Alexander Peden

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Peden's mask and wig

Peden's pulpit in the Linn Glen, Dalry. This outcrop overlooks a natural amphitheatre.

Alexander Peden also known as Prophet Peden (1626–26 January 1686) was one of the leading forces in the Covenant movement, was born at Auchincloich Farm near Sorn, Ayrshire, about 1626, and was educated at the University of Glasgow. He was a teacher at Tarbolton and then ordained minister of New Luce in Galloway in 1660.

After the restoration of Charles II, Peden had to leave his parish under Middletons Ejectment Act in 1663. For ten years he wandered far and wide, bringing comfort and succour to his co-religionists, and often very narrowly escaping capture, spending some of his time in Ireland. To hide his identity, Peden took to wearing a cloth mask and wig, which are now on display in Edinburgh's Museum of Scotland.

In June 1673 while holding a conventicle at Knockdow near Ballantrae, Ayrshire, he was captured by Major William Cockburn, and condemned by the Privy Council to four years and three months imprisonment on the Bass Rock and a further fifteen months in the Edinburgh Tolbooth.

In December 1678 he, along with sixty others, was sentenced to banishment to the American plantations. They were transported by ship to London, where they were supposed to be transferred to an American ship, however the American captain on hearing the reason for their banishment released them. Peden made his way north again to divide the remaining years of his life between his own country and the north of Ireland. His last days were spent in a cave on the River Lugar in the parish of Sorn, near his birthplace and his brother's farm in Auchinleck, and there he died in 1686, worn out by hardship and privation.

He was buried in Auchinleck churchyard. Six weeks later his body was exhumed by troops from Sorn Castle, who planned to hang his corpse from the gallows in Cumnock. However William Crichton, 2nd Earl of Dumfries objected to the hanging, so the troops buried the corpse at the foot of the gallows. In 1891 a monument was erected to mark the spot.

Prophet Peden receives a good deal of attention in Jack Deere's book "Surprised by the Voice of God" which records prophetic and other charismatic gifts practiced by historical reformed figures. In 1682, Peden performed the wedding ceremony of John Brown and Isabel Weir. He told Isabel after the ceremony, “You have a good man to be your husband, but you will not enjoy him long; prize his company, and keep linen by you to be his winding sheet, for you will need it when ye are not looking for it, and it will be a bloody one".

On the night of April 30, 1685, Captain John Graham of Claverhouse shot John Brown through the head for Brown's refusal to proclaim the king of England, rather than Christ, as the head of the church, and then taunted his wife about it. Peden was 11 miles away. He prayed with the family of John Muirhead in his home, "Lord, when wilt Thou avenge Brown's blood? O, let Brown's blood be precious in Thy sight." Peden told them of his vision of Brown's wife weeping over his corpse and of Claverhouse killing John Brown. Isabel Brown buried her husband in the sheet she has saved. Jack Deere's book also relates an account of Peden praying over the corpse of a then-recently departed young man for hours until the man was raised from the dead. Peden was well-known for God's spectacular answers to his prayers.