Another "most violent persecutor" who King James II recruited to Ulster in 1689 was Colonel Thomas Buchan (1641-1724, Wikipedia here), a Scot from Auchmacoy near Aberdeen (shown above) and a professional soldier who had fought on the continent.
• BUCHAN IN AYRSHIRE, 1678–1689
According to The Covenanter Encyclopedia by Dane Love, in 1678 during the Killing Times in Scotland, the Duke of York (the future King James II) deployed Buchan to the village of Dalmellington in rural east Ayrshire with a garrison of 900 'Highland Host' soldiers, to suppress the local Covenanter Presbyterians. Buchan seems to have been a Scottish equivalent of Conrad Von Rosen (see recent post here), the Latvian-born Frenchman who King James II recruited around the same time, and for the same purpose – to terrorise the civilian population.
• THE KILLING OF JOHN SMITH OF MUIRKIRK, 1685
Buchan was a sidekick of the notorious persecutor John Graham of Claverhouse, aka Bluidy Clavers (Wikipedia here). In February 1685, during the reign of King Charles II, it was Buchan who personally shot dead John Smith - Smith's crime was to have attended an open-air religious service known as a conventicle. Smith fell ill on his way home from it, Buchan found him prostrate on the ground and shot him where he lay. Smith's gravestone in Muirkirk was erected in 1731 and is shown below - 'shot by Col. Buchan'.
HERE LYES JOHN SMITH
WHO WAS SHOT BY COL
BUCHAN AND THE LAIRD
OF LEE FEB–––––1685
FOR HIS ADHERENCE TO THE
WORD OF GOD AND SCOT
LAND’S COVENANTED W
ORK OF REFORMATION
REV 12.11 ERECTED IN THE
YEAR 1731
The stone also has an epitaph on the reverse side.
• CORONATION IN LONDON; SIEGE IN LONDONDERRY
William and his wife Mary were crowned as joint monarchs on 11th April 1689, and things escalated further. In the north west, the Siege of Derry began a week later on 18 April. (A published 'Declaration of the Gentlemen of Derry' is online here on page 43)
"...when on the 5th (December 1688) part of the Earl of Antrim's forces advanced to take possession of this place, though we looked on ourselves as sheep appointed for slaughter, and on them as the executioners of vengeance on us, yet we contrived no other means of escape than by flight, and with all precipitation to hurry away our families into other places and countries. But it pleased GOD, who watches over us, so to order things, that when they were ready to enter the city, a great number of the young∣er, and some of the meaner sort of the inhabitants, run happily to the gates and shut them...
... We began to confider it as an especial instance of God's mercy towards us, that we were not delivered over as a prey unto them, and that it pleased Him to stir up the spirits of the people so unexpectedly to provide for their and our common safety and preservation: wherefore we do declare and remonstrate to the world, that as we have resolved to stand upon our guards, and defend our walls... "
• BUCHAN IN COUNTY DOWN, 1689
James II had retreated to Ireland the month before, and he brought the Covenanter persecutor Colonel Thomas Buchan from Scotland to Ulster. Buchan's brief was to 'reduce the people of Down to due subjection to his authority'.
Presbyterian historian James Seaton-Reid said that, on 23 April 1689, King James II arrived in Newry and ordered Colonel Thomas Buchan to gather up soldiers from the garrisons at Carrickfergus, Lisburn and Antrim and to get to work on the County Down population.
Another of King James II's soldiers, a Colonel Mark Talbot, was wary of going near the Ards – one source says he, "fearing this rabble and the great number of Scots there, durst not attack them. This commotion gave great disturbance to the country people".
A Mourne man, Captain Henry Hunter, had already been organising County Down farmers into local militias awaiting an attack from King James II's experienced army. Hunter gathered them at Killyleagh and within the castle walls. (pic below from John Clarke Photography on Facebook)
• THE KILLING OF THE CUFFIE(S) OF SHRIGLEY, APRIL 1689
Buchan organised 'three troops of horse' and on 30 April marched them from Lisburn to Killyleagh. Hunter had a reported 2000 men ready for them, somewhere between Comber and Killyleagh. When Buchan's force attacked, an estimated 300 of Hunter's local men were killed in 'the Break of Killyleagh' - 'break' apparently being a Scots language word for 'rout'.
Two of those killed – farmers John and William Cuffie – were in the corner of a field in Tullymacnous townland outside Shrigley just north of Killyleagh, which perhaps was part of their rented tenant farmland. A 'plain headstone' was later erected in their memory. According to the Ulster Journal of Archaeology (in the April 1853 edition, p. 140; and also in Vol IV, 1898, p 182) it bore this inscription:
However the footnotes of The Hamilton Manuscripts (1867, p 145) give it as:
... including an additional note re: the stonemason's year error, which should have been 1689, not 1688. The UJA article says that the Cuffeys 'were of Scottish descent'. (Over 200 years later, the Census of Ireland of 1911 recorded a couple called Cuffey still living nearby).
Having 'broken' Killyleagh, Colonel Thomas Buchan then –
'... proceeded to Newtownards, Donaghadee and Portaferry, driving before him the flying Protestants who had been in arms ... the presbyterian ministers ...mostly withdrew to Scotland ... till they should be enabled to return to Ireland ... nearly fifty Irish ministers had taken refuge in Scotland and were settled in various parts of the kingdom, where they attentively observed the progress of events in their native country, and awaited with anxiety the issue of the momentous struggle around the walls of Derry'.
• MASS DROWNING ATTEMPT AT DONAGHADEE, 1689
When King James II's troops reached Donaghadee, led by Buchan and Lord Duleek (John Bellew), they drove a group of around 78 civilians into the sea in an attempted mass drowning. They were all rescued by a Captain Andrew Agnew of Portpatrick, whose ship happened to be just offshore, and he took them to safety in Scotland. (see previous post here).
• Buchan eventually returned to Scotland, was promoted to General, and became overall leader of King James II's armies in Scotland. A bio of Buchan is online here on page 180.
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NB: A full list of the Presbyterian ministers who fled to Scotland in 1689 is here
NB: A Captain Patrick Savage of Ballygalget was on King James II's side at Killyleagh. There are more details in A Genealogical History of the Savage Family in Ulster by George Francis Savage-Armstrong, which is online here (p 213)
NB: Bishop William King of Londonderry, and Charles Leslie of Raphoe, wrote slightly differing contemporary accounts of the 'Break of Killyleagh'. Their statistics for Hunter's local militia range from 400 - 4000, with 61 - 600 of them killed by Buchan's troops. A tenfold margin of error.
NB: Famous Presbyterian minister Rev Henry Cooke said he was descended from a boy who had survived the Break of Killyleagh by fleeing to refuge within the walls of Derry (source here)
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POSTSCRIPT: THE SEARCH FOR THE CUFFIES' 1689 GRAVE
• Map 1 – the 1846-62 Ordnance Survey Map for Tullymacnous townland shows a grave in a corner of a field.
• Map 2 – Here it is on Google Maps today
• Maps 4, 5 and 6 - Google Earth current satellite images are from April 2021, on which you can follow the shapes of the pond and the hedge boundaries. On the last of the images below you can see an object in pretty much the exact location of the grave. So maybe the grave existed in April 2021 – and perhaps even exists still today.
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