The Battle of Airds Moss was fought on 22 July 1680 on the moorland between Cumnock and Muirkirk in East Ayrshire. A party of 112 government troops commanded by Andrew Bruce of Earlshall, loyal to King Charles II, came across a group of Covenanters on the road between the two towns. The Covenanters were the smaller company, led by Richard Cameron, who only weeks earlier had ridden into Sanquhar and had the Sanquhar Declaration read aloud, calling for war against Charles II and denouncing him as a tyrant. The Privy Council had responded by declaring the participants open and notorious traitors and rebels, and placing a price of 5,000 merks on Cameron's head.
A brief battle ensued in which nine Covenanters were killed, including Cameron himself and his brother Michael, while five more were captured and the remainder escaped. Twenty-eight of the government troops were also killed. The prisoners were taken to Edinburgh, where they were later hanged. Cameron's death effectively extinguished the immediate leadership of the most militant wing of the Covenanting movement, though his followers took his name as the Cameronians and ultimately formed the nucleus of the Scottish regiment of the same name. The battle is commemorated by a memorial in the shape of a squat obelisk, erected by the Scottish Covenanters Memorial Association.
Richard Cameron had been ordained a Church of Scotland minister in Rotterdam only months before the battle, and the minister who conducted his ordination reportedly said prophetically of him, "Here is the head of a faithful minister and servant of Jesus Christ, who shall lose the same for his Master's interest; and it shall be set up before sun and moon in the public view of the world." That prophecy was fulfilled at Airds Moss on 22 July 1680, when Cameron was killed in the brief clash with government forces, his head taken as proof for the authorities who had placed a price of 5,000 merks upon it.
9 Covenanters killed, 5 captured; 28 government troops killed
112 government troops under Andrew Bruce of Earlshall; a smaller company of Covenanters under Richard Cameron
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