William Skirving

Active in the cause of universal franchise and other reforms inspired by the French Revolution, they were convicted of sedition in 1793–94, and sentenced to transportation to New South Wales.

[2] He was educated at Haddington grammar school and at Edinburgh University,[3] originally with a view to the ministry in the Burgher Secession Church (a branch of Presbyterianism).

[4] On graduation he studied divinity for a short time[5] before changing direction and taking up a position as a tutor in a private household, and then leasing land to farm at Damhead.

[13] In 1792 he also became active in setting up the Edinburgh Society of Friends of the People an organisation of Radical Whigs and other reformers inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution.

The Friends of the People called for universal suffrage, annual elections and were seeking to make contact with like-minded groups such as the United Irishmen.

Thomas Muir, a young lawyer who was Vice President to the Convention, and the voice of the radical faction, was charged with sedition, partly on the grounds of reading aloud an address from a representative of the United Irishmen.

[15] By the third convention, Whig members of Parliament, lawyers and other upper middle class supporters had abandoned the Societies in fear, in both Edinburgh and London.

[18] William Skirving spent about a month in Newgate Prison and in February was sent on board the convict transport Surprize with Fyshe Palmer, Margarot and Muir.

During the voyage, the vessel's master Captain Campbell claimed that he had detected a plot for murder and mutiny with the aim of sailing to France and that Fyshe Palmer and Skirving were ringleaders.

[19][20] The source for this claim was information provided by this ships' superintendent of convicts William Baker, a British loyalist who had taken a strong dislike to the Scotsmen.

[22] Campbell ordered Fyshe Palmer and Skirving to be confined together in a small cabin without any of the amenities they had paid for and minus their personal effects.

The Governor had been instructed to give the Martyrs a fairly free rein and specifically asked to avoid discovering ‘seditious’ books which they were not supposed to take with them.