Sir George MacKenzie
Somewhat ironically, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh began his career defending Covenanter’s, not persecuting them. As a young advocate of twenty-four, Mackenzie cut his teeth in court defending a leading Covenanter the Marquis of Argyll against a charge of treason. He managed to have the Marquis acquitted of the charge- even though his own letters later damned the unfortunate nobleman. This case was not Mackenzie’s only judicial foray on the Covenanter’s behalf. Five years later, he successfully freed the Presbyterian prisoners taken after the battle of Rullion Green. However, this support was not to last.
MacKenzie had taken on the covenanter’s cases to make a name for himself in the courts- not from any sense of fellow feeling. However, once he had established himself as an advocate, there was no need to show off his skills defending hopeless cases anymore. So, Mackenzie was free to switch his allegiances back to where he felt more politically and religiously more at home: to the King and established Scottish church. Mackenzie began by making speeches against covenanters, gradually escalating to outright persecution.
Mackenzie’s canny move paid off. In 1677, he was appointed King’s Advocate for Charles II in Scotland. As such, Mackenzie was unstinting in his duty to hunt down and prosecute all Covenanters. He formed a partnership with Commander John Graham of Claverhouse, who rounded up the hapless dissenting Presbyterians and delivered them to Mackenzie who condemned them in court. It was Mackenzie who ordered the Covenanters be held in custody in Greyfriars cemetery, who sentenced five of their number to hang in the Grassmarket and who sent the majority of the rest to their doom in the transport to America.
Mackenzie, however eventually fell from grace. His descent began under James II of England/ VII Scotland when in 1686 he refused to abolish anti-catholic laws. However, it was well and truly finished off when William of Orange decided to rid himself of pro-Stuart clergymen in Scotland by handing religious control back to the Presbyterians MacKenzie had so enthusiastically persecuted. Mackenzie was forced to flee Scotland for England. He spent his last night in his homeland, amongst the graves of Greyfriars, mourning his fate.
However, Mackenzie returned to Greyfriars soon enough. In 1691 he died in Westminster, but his body returned over the border to Edinburgh, where it was buried in Greyfriars cemetery. Mackenzie’s last resting place was just meters from the location of the makeshift prison where so many of those he had persecuted died in misery and the spot where the national covenant was signed. His tomb, with its ornate dome and Corinthian columns, was perhaps the grandest in Greyfriars. It also quickly became one of the most notorious, earning the name, the Black Mausoleum.