East Kilbride Covenanters

The village and parish of East Kilbride were strong centres of Covenanting belief during the period 1638-1688.
Millhouse Glen was the location of a Conventicle held on Pulpit Hill, in 1675, by the Rev John Blackadder.
On Saturday 5 October 2002 a memorial was dedicated at the Priestknowe roundabout, East Kilbride, to the ten martyrs of the parish. This was erected by the SCMA in conjunction with South Lanarkshire Council and other parties.
The ten martyrs fall into four classes:

• John Parker and Christopher Strang and two other who were hanged at Edinburgh in December 1666 after being apprehended at the Battle of Rullion Green.
  
• John Clyde was hanged in November 1679 with four others at Magus Muir, Strathkinness, as a reprisal for the assassination of Archbishop Sharp.
  
• After the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679 many prisoners were confined for five months in Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh; 257 of them were transported to the new colonies in America where they were to be sold as slaves. On a wild stormy night of December 10 1679, the convict ship was wrecked off Deerness, Orkney. 200 were drowned--among them the following East Kilbride men -
  

Robert Auld   James Clark  John Clark
William Rodger John Struthers

4. For his insistence that Christ was King, John Watt of East Kilbride was hanged at Gallowlee, between Edinburgh and Leith, on 14 November 1684 and in the same place, Robert Pollock, a shoemaker in East Kilbride, was hanged for similar beliefs on 23 January 1685.