sin. It was John Davidson of Prestonpans who was
given the task of opening the Tuesday meeting. This he did so suitably that the
assembled commissioners, filled with a profound sense of their shortcomings in
God's service, were humbled to tears of conviction and repentance for the sins
of their office.
The scene is best described in the words of David
Calderwood: 'While they were humbling themselves, for the space of quarter of
an hour, there were such sighs and sobs, with shedding of tears, among the most
part of all estates that were present, everyone provoking another by his
example, and the teacher himself by his example, that the kirk resounded, so
that the place might worthily have been called Bochim; for the like of that day
was never seen in Scotland since the Reformation, as every man confessed.' It
was a Divine preparation for the evils to come.
That 1596 Assembly was, as
Calderwood observed, the last free Assembly of the Church of Scotland for many
years to come. Not until the Covenant in Greyfriars Churchyard in 1638 did the
General Assembly again meet freely. During the forty or so intervening years
the life of Scots Presbytery was encumbered with Episcopalianism and her purity
tainted with the leaven of Herod.
The statecraft of James VI is even now
worth being called to memory. His Majesty had at first expressed his fondness
for Presbyterianism and had cheered Welsh and his brethren by stating his royal
wish to see an increase in the number of Reformed clergy in his realm. However
after the death of Chancellor Maitland, James began to execute his long
premeditated scheme to put down the Presbyterian Church and to replace it with
an Episcopal Church of the English type. He had more than one reason for
seeking to subvert Presbytery. The Presbyterian ministers were apt to be rather
too zealous in exalting the Headship of Christ to please a Stuart monarch's
ambitions. Furthermore, by assimilating the Scots to the English Church he
hoped to smooth the way more easily to the throne of both Kingdoms.
The
details of this notorious conflict do not concern us here. But it is sufficient
to say that a man of John Welsh's character and principles could not fail to
fall foul of the King's policy. Outspoken in defence of the Church's true
liberties, Welsh preached a notable sermon in St Giles, Edinburgh, in December
of that same year, 1596. It was admirable theology; but, under the existing
political circumstances, it was deemed to be a virtual act of treason. King
James would soon have his revenge on Welsh in ample measure.
Welsh's
sermons are of that 'torrential' kind that sweep all before them. The following
specimen drawn from the pages of James Young's biography(4) may serve to
illustrate the sort of denounciation of royal encroachment with which the walls
of St Giles must have rung in that December sermon. The passage is taken from a
condemnation of selfishness in those landowners who preferred to pocket funds
intended to support the gospel ministry: 'A great many of you . . . are the
cause of the everlasting damnation of a great part of the people, for want of
the preaching of the Word of Salvation unto them . . . Vouchsafe so much upon
every kirk as may sustain a pastor to break the bread of life unto them, and
think of the damnation of so many millions of souls of your poor brethren who
might have been saved, for ought that ye know, if they had had the gospel
preached unto them . . .' No hyper-Calvinism this!
From Kirkcudbright,
John Welsh travelled northward to his third and last Scottish charge in the
county-town of Ayr, with which town his name has ever after been associated.
For it was here that his preaching was most remarkably owned of God to the
pulling down of strongholds and the establishing of the Reformation. This
association of Welsh with Ayr will be regarded as all the more remarkable when
it is remembered that he spent slightly less than five years in the town - from
August 1600 to July 1605.
Ayrshire, situated a little to the south of the
Clyde, had become more favourably disposed in Welsh's time to evangelical
doctrine then almost any part of Scotland. To Ayrshire had come, long before,
the itinerant preachers sent out from Oxford by John Wycliffe. Here Wycliffite
theology had found a home. The 'Lollards of Kyle' ['Kyle' being the old
district around Ayr in the middle of the shire] had actively promoted
evangelical beliefs long before the voices of Luther and Calvin had shattered
the darkness of Romish superstition on the Continent. It was in the little
Ayrshire villages Mauchline and Galston, as well as at Ayr itself, that George
Wishart had preached in the west. To Ayrshire Knox himself had come frequently.
Here too a Bond had been publicly signed by many noblemen for the defence and
proclamation of the true religion of Christ taught in the Scriptures.
John
Welsh was not the first but the fourth Reformed preacher to come to Ayr. An
Englishman, Christopher Goodman, had been the first labourer about the years
1559-1560. But he had quickly transferred to St Andrews, probably to be nearer
the centre of affairs. He was succeeded by James Dalrymple who continued at Ayr
to the year 1580. Following Dalrymple came John Porterfield, a man respected
but not conspicuous for ability or exertion. It was indeed as assistant to
Porterfield that Welsh now came to Ayr in August 1600. On his arrival, he found
at Ayr a small band of exemplary Christians, especially among the wealthier
inhabitants of the town. Happily, the monuments of popery had been swept away
and the Reformed Faith was preached in the ancient parish Church of St John the
Baptist [one part of which has been restored and still stands to this day as
the 'Fort', so named as the old Church had been put to secular use by Cromwell
at the time of the Civil War].
But the bulk of the people at Ayr were still
crude and barbaric, immoral and ignorant. Duelling in the streets was common.
The private feuds of competing noblemen frequently led to the loss of many
lives. A man could hardly pass through the streets in safety when Welsh first
came to the town, so common were the fights and quarrels. Welsh saw it all and
his soul was stirred within him: 'What nation [he expostulated] so polluted
with all abominations and murders as thou art ? Thy iniquities are more than
the sand of the sea, the cry of them is beyond the cry of Sodom.'
Welsh
addressed himself to the problem of the street fighting with all the energy of
his holy soul. When he heard of such a brawl he would rush into the thick of
the fight, clad often in a helmet, and would urge the combatants to sit down to
a meal at a table placed in the street! After reconciling the parties he would
conclude with prayer and the singing of a Psalm. Gradually this procedure used
by Welsh proved successful. Little by little Ayr grew more peaceful.
Every
aspect of Welsh's ministerial effort at Ayr was marked by extraordinary zeal
for the glory of God, and by careful circumspection. He laboured to suppress
Sabbath games, promoted decent sociality, disciplined and warned the unruly,
studied intensely, prayed fervently and preached frequently. In addition to the
two Sabbath Services he appears to have preached twice each day, from nine to
ten in the morning, and from four to five each afternoon- all that as well as
catechising and visiting the people!
Welsh's preaching was so moving that
reports tell us his hearers could not restrain themselves from weeping under
the intense sense of the presence of God in the services. Occasionally he
shrank from entering the pulpit and intensified his prayer for Divine
assistance. At such times the elders, who were intimate with their minister and
his spiritual exercise, would notice that he enjoyed an unusual degree of
liberty in the pulpit. He became more sought after than any preacher in
Scotland except Robert Bruce of St Giles, Edinburgh. Only Bruce excelled him in
the pulpit. More than twenty years later when men spoke of the remarkable
revival under David Dickson's preaching at Irvine, Dickson was to comment that
'the grape gleanings of Ayr in Mr Welsh's time were far above the vintage of
Irvine in his own.'
In 1604 two events took place which enhanced Welsh's
usefulness in Ayr. On the death of John Porterfield, Welsh became sole minister
of the town in that year. But of far greater consequence than that was the
outbreak of the plague in the east of Scotland. There had been frequent
occurrences of the plague in Europe in the later Middle Ages. Perhaps the last
such outbreak in Britain was the Great Plague of London [though not confined to
London] in 1665. No one who knows anything of the insanitary conditions which
prevailed in those times can be in the least surprised that these fearful
scourges swept periodically from one end of the land - indeed, at times, from
one end of the continent - to another.
The sanitation at Ayr was quite as
primitive as in most other parts of the land. Offal and filth accumulated on
either side of the High Street which being the King's highway, was not the
responsibility of the town council. A more perfect environment for the breeding
of the plague can scarcely be imagined. When once the epidemic broke out in one
part of the land certain procedures were compulsorily introduced in the other
towns to try to curtail the spread of the disease. But these measures were
seldom adequate.
As the 'pest' travelled steadily westwards in 1604 the
3,000 inhabitants of Ayr grew more alarmed at the prospect of death. Welsh, as
it might be expected, took full advantage of the opportunity providentially
afforded for calling the people of Ayr to repentance and faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
It was at this time that an event occurred which brought
lasting esteem to Welsh. Two pedlars arrived at the north side of the river
seeking admittance by the Auld Brig [still in use]. Although they were able to
show a clean bill of health from the place last visited, the magistrates
[called 'baillies'] would not admit them without first seeking the advice of
the minister. Welsh came and on hearing the problem silently sought God's
guidance in prayer. He then declared 'Baillie, cause these men to put on their
packs again and be gone; for if God be in heaven, the plague is in these
sacks.' The peddlers moved on and travelled to Cumnock, a few miles to the
east, where the plague unhappily broke out, with fearful loss of life.
These short years, 1604-1605, were the most comfortable of Welsh's whole
life. His popularity was very high with his own people. There were many
hundreds of godly people in the town with whom he could share the burdens of
his heart. Visitors to Ayr used to be able to see the manse gardens [a little
off the High Street, where the rear of the Littlewoods premises now stands]
renowned for the prolonged seasons of prayer, where the Ayr preacher used to
hold sweet intercourse with Heaven. It was even said that a light could
sometimes be seen around the eminent saint as he knelt in intercession. But
whether that be truth or legend it is certain that his prayer was very
extraordinary. 'O God, wilt thou not give me Scotland! O God, wilt thou not
give me Scotland!' was one of the expressions he was heard to utter as he
pleaded for the progress of the gospel throughout the whole land. It might be
asked how many of us stir ourselves up to similar pinnacles of agonising
intercession in our own generation.
But Welsh was not to enjoy this comfort
for long. He was shortly to be taken from his little town of affectionate
parishioners. The hour of King James VI's vengeance had nearly come. James was
now firmly seated on the throne of both Kingdoms. His maxim of 'No Bishop, no
King' was beginning to find practical expression not only in the suppression of
free Assemblies but now also in the imprisonment of faithful and able
preachers. Matters came to a head for Welsh after the Aberdeen Assembly of
1605, to which he came late and after it had dissolved itself.
The King had
forbidden the Assembly to convene at all - expecting that the commissioners
would be too intimidated to meet. But a number of men did convene in Aberdeen
despite the royal prohibition. They did no more than constitute themselves and
then disperse. So that when Welsh arrived the men had departed. But this
circumstance was not permitted to save him from the wrath of the King.
The
printed volume of Welsh's sermons published in 1744 consists of sermons he
delivered in Ayr at this period of his life, when the wrath of King James was
gathering against him. Sensing no doubt that his days in Ayr were numbered he
laboured to rivet the doctrines of the Word on the heart of his flock. The
volume is scarce nowadays but is a feast of good things for those who can
procure a copy. Two sermons on the 'great white throne' are followed by eight
on the need of repentance and nine on the Christian warfare, etc. The short
selection shows that Welsh was a scholarly, balanced preacher - no ranter, no
fanatic, but a careful student of Scripture and also a man fully acquainted
with the hearts of men, both saved and unregenerate. His final sermon at Ayr
was delivered in the morning of 23rd July, 1605. It was a discourse on the
theme 'No Condemnation to God's Elect'. In the printed copy which has come down
to us there appears the following valedictory prayer, evidently from the hand
of Welsh himself:
'Now let the Lord give his blessing to his word, and
let the Spirit of Jesus, who is the author of this verity, come in and seal up
the truth of it in your hearts and souls, for Christ's sake.'
The
King's men summoned him after the sermon to appear before the Privy Council in
Edinburgh. Taking leave of his sorrowing family and bidding farewell to his
devoted flock, he prepared for the journey to the capital. The people longed
and prayed for his speedy return. The Kirk Session ordained 'to proclaim out of
the pulpit that every man continue paying the contributions to the poor until
the minister's homecoming'. But that was not to be. Welsh was to see his
beloved little walled town of Ayr no more.
After a sham trial he was
committed to the Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh, from where he was shortly
transferred to Blackness Castle in West Lothian. Blackness still stands to this
day in pretty much the same condition, one can imagine, as it was in Welsh's
time. It was a brutal place of confinement. Strangely, none appears to know who
built it or why. Certainly its curious architecture dates from the age of bows
and arrows. Tradition has it that Welsh was put into the dungeon which can only
be entered through a hole in the floor. If this is correct then the confinement
of the preacher in such a foul hole can only be termed barbaric. The floor is
of uneven, shelving rock, sharp and pointed underfoot so that the prisoner can
neither sit, walk nor stand without pain. There is no fire-place and scarcely
enough light to read by. By comparison with it the Mamertine prison at Rome has
been described as comfortable. It was here, off and on, in this grotesque
architectural monstrosity that Welsh was confined till 6th November, 1606. No
doubt the angel of the Lord stood beside him to strengthen his heart in those
harsh and dreary months of solitude. It is no tribute to James VI that he made
Blackness the principal state prison of his reign.
After the lapse of eight
months or so King James disclosed in a letter to the Privy Council from Hampton
Court [26th September, 1606] that Welsh and similar offending ministers were to
be banished. Accordingly, several of the able Reformed preachers were condemned
to the most remote parts of the Kingdom - Bute, Kintyre, Arran, Orkney,
Caithness, Sutherland and Lewis. Robert Bruce was sent to Inverness, where he
speedily learnt Gaelic that he might spread the gospel among the ignorant
Highland population. John Welsh was banished from the realm altogether and sent
to France.
At 2 a.m. on the morning of November 7th, 1606, a boat lay off
the Leith pier, in the Firth of Forth, ready to carry Welsh to the Continent.
The November air must have been chill indeed for the preacher and his family
who were shortly to part one from the other. Welsh offered up the farewell
devotions amid a large concourse of sympathisers and the boat sailed into the
gloom of that winter's morning to the strains of the 23rd Psalm, leaving behind
many a heavy heart and tear-stained cheek. So touched was James Melville who
was present on the occasion, that he wrote of the event, 'God grant me grace
for my part never to forget it!'
More than six months were to pass before
Welsh saw his wife and family again - at Bordeaux, the same port into which he
himself now sailed in December, 1606. If the true character of a man is
revealed in his conduct while suffering, Welsh must emerge from the test as one
of the mighty men of faith. Oblivious of the cramp and agues he had to live
with after the sufferings of his confinement, he writes to his friend Robert
Boyd of Trochrig, 'Desiring and thirsting for no other thing under heaven but
that I may be fruitfully, with comfort, employed in His work, after the manner,
and in the place and part where the only wise God has appointed and decreed . .
.' And again: 'The fulfilment of my ministry is certainly dearer to me than my
life itself' . . . [Preaching] is my principal desire, and I could be content
with mean things . . .'
Preaching was so much his 'principal desire' that
he at once set about to acquire the language of his place of exile. He
progressed so rapidly that he was able to address a French congregation in the
space of fourteen weeks! These early attempts in French were in very many ways
remarkable. It appears that the doctrinal parts of his sermons were delivered
with a good degree of grammatical correctness, but that when the preacher
warmed to his theme and began to make his application, he became more and more
vehement- and less and less grammatical! Any speaker who has at all felt the
limitations of his grasp of an acquired language will sympathise with Welsh!
But, characteristically enough, he resorted to the following expedient to
correct this fault. He arranged for one or other of his hearers to stand up
whenever his grammar began to deteriorate. This was the signal to Welsh to pay
extra attention to the technicalities of language! Within three years he
brought out a book in French, 'L'Armageddon' in which he exposes the evils of
the 'Roman Babylon'.
France! the land of Calvin and of the Huguenots! It
was into this cockpit of conflicting theologies that the pastor from Ayr now
came. Here he met numbers of his expatriated fellow-countrymen, notably Robert
Boyd of Trochrig, with whom he kept up a correspondence. Boyd, son of the
Archbishop of Glasgow and proprietor of lands in Ayrshire, was Professor of
Theology at the University of Saumur. Later,
Andrew Melville was to be at Sedan,
near the Belgian border. By the year Welsh came to France, the Reformed Church
there had already reached its zenith and fallen to a mere third of its
strength. Perhaps no Church has passed through the fires of affliction more
courageously than the Protestant Church in France in the years before the
arrival of John Welsh. In 1571 the first Synod met at Rochelle under the
moderatorship of Theodore Beza, Calvin's colleague. It was a magnificent
occasion. The noble Queen of Navarre and her Son - afterwards King of France
the Prince of Conde and the Count de Coligny, Admiral of France, were all
present. No fewer than 2,150 churches were represented at the Synod. Many of
the Reformed congregations were astonishingly large. That at Orleans numbered
seven thousand communicants and was served by five pastors. 'Perhaps in 1571,
the Huguenots comprised one fourth of the whole population of France', is the
conjecture of one church historian.(6) But the French Church had reached its
climax. So brutal was the persecution, particularly that of 1572, [the 'St
Bartholomew Massacre'] that by 1598 the number of congregations represented at
the Synod of Rochelle had fallen to 760. The Church schools were broken up; her
ministers poorly paid; her tone of piety lowered.
But the Edict of Nantes,
which had received the royal seal in 1598, was now affording a respite to the
Huguenot Churches. Welsh was himself present at the meeting of the Rochelle
Synod of 1607. While he was there he was deeply touched by a visit from thirty
of his old parishioners from Ayr, bearing letters from home and telling of the
progress of the King's Episcopal policy. Welsh's indignation was white hot, but
his confidence in the sovereignty of God enabled him to predict future good for
the Scots Church: 'Yet that stock and trunk of Jesse shall flourish, and the
Lord shall reign in the midst of his enemies'. He never lived to witness the
'Second Reformation' of 1638 in Scotland nor the Long Parliament of 1641 in
England, but the eye of faith pierced the mists of time and saw Christ
overturning His enemies with the iron rod of his strength.
It would be
fascinating to follow Welsh's steps in the subsequent years of his exile. But
the details cannot be given here. In all he served in three French
congregations - at Jonsac, where he was pastor, by an interim arrangement of
the Provincial Synod, from 1608 to 1614; at Nerac, where he was minister of one
of the four congregations of the town - finally at St Jean d'Angely, from about
1617 to the end of his public life in 1622. His health was poor much of the
time. If the sufferings of his beloved Church of Scotland were not enough to
weigh him down, the distracting scenes before his very eyes in France must have
contributed to his early death. Two forces were at work, towards the end of his
life, which threatened the spiritual life of the Huguenot Churches. One was the
rise and growth of Arminianism. In the second place the government still
continued to bear down heavily upon Protestants. Louis XIII was now seated on
the throne. Bent on irritating and provoking the Protestants he raised an army
in 1621 and resolved to crush Rochelle, the 'Geneva of France', by force of
arms. In the course of his march he laid siege to St Jean d'Angely, where Welsh
preached. Here during the siege the intrepid pastor showed true heroism,
venturing through the streets amid a hail of bullets and carrying gunpowder in
his own hat to a Burgundian gunner on the city wall!
When the town
capitulated, Welsh, disregarding all entreaties not to preach in public while
the King was so close at hand, expounded the Word of God to a vast concourse of
people, saying later to the enraged King: 'Sir, if you did right, you yourself
would come and hear me preach, and you would make all France hear me likewise'.
Of such stuff are God's true prophets made!
Distressed by this siege and by
the disturbance it brought to the work of the gospel, Welsh at this time
contemplated going to Nova Scotia to preach in the new Colony recently planted
by James VI. But God was preparing to bring him shortly to a far better land.
His physician advised him for reasons of health to return to Scotland to take
his native air. But King James would allow him no more than to come to London.
It was in the English capital that Mrs Welsh obtained her famous interview
with the King:
King James: 'Who is your father ?'
Mrs Welsh: 'John
Knox'.
King James: 'Knox and Welsh! the Devil never made such a match as
that.'
Mrs Welsh: 'It's right-like, Sir, for we never asked his advice.'
King James: 'How many children did your father leave, and were they lads or
lasses?'
Mrs Welsh: 'Three, and they were all lasses'.
King James: 'God
be thanked, for if they had been three lads I had never enjoyed my three
Kingdoms in peace'.
Mrs Welsh then asked permission for her husband to take
his native air in Scotland.
King James: 'Give him his native air! Give him
the devil!'
Mrs Welsh: 'Give that to your hungry courtiers'.
The King
then agreed to allow Welsh to return to Scotland on condition he would submit
to the bishops. Mrs Welsh held out her apron towards the King and said
heroically: 'Please your Majesty, I'd rather kep [receive] his head there'.
Welsh was able to preach once while in London, presumably in the pulpit of
one of the Puritan 'lecturers'. This was his last appearance in public and he
was 'long and fervent'. He came down exhausted from the strain of speaking and
returned to his London lodgings a dying man. As he lay dying he was
occasionally overheard to say in prayer, 'Lord, hold thy hand, it is enough -
thy servant is a clay vessel, and can hold no more'. Within two hours of
leaving the pulpit he resigned his spirit quietly and without pain into the
hands of his Maker. So died one of those mighty spiritual giants whom it has
pleased God to give to his Church from time to time. May it please him to raise
up many another to the confounding of his enemies and the glory of his Name!
Notes:
1. Former Minister of Martyrs Free Church of Scotland, Ayr.
2. Many years after Welsh left Selkirk, James Kirkton, another Scottish
minister, when passing through the town, called on an old man named Ewart who
remembered Welsh's ministry. 'I inquired of him', writes Kirkton, 'what sort of
a man Mr Welsh was. His answer was, O Sir, he was a type of Christ: an
expression more significant than proper.' Select Biographies, Wodrow Society,
ed. W. K. Tweedie, vol. 1, 1845, p 3.
3. In his work A Survey of the
Spiritual Antichrist, 1648, Rutherford introduces a quotation from Welsh with
these words: 'I love not to compare men with men; only, good reader, pardon me
to name that apostolic, heavenly, and prophetical man of God, Mr John Welch . .
.'
4. Life of John Welsh, Minister of Ayr, 1866.