THE MURDER OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP

At the present time the only claim Strathkinness has to any significance

in the history of Scotland arises from the event which took place in 1679 on

Magus Muir, at the edge of what is now the village.

The sixteen hundreds was a time of great religious turbulence in both

Scotland and England. The conflict then was not, as it had been at the time

of the Reformation, between Roman Catholics and Protestants, but between

rival groups within what in each country was the national church, almost every-

one at that time believing that a single united church tolerating no rival was

essential to the peace and well-being of the nation. In Scotland the situation

was especially complex, but basically the conflict was between episcopalians,

who were restored to power in the church in 1661, and presbyterians who,

with the Restoration of Charles II, lost the control they had previously had.

The form of service in the church was scarcely affected by the change. Arch-

bishop James Sharp, once minister at Crail, was a moderate presbyterian who

after the accession of Charles II, like many others at that time, became an

episcopalian, and was made Archbishop of St. Andrews and Primate of All

Scotland, and one of the leading members of the government in Scotland.

As a former presbyterian, although he had always been sympathetic towards

episcopalianism, he was despised by many as a turncoat, and hated for the

part he played in the suppression of the covenanters. The murder of Arch-

bishop Sharp at Magus Muir by a group of extremists was unpremeditated -

his killers, who included the local laird Balfour of Burleigh, were hunting for

the sheriff-substitute of Fife, a notorious persecutor of presbyterians, and

came across Sharp, and one of his daughters, by accident. The murder was

followed by retribution, and five covenanters, not those guilty of the crime,

were executed, subsequently being buried by sympathizers near the spot

where Sharp was killed. The importance of the assassination of Archbishop

Sharp is that it helped to bring about the intensification of the conflict into

a civil war far more bitter than the struggle between Protestants and Roman

Catholics more than a hundred years earlier. Eventually, in 1691, the govern-

ment of William and Mary, in order to assist the pacification of Scotland after

the 1688 Revolution, decided that henceforth the Scottish church, unlike the

English, should be based on a presbyterian and not on an episcopalian system.

A cairn put up near the spot where Archbishop Sharp was murdered and

the nearby graves of the five covenanters so cruelly executed in revenge for an

act they were not involved in, are reminders of what happened in 1679. A

fitting memorial to those turbulent and intolerant times might be in the words

of the Rev. John Hall when he was minister of Strathkinness Parish Church,

‘It is surely a sign of change for the better when any Sunday in the Parish

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