at midnight with four companies of the regiment and the first provisional battalion, ascended the Izolo Berg; and having early on the morning of the 9th divided his forces into two columns, and penetrated the fastnesses of the Isidengi, the Kaffirs, seeing they were attacked on every point, fled in the utmost dismay, and several thousand head of cattle were the reward of this movement’ (Records of the 72nd Regiment, privately printed in 1886, p. 39). In September operations were brought to an end, the Gaika country was annexed as far as the Kei (though the annexation was not ratified till 1846), and the regiment returned to Grahamstown. A town in the newly acquired territory bears the name of Peddie.
On 23 Feb. 1838 Peddie exchanged into the 90th regiment, then stationed in Ceylon. There his health broke down, and he died at Newara Elija in August 1840.
[Hart's Army List, 1840; Delavoye's Records of the 90th Regiment.]
PEDEN, ALEXANDER (1626?–1686), covenanter, was born in or about 1626, according to some at the farm of Auchencloich, Ayrshire, and according to others in a small cottage near Sorn Castle, Ayrshire. In any case his father was in fairly good circumstances, being on terms of intimacy with the Boswells, lairds of Auchinleck. Peden attended the university of Glasgow; his name spelt Peathine is entered in the fourth class in 1648 (Scot, Fasti Eccles. Scot. i. 765). Some time after this he became schoolmaster, precentor, and session clerk at Tarbolton, Ayrshire, and subsequently was, according to Wodrow, employed in a like capacity at Fenwick, Ayrshire. As he was about to receive license to preach from the presbytery of Ayr a young woman accused him of being the father of her child, but her statement was finally proved to be false. On account of the ‘surfeit of grief’ that the woman then gave him Peden, according to Patrick Walker, made a vow never to marry. The young woman, Walker also states, committed suicide on the spot where Peden had spent twenty-four hours in prayer and meditation regarding the accusation.
In 1660 Peden was ordained minister at New Luce, Galloway; but having refused to comply with the acts of parliament, 11 June, and of the privy council, 1 Oct. 1662, requiring all who had been inducted since 1649 to obtain a new presentation from the lawful patron and have collation from the bishop of the diocese, letters were directed against him and twenty other ministers of Galloway, 24 Feb. 1663, for ‘labouring to keep the hearts of the people from the present government in church and state,’ and he was ordered to appear before the privy council on that day month to answer for his conduct. Failing to do so, he was ejected from his living. He preached his farewell sermon from Acts xv. 31, 32, occupying the pulpit till night, and as he closed the pulpit-door on leaving it, he knocked on the door three times with his Bible, saying, ‘I arrest thee in my Father's name that none enter thee but such as come in by the door as I have done,’ a prohibition which is said to have been effectual in preventing the intrusion of any ‘indulged’ minister, the pulpit remaining vacant until the Revolution.
After his ejectment Peden began to preach at covenanting conventicles in different parts of the south of Scotland, obtaining by his figurative and oracular style of address and his supposed prophetical gifts an extraordinary influence over the peasantry, which was further increased by his hardships, perils, and numerous hairbreadth escapes. On 25 Jan. 1665 letters were directed against him for keeping conventicles, and, as he disregarded the summons to appear before the council, he was declared a rebel and forfeited. He continued, however, to remain in the country, holding conventicles whenever opportunity presented. Patrick Walker states that he joined with that ‘honest and zealous handful, in the year 1666, that was broken at Pentland Hills (on 28 Nov.), and came the length of Clyde with them, where he had a melancholy view of their end, and parted with them there.’ He was excepted out of the proclamation of pardon on 1 Oct. 1667, and in December all persons ‘were discharged and inhibited to harbour, reset, supply, correspond with or conceal’ him and others concerned in the late rebellion. For greater safety he therefore passed over to Ireland; but having returned in 1673, he was in June apprehended by Major Cockburn in the house of Hugh Ferguson of Knockdow, Ayrshire, and sent to Edinburgh. After examination before the privy council on the 26th he was imprisoned on the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. On 9 Oct. 1677 the council ordered him to be liberated from the Bass, on condition that he bound himself to depart forth of Britain, and not to return under pain of being held pro confesso to have been at Pentland. He does not appear to have complied with this condition, but was shortly afterwards removed to the Tolbooth, Edinburgh. While there he on 14 Nov. petitioned the council to be liberated, and permitted to go to Ireland. Instead of granting the request the council
