James Renwick (15 February 1662 – 17 February 1688) was a Scottish minister whose death on the scaffold, at the early age of 26, closed the sanguinary persecution directed against religious liberty in Scotland by the house of Stewart. He was born at Moniaive in Dumfriesshire on 15 of February 1662, being the son of a weaver, Andrew Renwick. Educated at Edinburgh University, he joined the section of the Covenanters known as the Cameronians about 1681 and soon became prominent among them. Afterwards he studied theology at the university of Groningen and was ordained a minister in 1683. Returning to Scotland “full of zeal and breathing forth threats of organized assassination,” says Mr Andrew Lang, he became one of the field-preachers and was declared a rebel by the privy council. He was largely responsible for the “apologetical declaration” of 1684 by which he and his followers disowned the authority of Charles II.; the privy council replied by ordering every one to abjure this declaration on pain of death. Unlike some of his associates, Renwick refused to join the rising under the earl of Argyll in 1685; in 1687, when the declarations of indulgence allowed some liberty of Worship to the Presbyterians, he and his followers, often called Renwickites, continued to hold meetings in the fields, which were still illegal. A reward was offered for his capture, and early in 1688 he was seized in Edinburgh. Tried and found guilty of disowning the royal authority and other offences, he refused to apply for a pardon and was hanged on 17 of February 1688. Renwick was the last of the Covenanter martyrs.
Life
Childhood
James Renwick was born at Moniaive in the Parish of Glencairn, Dumfriesshire, in 1662. Renwick's father Andrew (or in some sources, Alexander) was a weaver by trade. His mother, Elizabeth Corson, had borne several children prior to James' birth, but all had died in infancy or early childhood. The young James was credited with having an affinity for the church from a very early age. Alexander Shields (and later John Howie) wrote: "By the time he was two years of age, he was observed to be aiming at prayer, even in the cradle and about it..."
In Edinburgh
In 1675, Andrew Renwick died and James went on to the University of Edinburgh, where he studied religion, in particular the presbyterian religion of his forefathers. In 1681, he saw several Covenanters martyred in Edinburgh, including Donald Cargill. He witnessed the execution of Donald Cargill at the cross of Edinburgh on 27 July 1681, and the spectacle determined him to cast in his lot with the adherents to the Sanquhar declaration of 22 June 1680, popularly known as Cameronians, from Richard Cameron. Accordingly, in October 1681, he organised a secret meeting of members of this party, probably a field-conventicle, and by his earnest zeal did much to rally them to renewed action. A correspondence was instituted between the Societies of sympathisers in various parts of the west of Scotland. Renwick, at Lanark, on 12 January 1682, publicly proclaimed what was known as the Lanark declaration. He was not its author (it was written on 15 December 1681), and admitted that some of its vehement language against the existing authorities (‘a brothel, rather than a court’) was ill-advised. Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlston, who had been commissioned to Holland by the Societies in March 1682, made arrangements for Renwick to pursue his theological studies there, with a view to ordination.
Ordination in the Netherlands
After the martyrdom of Cargill the United Societies were without a minister, and there was no minister in Scotland whom they could acknowledge. But instead of ordaining at their own hands, they sent Renwick to Holland to get theological training from Dutch professors, and orderly instalment in the sacred office from Dutch presbyters; and from the middle of 1681 to the end of 1683, they had neither preaching nor sacraments. Shields mentions that Renwick, in the first year of his wonderful ministry, kept note of five hundred baptisms performed by him, and at that number "lost count."