Richard Cameron

c.1648-1680. Scottish Covenanter* from whom the Cameronians* took their name. Originally an Episcopalian in Falkland, he was converted and found his spiritual home thereafter among Presbyterians. Unable to obtain ordination in a Scotland on which episcopacy had been imposed, he went to Holland in 1679 and was ordained in Rotterdam at a service in which John Brown of Wamphray* and Robert MacWard (exiled Scots ministers) and James Koelman (a Dutch pastor) participated. He soon returned to Scotland and resumed his field preaching. He was one of the chief authors of the Sanquhar Declaration* that purported to depose Charles II, and he constantly prophesied the extinction of the Stuart line “for their treachery, lechery, but especially their usurping the royal prerogatives of King Christ.” Finally, in June 1680 the dragoons who had long sought him, surprised him and his little band at Ayrsmoss, and “the Lion of the Covenant” was killed.