Transcribed from:

The Presbytery of Perth
by the Rev. John Wilson, Clerk of the Presbytery, and Minister of Forgandenny
Perth, 1860

The first volume of the Record of Presbytery now extant, begins with a minute of date the 22nd day of April, 1618. A previous volume, however, is referred to in a minute of date March 15th, 1626. Said minute is indexed on the margin - "The former Buke of the Presbyterie deliverit to Mr Henry Adamsone" - and is as follows :-
"The qlk day producit the buke of the Presbyterie be Mr Johne CRUICKSHANK, beginning (the date is scarcely legible, but it seems to be) 1593, yeir of God, and deliverit to Mr Henry Adamsone, clerke present quha sall be comptable to the bretherin of the Presbyterie tharfore, quhansoever they require the same".

Clerks of Presbytery
We may be pardoned for appending to the foregoing account of the Records of Presbytery the names of those who have been their custodiers. Mr Henry Adamsone was Clerk in March, 1626, when " the former Buk of the Presbyterie was deliveryt to him by Mr John CRUICKSHANK. He seems to have been appointed to the office some years before, and continued therein till his  death in 1637.


Mr John CRUICKSHANKS was ordained and admitted minister of Redgorton, on the 1st of March, 1626. He was one of the nearly 400 ministers of the Church of Scotland who were ejected from their parishes in the restoration of Episcopacy in 1662, and of whom a list is given by Woodrow, in the second volume of his history. After his ejection, Mr CRUICKSHANKS went to Ireland, like many others of his outed brethern, He had returned, however, before 1666, for he was then in Galloway, and provoked by the cruelties inflicted on the Covenanters of that district by Sir James Turner, took an active part in stirring up the people to that rash and ill-advised rising which was so completely broken and put down at the Battle of Pentland. Mr CRUICKSHANKS marched with the insurgents from Dumfries towards Edinburgh, preached to them at Lanark, where they solemnly renewed the Covenant, and was among the first slain by Dalziell's troopers in the defeat at Rullion Green, on the ________ day of November, 1666.