Centenary of a radical kirk minister
Dr Stephen Clackson marks the life of the Rev Matthew Armour of Sanday who died 100 years ago this month
(From The Orcadian dated March 6, 2003)

One hundred years ago, an hour before midnight on March 23, 1903, the Rev Matthew Armour, Sanday’s radical Free Kirk minister, passed away.

As the present occupant of the manse in which he lived for over half a century, and inspired by conversations with the two Sanday worthies, Mr Hugh Walls (now staying in Kirkwall) and Miss Mary-Ann Fotheringham, I feel it incumbent upon me to write this brief commemoration of his life.

Matthew Armour was born in Paisley on April 12, 1820. His father, Robert Armour, was a master cooper by trade, and it was his mother, Jane, who, by his own admission, first instilled in him his radical principles.

After a brief period employed in the shawl-making trade, when he was able to travel to Paris and London, he entered Glasgow University in 1838. He completed his arts course in 1842, without graduating, and then went on to St Andrews to study divinity.

After the Disruption in 1843 (when one third of the Church of Scotland’s ministers withdrew from the established church), Matthew Armour sided with the Free Church and continued his studies by attending classes held by leading Free Churchmen of the day, at George Street Hall, Edinburgh.

He was licensed by Paisley Presbytery, and after several assistantships in various places, he was ordained as Sanday’s second Free Church minister on March 9, 1848.

Being now settled into a ministry, the Rev. Armour was not long in bringing a wife to the Free Kirk Manse. In September, 1849, he returned to Paisley to marry draper’s daughter Jessie Thomson. There is a tale, that when the happy couple arrived in Sanday, a farmer came with a horse and cart to meet them.

They were surprised by this, as the farmer was not a member of the Free Church congregation. When asked why he had come to fetch them, the farmer replied it was because he too bore the surname Thomson.

Matthew and Jessie produced a family of seven children: Elizabeth Dennison (1850), Jane Alexandrina Duff (1852), Robert (1853), William Thomson (1855), Jessie Rowand (1858), Agnes Fulton (1861) and Matthew (1863). (It is a wonder to me how they all fitted in the manse.)

Tragedy struck the family in July, 1867, when Elizabeth died of consumption at the age of 16, followed to the grave by her mother, aged 47, four days later, on the day of the funeral.

The Rev Matthew Armour, and members of his family, in Sanday, more than 100 years ago.

Two of the sons, William and Matthew, went on to have careers in the church, Matthew Armour junior becoming minister in Papa Westray.

The eldest son, Robert, crofted in Sanday for a time, and was no doubt grateful for what his father did for the island’s crofting community in 1888.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1843 Disruption, having no property of its own, the Free Church was obliged to embark upon a programme of building – churches to house the congregations, manses to house the ministers and schools in which to teach the children.

By 1851, the Orkney congregations had accumulated a debt of £1,100. The Orkney Presbytery produced a “Plea for the Free Church in Orkney”, and Matthew Armour was granted three months’ leave to go south with the Rev William Sinclair of Kirkwall to raise funds to liquidate the debt. This they did by travelling throughout Scotland, preaching at a different church each Sunday and going round collecting money on the days following.

They received a great deal of support, some churches even holding collections on their behalf, and they returned to Orkney with £200 more than was needed. This financial feat was the first of many events in the life of Matthew Armour which would be long remembered in these islands.

By the end of his first decade as minister in Sanday, some of the members of the Free Church congregation had become dissatisfied with the peculiar manner of Matthew Armour’s preaching, saying that they found it “unedifying”.

Led by the folklorist Walter Traill Dennison and his brother Jerome (“Jarm”), all but one of the elders, most of the office-bearers and some 100 members walked out (140 members remaining with the minister).

They broke away and founded their own “Free Church Station”, which they erected within sight of the Free Kirk and not ten minutes walk away from it. However, there never seems to have been any bitterness on the part of Matthew Armour towards them, and, apart from not talking to each other on Sundays, the two congregations appear to have co-existed on more-or-less friendly terms until a difficult reunion in 1904.

The complaints against Matthew Armour’s preaching included: not sticking to the text, lack of method in his sermons, language that was difficult to understand, and a voice which fluctuated from almost inaudible at one moment to boomingly loud at the next.

(It is said that he had a slight speech impediment which would hamper him at the start of each service, but which disappeared as he got into his sermon.)

On the other hand, many found him an exciting preacher and enjoyed his earnest and fervent style.

The late father of Miss Fotheringham attended the Free Church when he was young, and remembered the Rev Armour constantly bobbing down into the pulpit during his animated sermons.

Eventually, the Presbytery decided to come and hear him preach for themselves, and they exhorted him to use plainer language, be more methodical and to guard against making “rash statements”.

Six months went by without change, and this was used as the pretext for the split. It does seem, however, that there were more fundamental differences between the minister and his elders, particularly Jerome Dennison who had effectively been acting-minister for about four years before Matthew Armour arrived, and with whom there may have been an element of rivalry.

Considering the controversy over Matthew Armour’s preaching, it was strange that immediately after the split in his church, in 1860, a great revival should take place under his ministry. People crowded into the Free Kirk, meetings were held night after night and often went on until midnight. There was fainting during services and visions were seen. For a time, day to day work ceased while people engaged in prayer, Bible reading and religious discourse, or wept over their sins.

Matthew Armour went to other islands and to the Mainland telling of what the Lord had done in Sanday, and the revival spread like wildfire throughout Orkney. Probably the most lasting memorial to this phenomenon, however, was created when Walter Traill Dennison took a break from recording island folklore to write his ten “Sanday Revival Hymns”.

The Free Church Manse in Sanday where the Rev Matthew Armour lived until his death.

Matthew Armour had his own encounter with folklore on an occasion when a young girl came to him with a book she had accepted from a Sanday witch named Recchel Tulloch. It was the “Book of the Black Art”, a text-book of witchcraft written in white ink on black paper, which, it is said, was reclaimed by the Devil on the owner’s death – along with the owner’s soul! It could not be physically destroyed, and ownership would only pass to another if the book were sold for a lower price than it had been bought for, provided, of course, someone foolhardy or foolish enough to purchase it could be found.

When the girl discovered the nature of her new possession, she tried in vain to give it back to the witch and then, in desperation, threw it into the sea from Grunavi Head – only to find it lying on her bedroom table when she got home!

Although more used to saving souls in other ways, the Rev Armour came to her rescue and somehow managed to dispose of the book. ( I just hope it doesn’t turn up hidden somewhere in the manse . . .)

Matthew Armour’s radical political persuasion briefly made him a household name throughout Scotland.

The General Election in the autumn of 1885 was a contentious one for the traditionally Liberal Orkney and Shetland seat. The Tory candidate, the Hon Thomas Dundas, was the brother of the Earl of Zetland who had swapped allegiance from the Liberal Party to the Conservatives.

Since 1883, the Napier Commission, which had been set up by the Liberal government, had been looking into the grievances of crofting communities, and in 1884 the Third Reform Act extended the same voting rights to those communities as had hitherto been enjoyed only by town dwellers.

The Tory candidate went out of his way to try to attract the votes of the crofters, and there was unease that the Earl might attempt to exert influence in his capacity as a landlord.

A Conservative canvassing meeting was held in the schoolroom opposite Sanday Free Kirk, and the candidate was subjected to fierce questioning by Rev Armour, which seems to have stirred up passion in those present. Outside the school, Dundas was subjected to verbal abuse and had mud thrown at him.

Matthew Armour was subsequently blamed for inciting this riot, and after the election (in which the Tories failed to win the seat), a policeman arrived at the Free Kirk Manse to order him down to the Kettletoft Hotel for questioning by the Sheriff and the Procurator Fiscal, and there he was charged with disorderly conduct and breach of the peace.

A further seven involved in the fracas were accused of mobbing, rioting and assault: William Skea junior, Robert Garrioch, Peter Moodie, Robert Muir, Andrew Guthrie, Charles Cooper and William Wilson.

Rev Armour appeared before the Sheriff in Kirkwall on January 30, 1886. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, but was nevertheless found guilty and was sentenced to four days’ imprisonment without the option of a fine.

The Sanday lads also cast into gaol learnt the fate of the minister when the prison pipes reverberated to strains of the 23rd Psalm which he sung aloud as he prepared to go to sleep.

He was not asleep for long, however, for his defence solicitor, at the great expense of 15 shillings, had sent a telegram to Edinburgh giving full details of the case to lay before the Lord Advocate, and at 10pm that evening a telegram arrived at the prison ordering the Rev Armour’s release. He had been in custody for just seven hours. News of his liberation spread rapidly through Orkney’s capital, and hundreds waiting outside sang “See the conquering hero comes” as he emerged from gaol, while children ran through the streets crying “The minister’s oot, the minister’s oot!”

In August,1888, the Crofters’ Commission came to Sanday to hear evidence in the West Kirk. Unlike crofting communities in much of Orkney, the Sanday crofters were well-prepared when the commissioners arrived, thanks to the backing of their Free Church minister.

The radical Rev Armour was a supporter of land reform. He desired fewer large farms on Sanday and more smaller ones in order to encourage people to remain on the land, preferably their own land, and he did not hesitate to speak out on the subject, which naturally brought him into conflict with big farmers, factors and landlords. Matthew Armour stood as the champion of the crofters’ cause for fair rents, fair conditions and security against eviction.

He spoke up on their behalf before the Commission and helped the crofters organise their evidence in a way that would achieve a favourable outcome.

This has never been forgotten in Sanday. In 1894, the crofters and other working people of the island, concerned to compensate the minister in some way for any loss he might have suffered through his support for them, presented him with a purse of money and an illuminated address.

In 1988, Sanday School celebrated the centenary of the visit of the Crofters’ Commission by staging a play about it and organising an exhibition. The play was also performed in Kirkwall Town Hall as part that year’s St Magnus Festival.

There were three months of celebrations to mark the Rev Armour’s golden jubilee in 1898, and all the denominations on the island joined in honouring him. His congregation gave a dinner for him at the Kettletoft Hotel, and at a special assembly in the church he was presented with an illuminated address and a bag of gold sovereigns.

The islanders were grateful to him not only for his 50-year ministry and the valuable aid he had rendered to the crofters’ cause, but also for his serving on the county council since its inception in 1889, where he had worked hard to bring Sanday a proper road system.

Matthew Armour also served on Sanday parish council and on the school board, and despite his occasional disputes with the Presbytery (for example when he was once censured for allowing an American Quakeress to preach in his kirk) he was moderator of Orkney several times.

Hopefully, he did not leaf back through the pages of the hotel visitors’ book that night, where, eight years earlier, someone had penned the verse:

“Old Armour should have left county councils alone,
And stuck to his Bible and pulpit and gown,
And peacefully closed the end of his days
In feeding his flock on his puir sandy braes.”

On January 1, 1903, the Rev Armour intimated before the Deacon’s Court that he intended making application for a colleague and successor, and mentioned that if spared till April he would be 83 years of age and have been 55 years in the ministry.

But within a few weeks he was afflicted by creeping paralysis, which prevented his discharging his ministerial duties for three Sundays, and then he died.

Only once before in his life had he been kept from his pulpit by ill health.