John Barclay 1736-98

Founder of the Berean sect at Fettercairn, which eventually spread to London, Bristol, Edinburgh and five or six other towns. The name was taken from Acts 17 where the Christians at Berca ‘received the Word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily’. Born at Muthill, Barclay studied at St Andrews, attracted to Professor Campbell’s ‘enlightened’ views, as opposed to those of Professor Tullideph, the ‘Moderate’ leader. Assistant at Errol he was dismissed, perhaps because the minister had married Tullideph’s daughter. Later, assistant to Rev. Antony Dow, the aged minister of Fettercairn, where b.c began to attract large crowds to services, his doctrine became suspect and on Dow’s death he was prohibited by the Presbytery (whose members he had called ‘swine’) from preaching within the parish.

Although the people were for Barclay, Mr Foote of Eskdalemuir, with only 3 votes, was imposed on them. When refused a certificate of character, Barclay appealed to the Assembly, where he was represented at the Bar by James Boswell, advocate, the· famous companion of Dr Johnson. By the end of the same year (1773) we find him leading an independent church of Bereans in Edinburgh, at first in St Andrew Chapel at the foot of Carrubbers Close and later in Magdalen Chapel. His Fettercairn followers had already with remarkable speed built for him a large barn-like meeting-house at Sauchieburn cross-roads just outside the boundary. Although they ‘called’ him as minister and he seems to have been there a few weeks, he preferred Edinburgh and left with them James McRae, a young schoolmaster. The people seem to have resented his not staying with them for they did not subscribe to his publications (it may be they could not read) and his name does not appear on the tablet which still stands on the wall of what is now a farm shed but was once the church of a large congregation.

Barclay had not been ordained in the Church of Scotland and was now ‘set apart’ by Independent ministers at Newcastle for his Edinburgh work, which was to be life-long except for a two year visit to the south to set up churches in London, Bristol and elsewhere. Because of extreme poverty he was never able to revisit his churches in England but kept in touch with the Scots Bereans at Dundee, Arbroath, Stirling, Crieff and Glasgow by long walking tours. He is buried in the Old Calton graveyard, with his successor in the Edinburgh church, James Donaldson, beside him. The latter had previously been pastor in Dundee in a hall off the Overgate. Their last Edinburgh pastor was Daniel Hollis, ordained 1839. We finally hear of them in 1843 with ministers still in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Laurencekirk, but none in England. Bereans held that ‘assurance was of the essence of faith’, did not use the word ‘sacraments nor consecrate the elements at Communion, and had a type of Independent government.

The only tenet peculiar to Barclay and his followers was the view that Old Testament prophecies and the psalms referred exclusively to Christ and should not be applied to ourselves. He termed the usual commentaries ‘a pack of lies’ and published his own translations of psalms with commentaries, and some spiritual poems. Up to about 1940 Mont-rose Congregationalists held an annual ser­vice at the old Sauchieburn meetinghouse.