Richard Cameron ( Covenanter ) Richard Cameron ( 1648 ? – 22 July 1680 ) was a leader of the militant Presbyterians , known as Covenanters , who resisted attempts by the Stuart monarchs to control the affairs of the Church of Scotland , acting through bishops . While attempting to revive the flagging fortunes of the Covenanting cause in 1680 , he was tracked down by the authorities and killed in a clash of arms at Airds Moss in Ayrshire . His followers took his name as the Cameronian s and ultimately formed the nucleus of the later Scottish regiment of the same name , the Cameronians ( Scottish Rifles ) . The regiment was disbanded in 1968 . Life . Cameron was born at Falkland , Fife in 1647 , or 1648 , the son of Allan and Margaret Cameron who farmed the estate of Fordell , near Leuchars . St Salvator ’ s College of St Andrews University has a record of his enrolment in the Arts faculty there on 5 March 1662 . After graduation he returned to Falkland where he found employment as the parish school teacher and precentor in late 1669 or early 1670 . It was some time after this that he began to attend conventicle s . On 16 April 1675 he , his brother Michael and his parents were summoned to appear at the local court , charged with " " keeping conventicles at the house of John Geddie in Falkland " " and " " withdrawing from the parish church " " . The outcome of the case is not known , but it is likely that the accused were fined ; and it is known that the entire family moved shortly thereafter to Edinburgh where Michael had married into the family of a burgess . Here Cameron came under the spiritual guidance of an itinerant field - preacher , John Welwood . After a brief period employed as private chaplain to the wife of Sir William Scott of Harden in 1675 , Cameron was dismissed from service for refusing to attend the parish church on the Sabbath . With Welwood ’ s encouragement Cameron became increasingly religiously active and was eventually licensed as a field preacher in 1678 . Between 1669 and 1672 two Indulgences were granted in the name of Charles II , intended to bring over 270 dissenters , a third of the ministry , back into the fold of the Church of Scotland . While over 40 outed ministers agreed to the new terms , submitting themselves to the Crown ' s High Church Anglican form of church governance — which meant accepting episcopacy and the King as head of the church — Cameron remained with those who rejected any accommodation that would compromise their presbyterian principles . He was accused by moderates of fomenting division in the Kirk by declaring his opposition to the Indulgences in his public preaching and formally summoned to appear three times before presbyteries , the moderator urging him to be " " circumspect and inoffensive " " . In early 1679 , amid mounting pressure from indulged ministers , Cameron embarked for the Netherlands to join other exiles . The year 1679 was one of continuing confrontation between the Covenanters and the authorities , culminating in the assassination of Archbishop Sharp , the so - called " Rutherglen Declaration " and the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge . In late July or early August , Cameron was ordained a Church of Scotland minister at the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam . The Rev . Robert MacWard , who conducted the ceremony , reportedly said prophetically to the onlookers , " " 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 . " " Several weeks later Cameron returned to Scotland , where in the meantime a Third Indulgence had been granted and accepted by a vote in the General Assembly . Hoping to revive the cause of the demoralised Covenanters after their recent defeats , he resumed his field - preaching after reporting in code to McWard , " " I was received with more affection and joy than ever before . " " On 8 December he wrote again in code to Rotterdam , " " I have got a far better market than was expected when I came from you ; our wares vend well , both in open markets and in houses through the country . " " Joined by Donald Cargill , another exile from Rotterdam , Cameron helped draw up a band ( bond of mutual defence ) in March 1680 , which eventually carried 27 signatures of the group who formed the nucleus of his loyal following . By April the Scottish Privy Council reported to James , Duke of York , who feared Covenanter meetings as " " fore - runners of rebellion " " , that new measures were being planned against the " " fanatics " " who were " " running out again to field - conventicles in several parts of the kingdom " " . On 22 June 1680 Cameron , accompanied by 20 followers , including David Hackston , wanted for his part in the murder of Archbishop Sharp , rode into the town of Sanquhar in Nithsdale . After singing a psalm at the cross , the Sanquhar Declaration was read aloud by Michael Cameron , calling for war against Charles II , denounced as a " " tyrant " " , and the exclusion of his openly Roman Catholic brother James from the succession . The Privy Council ’ s response on 30 June condemned the " " execrable paper " " as tantamount to a declaration of war and declared the participants " " open and notorious traitors and rebels " " . Cameron had a price of 5 , 000 merks placed on his head , while 3 , 000 merks were offered for three other identified ring - leaders of the group , including Cargill ( who , because of personal reservations , had not in fact been present at Sanquar ) and 1 , 000 merks for each for the others . In the weeks that followed Cameron continued preaching before ever - growing crowds at various locations in the south west of Scotland . He delivered what was to be his last sermon at Kype Water , Clydesdale ( modern Lanarkshire ) on Sunday 18 July 1680 , where he told the assembled congregation , " " But we are of the opinion that the church shall yet be more high and glorious , and the church shall have more power than ever she had before ; and therefore we declare avowedly in opposition to all tyrannical magistrates over Protestants and over Presbyterians , magistrates that are open enemies to God . We declare we will have none such acknowledged as lawful magistrates over us ; we will have none but such as are for the advancement of piety , and the suppression of impiety and wickedness . Let all the world say as they will , we have the Word of God for it . The work begun shall be carried on in spite of all opposition ; our Lord shall be exalted on earth ; and we do not question much but that he shall yet be exalted in Scotland . I assure you that we in Scotland have need to take heed to ourselves . I am very much afraid that we may even have done with good days in Scotland for all this . But let us stir up ourselves , and take hold of him by faith ; for I assure you , if ye be not delivered , and made a free and purified people , we shall be no more a free corporation , nation , or embodied people , than the Jews are this day . I say not this to disquiet you , but to stir you up to take hold of Christ , and his standard on which it shall be written , ‘ Let Christ Reign ’ . Let us study to have it set up amongst us . It is hard to tell , where it shall be first erected ; but our Lord is to set up a standard , and oh that it may be carried to Scotland ! When it is set up , it shall be carried through the nations ; and it shall go to Rome , and the gates of Rome shall be burnt with fire . It is a standard that shall overthrow the throne of Britain , and all the thrones in Europe , that will not kiss the Son lest he be angry , and in his anger they perish from the way . " " On 22 July , accompanied by about 60 followers on horse and foot , Cameron was in east Ayrshire when government dragoon s commanded by Andrew Bruce of Earlshall ( ' Bluidy Bruce ' ) , acting on information received from a local laird , tracked him down at Airds Moss near Cumnock . During a bloody engagement at about four o ’ clock in the afternoon Cameron ' s followers , who had become known as the ' Hill Men ' , were overwhelmed by superior numbers . Bruce ' s despatch reported , " " The dispute continued a quarter of an hour very hot ; the rebels , refusing either to fly or take quarter , fought like madmen . . . " " Cameron was killed on the spot and Hackston taken prisoner . Cameron ’ s head and hands were severed from his body and taken to Edinburgh where they were shown to his father who was already imprisoned in the town ’ s tolbooth . After being paraded through the main street behind Cameron ' s head displayed aloft on the end of a pole , Hackston was sentenced and two days later brutally executed at the cross . Cameron ’ s head and hands were then affixed to the Netherbow Port for public display . The period in which these events took place was later given the name " The Killing Time " because hundreds , if not thousands of Presbyterians were persecuted and martyred for holding Cameronian views . Legacy . In 1689 , following the accession of William II and that monarch ’ s adoption of religious toleration ( excepting Roman Catholics in positions of state ) , Cameron ' s followers were pardoned and incorporated into the British Army as the Cameronian regiment which defeated Jacobite forces later that year in the Battle of Dunkeld . The troop was subsequently renamed the 26th ( Cameronian ) Regiment of Foot and continued to serve the British Crown until its disbandment in 1968 as part of a post - imperial reduction in the size of Britain ’ s armed forces . Viewed by royalists , episcopalians and moderate presbyterians as narrow - minded zealots , the Cameronians saw themselves as emulating the early Christian martyrs by holding steadfastly to their beliefs in the face of their enemies ’ cruelties and contraptions of torture and execution . The ‘ blood sacrifice ’ they made for the sake of their Protestant consciences exerted a strong influence on later generations of Protestant Scots and still resonates with many of their countrymen to this day . Cameron ' s most recent biographer follows a tradition in seeing their struggle as one of religious and civil liberty in the face of an hereditary monarchy and therefore an early expression of republicanism . A flavour of the religious fervour inspired by the Cameronian s can be gauged from the symbolism and language of a poem , " The Cameronian ’ s Dream " , which preserved their memory long after the events described above had taken place . Its author James Hyslop was a self - taught shepherd from the Cumnock - Sanquhar area in the south west of Scotland which was the seedbed of the two Covenanter Risings of 1666 and 1679 . Written by Hyslop between the ages of fourteen and eighteen and published in 1821 , the poem ends with a Cameronian ' s vision on the desolate moor at Airds Moss .