Fife’s Opportunistic Assassins

In 1679, a small group of rebels were hiding in the woods, waiting to ambush the Sheriff of Fife on the road to St Andrews. He had been relentless in his persecution of their fellow Covenanters and it was time to teach him a lesson.

Fortunately for the Sheriff, somebody had tipped him off and he stayed at home that day. Instead, the carriage of James Sharp, the Archbishop of St Andrews was trundled along towards them. This was the man who gave the Sheriff his orders and the group took it as a sign from God.

The opportunistic assassins took out all their grievances on the archbishop, just a day before his 61st birthday. He was dragged from the carriage, repeatedly stabbed before being put out of his misery by a shot to the chest. Also in the carriage, his traumatised daughter Isabel was forced to watch the events unfold.

The killers escaped but the murder of such an influential figure couldn’t simply be ignored. A few months later, 5 Covenanters were dragged to the site of the assassination in chains. None of them were associated with Sharp’s death but that wasn’t important. When they refused to sign an oath to give up their religion, they were promptly executed and left to hang from the branches of trees.

The old road is hidden amongst a forest now at Magus Muir, but both sides of the story are represented by monuments, barely 30 metres apart. A pyramid surrounded by yew trees commemorates Archbishop Sharp as a martyr. On the other side of a wall, a large gravestone remembers the Covenanters who would rather die than sign away their faith.