- It was the Restoration of Charles II to the throne that revived the dormant Covenanting movement. Like his father, Charles IICharles wanted to bring the Church of Scotland back under his control and he re-introduced bishops. There was opposition, but he did have the upper hand and he did not want to overplay it. Charles, as he said many times, had no wish to "go on his travels again" and he was happy to reach limited accommodations where he could, although a large number of ministers who would not accept bishops were sacked.
Many Presbyterians, particularly in the Southwest, revived the Covenant and were hunted down for practicing their religion. To defend their meetings or conventicles, many of which were held outdoors, they formed an armed guard, which was styled the Cameronians, which was later incorporated into the British Army as the Cameronians Regiment. This period of the late 1670's - 1680's became known as "The Killing Times" because of the violent intensity of the government's action against the Covenanters.
Covenanting was not strong in the parish of Bonhill - in fact the opposite was true, since the minister of the time, William McKechnie, was a supporter of his boss the bishop, unlike his colleagues at Luss and later Kilmaronock who were sacked from their churches. Most of the locals just kept their heads down - there were not many of them anyway. It is reckoned that there were only about 350 people in the whole parish in 1643. However, there was one brave Bonhill soul who stood up for religious freedom against the aggressive intimidation of the government forces.
This was a Bonhill man called Robert Nairn. Nairn was a shoemaker and a Bonhill churchCovenanter, and he refused to attend Bonhill Parish church, which was now part of a church headed by bishops, with McKechnie as minister. It had become a criminal offence not to attend Church, and he had to leave home and hide out with friends, or in the open, from the officers of the law from Dumbarton who were very actively hunting for him.
Amongst the places he hid out for a time was Napierston Wood. However, the cumulative effects of what we would now call living rough, caught up with him, and, very ill, he returned home to die on 15th April1685.
Even in death, the Church still hounded Nairn and McKechnie refused him burial in Bonhill Churchyard. However, by this time the locals had had enough of the Church's attitude, and some young local lads broke the locks on the Churchyard gates and guarded his burial service in Bonhill Churchyard. A descendant, Thomas Nairn of Bankhead in Balloch, erected a gravestone on his grave in 1826.
Local tradition had it that he had been sheltered for a time in the farm of the McAllisters of Mid-Auchencarroch (who held on to their strict Covenanting views until the 1850's and beyond) and sure enough, when in the early 1800's a barn was demolished during renovations of their farm, a secret room was uncovered behind a double gable in which they found Nairn's lapstone, just where he had left it 120 years before. Other of Nairn's artefacts seem to have been passed down within the family and other of his descendants, the Nairn Marshall's who became wealthy in the 19th century and built and lived at Dalvait House in Dalvait Road Balloch until about the Second World War, loaned some of them to be displayed at the Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow in 1938. They seem to have been lost from sight since then.
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1685 - Yes, date unknown
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