The last state prisoner taken off the Bass Rock was a Glasgow apothecary called John Spreull, and when the release order arrived in May 1687 he read it and refused to go. It contained statements he judged untrue. He left only once the wording was corrected.
He had been there since July 1681. Scotland called him Bass John afterwards, and the surname has traveled with the nickname.
Who Was Bass John Spreull?
John Spreul or Spreull, born about 1646 and dead in November 1722, was a Paisley merchant's son. He kept an apothecary's shop, selling herbs and drugs in Paisley and then Glasgow, and he was a Covenanter.
He was seized on 12 November 1680 and brought before the Privy Council, which wanted him tied to the rising that ended at Bothwell Bridge. He was put twice in the boot, the leg-crushing frame used on prisoners who would not talk, and gave them nothing: no confession, no names. The treason charge came to trial in March 1681 and returned not proven. He went to the Bass anyway, for nearly six years.
What happened next is the part most accounts skip. Released in 1687, he prospered: a red herring operation at Crawfurd's-dike near Greenock, a pearl trade that reached Queen Anne, and in 1696 a subscription to ransom Scots seamen held by Barbary corsairs. He put £1,000 into the Darien Scheme, and in 1705 published An Accompt Current betwixt Scotland and England. His motto was Sub pondere cresco, "under weight I grow." The decades he survived run through our accounts of the National Covenant of 1638 and the Killing Time.
Why Are There Two Covenanter John Spreuls?
Because there were, and mixing them up is the commonest error on this name.
The other John Spreul, 1616 to 1690, was town clerk of Glasgow from October 1645 and the son of a provost of Renfrew. He graduated at Glasgow in 1635, served at Philiphaugh and Dunbar, was jailed in 1660 for refusing to condemn the Western Remonstrance, and was later banished to Berwick, Newcastle and Holland. In July 1683 he too was sent to the Bass Rock, and he died shortly after his release.
Two men of one name, related, both Covenanters, both held on the same sea rock within two years. The rule genealogists use to separate them is a modern convention rather than anything the seventeenth century observed: records naming a "Mr. John Spreull," or calling him a writer, generally mean the town clerk, while "Bass John" means the apothecary. Anything beyond that needs the document itself, and much nineteenth-century writing merged the two.
What Does the Name Spreull Mean?
Nobody knows, and the reference works say so.
The Oxford-backed Dictionary of American Family Names gives the parent form Sproul as "Scottish (Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire) and English: unexplained," and treats Sproull as a Scottish variant. That is a dictionary declining to guess, which beats most of what circulates about this surname. Spreull is the west of Scotland spelling in the same cluster, alongside Sproull, Sproul, Sproule and Sprowl.
What it does supply is geography, and that matches the documented history: Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire, meaning Paisley, Renfrew and Glasgow. Names with a firm footprint and no settled etymology run through our survey of lesser-known Celtic surnames.
Where Was Spreull's Land?
At 182 Trongate in Glasgow, and for most of two centuries a city landmark.
The tenement was built in 1784, and its celebrated feature was an elliptical hanging stair rising through the middle of the building, reached by a wide arched pend. Nineteenth-century writers treated it as a small marvel, and the architectural historian Frank Worsdall raised the possibility that Robert or James Adam designed it, while calling the attribution unproven. It was demolished in the twentieth century, and Trongate gives no sign it was ever there.
It went up sixty years after Bass John's death, so read the name as the family's mark on the burgh rather than his own front door. Glasgow families of that period appear in our history of the Aikenhead name, and the Renfrewshire side runs through our account of the Paisley surname.
How Rare Is Spreull Today?
Very. The 1901 census of Scotland recorded ten people spelling it Spreull, ranked 13,083rd. Ten.
Sproull, Sproul and Sproule carried the family forward in far larger numbers, especially through Ulster and into America, so a Spreull researcher is working on a spelling rather than a separate family. Names in this bracket fill our roundup of rare names outside the clan structure. There is no Clan Spreull, no chief has ever been recorded, and the surname is absent from our A to Z of sept names. Renfrewshire names that did form clans, such as the Sempills, stood on land.
How Should a Spreull Line Be Traced?
- Search Spreull, Spreul, Sprewll, Sproull, Sproul and Sproule together. The town clerk alone appears under three of those forms.
- Start in Renfrewshire and Glasgow. With ten bearers nationally, one wrong household contaminates a whole tree.
- Handle Covenanter sources carefully: two John Spreuls of one generation were held on the Bass, and printed martyrologies blur them.
- Work register images on ScotlandsPeople, not index transcriptions. The double L and the E-U sequence are easily miscopied.
- Follow the Sproule spelling into Ulster when the Scottish trail stops, as it often does.
Own a Piece of Spreull Heritage
Sub pondere cresco, under weight I grow, was Bass John's motto, and it suits a surname only ten people in Scotland were carrying by 1901. The Spreull range is a keepsake ornament in a silver frame, a mug and a garden flag, each placing the family crest over a tartan background. Nothing was ever woven for this spelling, so the pattern chosen to sit behind the crest is a designer's decision rather than an inherited one. Our guide to the customs that surround tartan sets that out.
Spreull Surname Crest Garden Flag
Frequently Asked Questions About the Spreull Name
What does the surname Spreull mean?
The standard family-name dictionary calls the parent form Sproul "unexplained" and places it in Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire. On present evidence the meaning is unknown, and any confident translation you meet online is invention.
Is there a Clan Spreull?
No. No chief of the name has been recorded and the surname is not on the recognized sept lists.
Who was Bass John Spreull?
A Glasgow apothecary, born about 1646, tortured twice in the boot in 1680, tried for treason in 1681 on a not proven verdict, and held on the Bass Rock from July 1681 to May 1687. He was the last prisoner off the rock.
Sources and Further Reading
- Dictionary of American Family Names: Sproul — "Scottish (Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire) and English: unexplained."
- Dictionary of American Family Names: Sproull — Sproull as a Scottish variant of Sproul.
- John Spreul, apothecary — the 1680 arrest, the boot, the not proven verdict, the Bass Rock years, and the later herring and pearl trades.
- John Spreul, town clerk of Glasgow — the kinsman, his 1683 imprisonment on the Bass, and the convention for telling the two men apart.
- Frank Worsdall on Spreull's Land — the elliptical hanging stair, the pend, and the unproven Adam attribution.
- Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Journal, May 1958 — 182 Trongate, built 1784, and the stair as one of the sights of the city.
- Spreull in the 1901 Scottish census — 10 bearers, ranked 13,083rd.
- ScotlandsPeople — National Records of Scotland registers and census images for every spelling of the name.
- George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland — where to check early Sprewll and Spreull forms. Its full text was not reachable from this environment, so nothing above rests on it.
Six years on a rock in the Forth, a release order refused until its wording was corrected, and a herring yard at Crawfurd's-dike afterward: browse the Spreull designs, among 2,000-plus other family names.