While Mr. Thomas Houston, minister of Boleskine parish, was not of the heroic type, he deserves a place in the annals of the houston clan for faithfulness and endurance. He must have trembled with fear when he was assigned to Boleskine to fill The vacancy caused by the barbarous murder of the minister by a l)and of ruffians. However, he accepted the charge and moved his family and household effects into the bleak manse in early 1670. This was in the reign of Charles II.

Boleskine was in Inverness-shire on the fringes of the Scottish Highlands where the natives of that time had little reverence for the clergy of any church and even less for ministers from among their old enemies of the Lowlands. The new minister was in for a rough reception. Soon after his arrival, his house was invaded by "Lochaber robbers" who threatened him with "naked swords and drawn dirks." These men of Lochaber, a tough, thieving lot from one of the Highland clans, took his money and household effects, plundered the house and threatened the minister’s family.

From this frightful beginning, we have traced the experiences of Mr. Thomas Houston for 18 years through the minutes of the Presbytery of Inverness, Scotland, his very life making a living sermon. The minutes reflect his fearful plight after the raid, with his aggressors "lieing in wait for his life and threatening his ruin and damage so that in the evening he is afraid to be burnt to ashes before morning."

Mr. Houston’s parishioners and the Presbytery itself promised to restore the minister’s money and goods—a promise easily forgotten. For at the Presbytery meeting June 8, 1670, the minister from Boleskine stood up and asked for a transfer—to just any place. He was completely discouraged by the threats and plundering, and also by the fact that his parishioners had fallen down on their pledges.