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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
On the day of the ‘May’ or ‘Cow Fair’ in 1784 the main streets of Irvine, one of the principal towns in Ayrshire, were crowded to excess with those who had come to take part in the fair. It was not unusual for the streets of this busy seaport to be filled with noise and activity. Whilst Irvine was not a prominent manufacturing town it was, as a royal burgh, a major port for local and foreign trade. Consequently its streets often reverberated with noise from the many carts which transported coal and other merchandise to and from the docks. The town was also a busy commercial centre with banks, a town house, merchant houses, shops, and street markets. Home to some fifty vessels, over three hundred sailors, and thirty-eight taverns, it was a ‘town of crowds – meal mobs, redcoats, pressgangs, smugglers, fairs, and the Buchanites’.
1 There were five fairs in Irvine each year and over two hundred in Ayrshire annually. Their primary focus had been economic but by the end of the eighteenth century they had become popular social events. Strawhorn, John, The Scotland of Robert Bums (Darvel, 1995), p. 73 Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., pp. 73, 80–1; Sir John Sinclair, ed. (ed. Donald J. Withrington and Ian R. Grant), The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791–1799; vol. 6 Ayrshire, rev. edn (East Ardsley, 1982), pp. 244–6.
3 Ibid., p. 245; Shaw, James Edward, Ayrshire 1745–1950: A Social and Industrial History of the County (Edinburgh, 1953), p. 25 Google Scholar.
4 Strawhorn, John, The History of Irvine (Edinburgh, 1985), p. 95 Google Scholar.
5 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Innes MSS, Train Papers (MS 1166 Ace 668 3) [hereafter Train Papers], fol. 35.
6 Train, Joseph, The Buchanites from First to Last (Edinburgh, 1846), p. 61 Google Scholar.
7 Train, Buchanites, p. 61.
8 Gait, John, The Autobiography of John Gait, 2 vols (London, 1833), 1: 6–7 Google Scholar.
9 Train Papers, fol. 35.
10 The Buchanites believed they would not die; at the second coming of Christ they would be instantly changed into immortal beings. Those ‘sleeping in Christ’ would also be raised and together they would return to the earth to reign with Christ for 1,000 years. The millennial reign of the righteous preceded the resurrection of the wicked and the final judgement. White, Hugh, Number Second of the Divine Dictionary; or, a Treatise Indicted by Holy Inspiration (Edinburgh, 1786), p. 81 Google Scholar.
11 They left ‘with such precipitation that some of them never shut the door behind them; one left a washing on the green, another a cow bellowing at the crib without food or anyone to mind her’: Robert Burns to his cousin James Burness in Ferguson, J. De Lancey, ed., The Letters of Robert Burns (Oxford, 1931), p. 16 Google Scholar.
12 Train, Buchanites, p. 149.
13 To leave ‘without lawfull call’ and ‘ruin your poor families, by leaving house and all’: Anon., Satan’s Delusions: A Poem on the Buchanites (Kilmarnock, 1784), p. 13.
14 Elspath Buchan nee Simpson, the daughter of an inkeeper in Banff, was born in 1738. Brought up in the Scottish Episcopal Church, she married a Burgher Seceder. Glasguensis Mercator, ‘Account of the Buchanites’, The Scots Magazine (Nov. 1784), p. 589.
15 Train, Buchanites, p. 20.
16 The ‘power of God wrought so wonderfully upon all my senses, that it overcame the flesh so much, that I could not make use of earthly food for some weeks’: H. White, E. Buchan, and Purves, J., Eight Letters Between the People called Buchanites and a Teacher near Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1785), pp. 38–41 Google Scholar.
17 Ibid.
18 Train, Buchanites, p. 17.
19 According to Buchan, White had, in the same way as the prophet Jeremiah, been sanctified in the womb and would, because of his wisdom, become ‘very high in righteousness’: ibid., p. 21.
20 Edinburgh, Scottish Record Office [hereafter SRO], Irvine Relief Church Session Minutes, CH.3/409/1, 7 May 1783.
21 Ibid., 20 April 1783.
22 Ibid., Oct. 1783.
23 It was hoped that his loss of income would persuade him to return to his position. Whilst at New Cample, Mr Bell ‘the relief minister of Glasgow’, invited White back at the request of the people of Irvine but he ‘dispised’ the offer. Train Papers, fol. 38.
24 Buchan passed on the spirit by breathing on her disciples: White et al., Eight Letters, p. 37. ‘[S]he pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them, which she does with postures & practices that are scandalously indecent’: Robert Burns to James Burness (Ferguson, Letters of Robert Burns, p. 19).
25 Train Papers, fol. 34.
26 Cameron, J., A History of the Buchanite Delusion: 1783–1846 (Dumfries, 1904), p. 28 Google Scholar.
27 Train, Buchanites, pp. 2, 7.
28 White et. al., Eight Letters, p. 6.
29 ‘Why this earth has been without a person of holy inspiration, since the murder of the last of the apostles, until this present generation …. From the time that there has not been on earth a person with the inspiration of Christ and his apostles, there has not been one grain of salvation-work carrying on in this world’: White, Number Second, p. 79.
30 White, Hugh, The Divine Dictionary; or, a Treatise Indicted by Holy Inspiration (Dumfries, 1785). p. 35 Google Scholar.
31 Buchan wrote to a clergyman in England ‘this is the last time we have on prophecy’: White et al., Eight Letters, p. 44.
32 White, Number Second, p. 109.
33 Buchan stated that they ‘never left any place till the persecution was so hot, that the place could not bear us any longer; and so had to flee for our lives, according to the Scriptures’: White et al., Eight Letters, p. 43.
34 White, Number Second, p. 70.
35 Train, Buchanites, p. 29.
36 White et al., Eight Letters, p. 6.
37 Train, Buchanites, p. 65.
38 Ibid., p. 104.
39 SRO, Church of Scotland, Presbytery at Penpont Minutes, CH2/298/8, p. 105.
40 Ferguson, Letters of Robert Burns, p. 19.
41 White et al. Eight Letters, p. 43.
42 ‘My working with my hands to help the needful in their necessities, is a divine operation: if I have no other views in so doing, except to get an opportunity to convince them, that their ways of working are against God. However, if I take wages, I do no more than the heathens’: White, Number Second, p. 84.
43 Ibid., p. 7.
44 Discussion on the timing of the millennium was popular at the end of the eighteenth century. James Purves was a schoolteacher and pastor of a ‘fellowship society’ and author of books on biblical prophecy. White, Buchan, and Purves exchanged a number of letters. Le Roy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of our Fathers: the Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation, 4 vols (Washington, DC, 1946–54), 2: 695.
45 White et al. Eight Letters, p. 15.
46 Ibid, pp. 15–16.
47 Ibid, p. 43-
48 Train, Buchanites, p. 74.
49 White, Divine Dictionary, p. iii.
50 Glasguensis Mercator, ‘Account’, p. 590.
51 They calculated the date as being 1,260 days after the woman of Rev. 12 gave birth to her man-child, i.e. the days which elapsed after the spiritual birth of White as Buchan’s man-child. A specific date appears, however, to contradict the notion that they could hasten the day of translation by being spiritually prepared. Train, Buchanites, p. 244.
52 Ibid., p. 105.
53 Ibid., pp. 106–7.
54 Ibid., pp. 108–9.
55 Innes also refers to Moses fasting before approaching the Lord’s presence on the ‘Nau Mount’ and Jesus remained ‘fortey days after he arose from the Grave in a steat of fasting so we inclined to be like them’: Train Papers, fol. 64.
56 Train, Buchanites, p. 109.
57 Train, Buchanites, p. 109.
58 Mrs Hunter was able, with the help of a magistrate, to remove her children and husband from the Society prior to the completion of the fast and return with them to Irvine: Train Papers, fol. 67.
59 The description of the Templand Hill translation attempt was forwarded to Train by the Revd D. Mundell, rector of Wallace Hall Academy. The account was corroborated by an eye-witness, Mr James Hossack of Thornhill: Train, Buchanites, pp. 125, 213. Innes refutes the Templand Hill attempt. He did not, however, complete the fast as he was forced to leave once it became known he had got Katherine Gardner with child. In later years Innes made every attempt to play down negative accounts of Buchan and the Society: Train Papers, fol. 153.
60 Mactaggart, John, The Scottish Galtovidian Encyclopedia (London, 1824 Google Scholar; repr. Strath Tay, 1981), p. 98.
61 Watson, R. M. F., Closeburn (Dumfriesshire) Reminiscent Historic and Traditional (Glasgow, 1901), p. 209 Google Scholar.
62 Train, Buchanites, p. 127.
63 Mactaggart, Gallovidian Encyclopedia, p. 98.
64 Train, Buchanites, p. 135.
65 SRO, Closeburn Kirk Session Minutes, 1780–1805, CH2/1233/2, 15 Sept. 1786.
66 Train, Buchanites, p. 144.
67 Ibid., p. 149.
68 Ibid., p. 156.
69 Privado, The Buchanites’, The Castle Douglas Miscellany, 27 Feb. 1826, p. 257.
70 Privado, The Buchanites’, The Castle Douglas Miscellany, p. 257.
71 Train, Buchanites, p. 158.
72 Chalmers, Archibald, The Buchanites and Crocketford’, Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society Transactions and Journal of Proceedings, 3rd ser., 1 (1912-13), pp. 293, 297 Google Scholar.
73 Train, Buchanites, p. 181.
74 Chalmers, ‘Buchanites and Crocketford’, p. 294.
75 Privado, Castle Douglas Miscellany, 6 March 1826, p. 265.
76 Train, Buchanites, p. 190.
77 Chalmers, ‘Buchanites and Crocketford’, p. 295.
78 Innes continued to converse with Buchan’s spirit every day: Train, Buchanites, p. 225.
79 Privado, Castle Douglas Miscellany, 6 March 1826, p. 265.
80 The Buchanites and their place as a millenarian sect in eighteenth-century Scotland will be discussed in my forthcoming Ph.D. thesis.