Chapter 46
The records show that Taine taught and practiced polygamy, and Meg MacGruer was one of seven wives, all of whom he married when they were very young, even by the standards of the day.
Meg MacGruer’s birth parents, a Thomas and Sarah MacGruer, were exiled from Taine’s group due to their vocal and public objection to Taine and Meg’s marriage.
It is these objections, taken to the Laird Gregor MacGregor, that brought charges of Heresy in the Glasgow Church Court against Ewin Taine.
These writings provide much of the background and context for Taine’s beliefs.
Tragically, Thomas and Sarah MacGruer would never know the fate of their daughter who, by the time Taine’s group fled Scotland for the Americas, was mother to a two-year-old boy christened as Rory Michael Taine. Meg was just seventeen years old.
It is in this way that the accusations against Meg were brought on the charges of adultery, wickednesse [sic], and witchery.
There is no evidence in either Meg MacGruer’s or the sailor’s records to note that there was any standing to the charges of adultery, and the crimes of wickednesse [sic] and witchery were of such a nebulous nature that everything from the illness that swept the ship, the injuries that crew and passenger alike suffered, and even the plague of rats and vermin on The Mary Clarence were attributed to Meg’s ill-doings.
What is likely, however, is that the charges and ire held against Meg were Taine’s retribution in response to her parents’ complaints to Laird MacGregor.
The Glasgow Church Court had launched a formal inquiry into Taine’s activities at the behest of the Laird, which was the inciting event that led to his clandestine departure from Scotland.
Her child dead, it is likely that Taine’s actions against Meg were a form of revenge for the trouble her family had brought his group.