
Robert Ferguson (1637-1714) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and a leader of the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685.
Biography[]
Robert Ferguson was born in Badifurrow, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1637, the brother of James Ferguson. He was educated at the University of Aberdeen before becoming a Church of Scotland minister, only to be cast out by the Presbyterians. He soon made his way to England and became vicar of Godmersham in Kent, only to be expelled in 1662. He later gained a reputation as a theological controversialist, attracting the notice of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury and writing Whig pamphlets amid the Popish Plot hysteria of the late 1670s. In 1680, he supported James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth's claim to the throne, and he participated in the Exclusion Crisis as an author of anti-Catholic literature. He was outlawed by King Charles II of England after the Rye House plot, and he allied with Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll, Monmouth, and other malcontents. He accompanied Monmouth to South West England in 1685 and fled to the Netherlands after the Battle of Sedgemoor, and he accompanied William of Orange to England during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Because he was ignored by William, he corresponded with the exiled Jacobites and wrote pamphlets against the government. The treacherous Ferguson died in poverty in 1714.