Notable Women of the Covenant Author:William Chapman General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1883 Original Publisher: W. Swan Sonnenschein and Co. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com ... more »where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER V. LADY CALDWELL. FROM the very earliest dawn of Christianity, women of all ranks and conditions of life have left their marks on the annals of the Church. They have, with the devoted enthusiasm peculiar to woman, gone forward, counting the calamities and heeding the ills of life as little as the bravest champion among men, who has dazzled the world by his grand achievements. Not least among the women of Scotland who bore with amazing fortitude the persecutions of prelacy, was Barbara Cunningham, Lady Caldwell: strong in adversity, humble in prosperity; the friend of the lowly and the mentor of the lofty. Descending from a family celebrated for its warm adherence to the Presbyterian Church, she was no mean upholder of that faith which they had cherished in their lives and left as a noble heritage for their children. Her great-grandfather, William Cunningham, had joined the Lords of the Congregation, and had sat in that Parliament of August 1560 which approved and ratified the Confession of Faith; while her father, Sir William Cunningham, suffered much during thepersecutions, being heavily fined, and imprisoned for several years in Stirling Castle. His daughter, inheriting the courage of her ancestors, and trained according to the Reformed Faith, was born about the year 1622 She was married, in 1657, to William Muir of Caldwell, and by courtesy was usually styled Lady Caldwell. Her husband was an " honourable and excellent gentleman," who zealously supported the Presbytery, and was one of the first who refused to attend the preaching of the p...« less