Preface

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Preface

If “a life told is a life remembered” it is in this dignified spirit that this account of St John Ogilvie is written . Four hundred years have passed since St John’s untimely death and martyrdom at Glasgow Cross on 10th March 1615 . He died to defend the right of religious liberty during the highly charged period of the Scottish Reformation . At the tender age of thirteen, John Ogilvie was sent by his family from the shores of Leith to receive a thorough education in mainland Europe . He was a Scot of noble birth, born in 1579 into a highly respected Calvinist family; on his capture in Glasgow he informed his captors that his father was “Walter Ogilvie of Drum” . His family background has therefore been associated with the wealthy laird, Sir Walter Ogilvie of Drum-na-Keith, in Strathisla, Banffshire . When John Ogilvie returned to his Scottish homeland after an absence of twenty-two years, he was an ordained priest of the Society of Jesus (SJ - the Jesuits) .

Governed by faith and conscience he returned to Scotland to preach at a time of great religious upheaval, in a reformed Protestant Scotland . During this period, life for many Scots was overshadowed by intense suspicion and conflict . As a measure of safety and in order to preach the prohibited Mass in secret, Fr Ogilvie adopted the disguise of a horse dealer . But, sadly, the course of his Scottish ministry lasted

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St John Ogilvie (1579-1615)

less than a year . He was betrayed and humiliated, suffered great brutality in prison, was put on trial for treason and hanged from the gallows for refusing to recognise the jurisdiction of the King . His final resting place was an unmarked grave, to ward off would-be pilgrims . Despite an ignominious death, John Ogilvie’s influence endures . He is Scotland’s only Catholic Reformation martyr . He was beatified in 1929 and canonised in 1976 . His steadfast faith and courageous death reinforce the need to defend and uphold religious liberty as we mark the 400th anniversary of his martyrdom .