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John Howie was author of a book of great popularity in Scotland, entitled the
Scots Worthies, being a homely but perspicuous and pathetic account of a select number of persons
who suffered for 'the covenanted work of Reformation' during the reigns of the last Stuarts. Howie
was a simple-minded Ayrshire moorland farmer, dwelling in a lonely cot amongst bogs, in the parish
of Fenwick, a place which his ancestors had possessed ever since the persecuting time, and which
continued at a recent period to be occupied by his descendants. His great-grandfather was one of
the persecuted people, and many of the unfortunate brethren had received shelter in the house when
they did not know where else to lay their head. One friend, Captain Paton, in Meadowhead, when
executed at Edinburgh in 1684, handed down his bible from the scaffold to his wife, and it soon
after came into the hands of the Howies, who still preserve it.
The captain's sword, a flag for the parish of Fenwick, carried at Bothwell
Bridge, a drum believed to have been used there, and a variety of manuscripts left by covenanting
divines, were all preserved along with the captain's bible, and rendered the house a museum of
Presbyterian antiquities. People of great eminence have pilgrimised to Lochgoin to see the home
of John Howie and his collection of curiosities, and generally have come away acknowledging the
singular interest attaching to both. The simple worth, primitive manners, and strenuous faith
of the elderly sons and daughters of John Howie, by whom the little farm was managed, formed
a curious study in themselves. Visitors also fondly lingered in the little room, constituting
the only one besides the kitchen, which formed at once the parlour and study of the author of
the Worthies; also over a bower in the little cabbage-garden, where John used to spend hours-nay,
days-in religious exercises, and where, he tells us, he formally subscribed a covenant with God
on the 10th of June 1785.
A stone in the parish churchyard records the death of the great-grandfather
in 1691, and of the grandfather in 1755, the latter being ninety years old, and among the last
survivors of those who had gone through the fire of persecution. John Howie wrote a memoir of
himself, which no doubt contains something one cannot but smile at, as does his other work also.
Yet there is so much pure-hearted earnestness in the man's writings, that they cannot be read
without a certain respect. The Howies of Lochgoin may be said to have formed a monument of the
religious feelings and ways of a long by-past age, protracted into modern times. We see in them
and their cot a specimen of the world of the century before the last. It is to be feared that
in a few more years both the physical and the moral features of the place will be entirely changed.
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