WIlliam Boick's Gravestone

St Machan's Kirkyard

Clachan of Campsie

Stirlingshire

NGR - NS 610796

The tablestone to William Boick is located in the churchyard at the Clach of Campsie. The inscription reads:

Erected in memory of William Boick, who suffered at Glasgow, June XIV., MDCLXXIII, for his adherence to the Word of God and Scotland's Covenanted Work of Reformation.

WIlliam Boick

There is a tradition in the parish that this stone has received the personal attentions of Richard Paterson, the prototype of Sir Walter Scott's "Old Mortality," who, as is well known, occupied himself in caring for the tombstones of the Covenanters, renewing the letterings, and clearing these of moss, so that the inscriptions should remain legible. Immediately adjacent to the stone of William Boick, the martyr, and to the north, there are two stones, with the letters "E. B." inscribed on them, and a symbol which to some appears to be a cross, while others regard it as a sword. Just beyond these with this symbol there are other three flat stones, alike in shape and lettering, evidently marking the last resting place of family connections of the Boicks. No trace of such a family can now be found in the parish.

According to Thomson's Martyr Graves of Scotland, Boick's name does not appear in Cruickshank nor Wodrow. All that is known is that five of the Lords of the Justiciary Court sat on 14 June1683 in Glasgow and may have condemned him.