In 1678 he and sixty other prisoners were to be exiled to the plantations of America. They were taken by Ship to London, there to be transferred to an American ship, but when the captain of this ship found out that the prisoners only crime was to be true christians he refused to take them and so they were set free. Peden returned to Scotland in 1679 to carry on with his work as preacher. He managed to escape capture for the next seven years but then at 60 his lifestyle of living in the wilds had caught up with him and he knew that his life was coming to an end. In 1686 he went to his brother's farm near Auchinleck where he died a few days later. He was secretly buried by friends in Auchinleck churchyard. Six weeks after he was buried the troopers from Sorn Castle, angry that they had never managed to capture Peden, exhumed his body with the intention of hanging the corpse from the gallows on the Barrhill in Old Cumnock, as a warning to others. The Earl of Dumfries forbid them to carry out their hideous plan, so to show contempt for Peden the soldiers buried him at the foot of the gallows. A granite monument erected in 1891 now stands on the spot.

Thomas Richard Beside the monument to Alexander Peden there is a gravestone to the memory of Thomas Richard. He did not belong to Cumnock but came from the farm of Greenock Mains which lies four miles from Muirkirk on the B743 road to Sorn. He was 80 years old and was known by the authorities that he had given shelter to covenanters. He was tricked by soldiers from Sorn Castle pretending to be covenanters and asked him for shelter. They started to ask him question about the others that he had given shelter, realising that he had become suspicious of them the soldiers revealed who they were and arrested him. He was taken to Cumnock and without a trial was shot for harbouring covenanters by troopers under orders from Colonel James Douglas.