Richard Cameron (1648? – 22 July 1680) was a leader of the Presbyterians who resisted the Stuart monarchs in their attempts to control the affairs of the Church of Scotland, acting through Bishops. His followers took his name, the Cameronians, which ultimately formed the nucleus of the later Scottish regiment of the same name, the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles). The regiment was disbanded in 1968.
Born at Falkland, Fife, he was initially a parish school teacher and then a highly successful field preacher of the strict Presbyterian school, a Covenanter. When Charles II demanded that all preachers submit to the Crown's form of church governance (High Church Anglicanism) and accept the King as the head of the church, Cameron left Scotland and spent some years in exile in the Netherlands.
In 1679, he was ordained a Church of Scotland minister at the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam. The Rev. Robert MacWard, who ordained him, reportedly said,
"Richard, the publick standard of the Gospel is fallen in Scotland; and, if I know anything of the mind of the Lord, ye are called to undergo your trials before us, and go home and lift the fallen standard, and display it before the world. But, before you put your hand to it, ye shall go to as many of the field ministers as ye can find, and give them your hearty invitation to go with you; and if they will not go, go your lone, and the Lord will go with you. Behold, all ye beholders! Here is the head of a faithful minister and servant of Jesus Christ, who shall lose the same for his Master's interest; and it shall be set up before sun and moon in the public view of the world."[1]
He returned to Scotland in 1680 and along with Donald Cargill, David Hackston and others issued the Sanquhar Declaration, calling for war against King Charles II, and the exclusion of the King's brother, James, Duke of York, from the succession. Cameron was killed later the same year in a skirmish with dragoons at Airds Moss near Cumnock during a government attempt to suppress the Covenanters in the South West of Scotland. His head and hands were severed from his body and taken to Edinburgh where they were affixed to the Netherbow Port. This period was later given the title of "The Killing Time" because hundreds, if not thousands of Presbyterians were persecuted and martyred for holding Cameronian views.
In 1689 after the accession of William III, who adopted religious toleration, Cameron's followers were pardoned, and incorporated into the British Army as the Cameronian regiment which defeated Jacobite forces at the Battle of Dunkeld in the same year, and was subsequently renamed the 26th (The Cameronian) Regiment of Foot.