The Grahams of Claverhouse were a younger branch of
an old and illustrious family which, from the twelfth
century onwards, bore an important part in Scottish
affairs, and of which several members figured prominently
in the history of the nation prior to the time when the
fame of the house was raised to its highest point by the
‘Great Marquis,’ the ill-fated Montrose.
The Claverhouse offshoot was connected with the main
stock through Sir Robert Graham of Strathcarron, son of
Sir William Graham of Kincardine by his second wife, the
Princess Mary, daughter of King Robert III. During the
early years of the sixteenth century, John Graham of
Balargus, third in descent from Sir William, acquired the
lands of Claverhouse, in Forfarshire, a few miles north of
Dundee. From these his son took the territorial title
which, a few generations later, was to become so feared
and so hated throughout covenanting Scotland, and which,
even at the present day, after the lapse of more than two
hundred years, is still a bye-word and a shaking of the
head to many.
John Graham, the ‘Bloody Claverhouse’ of Whig denunciators,
and the ‘Bonnie Dundee’ of Jacobite apologists,
was the son of William Graham of Claverhouse and Lady
Magdalene Carnegie, fifth and youngest daughter of John,
first Earl of Northesk. On the authority of Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe and of Mark Napier, successive writers
have stated that the mother of the future Viscount was Lady
Jean Carnegie. Sir William Fraser has pointed out, however,
that Lady Jean was only his maternal aunt, and that
she married, not a Claverhouse, but the Master of Spynie.
This mistake as to the name of the mother of Viscount
Dundee, adds the author of the ‘History of the
Carnegies,’ is the more remarkable that she bore the
same Christian name and surname as her cousin, Lady
Magdalene Carnegie, first Marchioness of Montrose.
The precise date of Claverhouse’s birth is not known.
Biographers, accepting Napier’s computation, almost unanimously
assume that it took place about 1643. That is based
on an erroneous deduction from a note to a decision of
the Court of Session, quoted by Fountainhall under date
of the 21st of July 1687. The matter under litigation
was a claim put forward by Fotheringham of Powrie to
levy fish from the boats passing by Broughty Castle. The
Lords decided that his charter gave him sufficient right
and title ‘if so be he had possessed forty years by virtue
of that title.’ With special reference to one of the three
defendants, it was added, ‘as for Clavers, he was seventeen
years of these forty a minor, and so they must prove
forty years before that.’ Napier assuming the seventeen
years of Claverhouse’s minority to have been coincident
with the first seventeen of the forty referred to, argued that,
as a period of forty years prior to 1687 leads back to 1647,
Claverhouse was not twenty-one years of age until seventeen
years after 1647; in other words, that he was of
age about the year 1664, and, consequently, born about
1643. The calculation is ingenious, and the result
plausible; but the marriage contract of Claverhouse’s
parents proves the fallacy of the original assumption from
which everything depends. That authoritative document,
for the discovery of which we are indebted to Sir William
Fraser, was subscribed in 1645; the objection which
that raises to the date worked out by Napier is obviously
insurmountable.
For the approximation thus shown to be erroneous, the
‘Dictionary of National Biography’ substitutes another
which has the merit of being more in accord with the
known dates of some of the events in Claverhouse’s
career. A memorandum preserved at Ethie and noted
in the ‘History of the Carnegies,’ supplies the scrap of
positive evidence upon which it is founded. It shows
that, in 1653, Lady Claverhouse, as tutrix-testamentar to
her son, signed a deed relating to a disposition which she
was bound to make to two of her kinsmen. It is not
improbable that this was done shortly after her husband’s
death. If such were the case, their eldest son, who,
according to the note to the decision of the Court of
Session, was a minor for the space of seventeen years,
would have been four years of age at the time, and must
therefore have been born about the year 1649.
The only information now available concerning the
future Viscount Dundee’s early life, prior to his matriculation
as a student, is supplied by the Roll of the
Burgesses of Dundee, which sets forth that, on the
22nd of September 1660, ‘John Graham of Claverhouse
and David Graham, his brother, were admitted Burgesses
and Brethren of the Guild of Dundee, by reason of their
father’s privilege.’ The register of St Leonard’s College
establishes the fact that the two brothers went up together
to the University of St Andrews towards the beginning of
1665.
This may be looked upon as a strong confirmation of
the date which we have assigned as that of Claverhouse’s
birth. That he should begin his academic course in his
twenty-second year and continue it up to the age of
twenty-five, would have been quite contrary to the custom
of a period when Scottish undergraduates, more particularly
those belonging to the leading families of the country, were
even more youthful than many of them are at the present
day.
It has generally been assumed that Claverhouse remained
at St Andrews for the full period of three years; but the
University register supplies no evidence in support of this.
On the contrary, the absence of John Graham’s name from
the list of those of his class-mates who graduated in due
course, justifies the belief that his studies were brought to
a premature close before 1668. To what extent he availed
himself of the opportunities afforded him during such stay
as he may have made at St Andrews, is a matter with
regard to which proof is wholly wanting and testimony only
bare and vague.
Dr Monro, the Principal of the College of Edinburgh,
in his answer to the charge brought against him on the
ground of ‘his rejoicing the day that the news of Claverhouse
his victory came to the town,’ admitted that he
had not ‘rejoiced at the fall of my Lord Dundee,’ for
whom he ‘had an extraordinary value’; and he challenged
any ‘gentleman, soldier, scholar or civilized citizen’ to find
fault with him for holding the fallen leader’s memory in
respect. From this, the utterance of one well qualified
by personal acquaintance to form a competent judgment,
and unlikely, from his training and education to express it
in inconsiderate terms of meaningless exaggeration, it has
been argued that the subject of Monro’s eulogy must have
possessed the attainments upon which men of culture
naturally set store. In support of this warrantable inference,
there is the statement of a writer who, though not
a contemporary, is undeniably a well-informed chronicler.
The author of the Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron says
that Claverhouse ‘had ane education suitable to his birth
and genius.’ According to the same authority, he ‘made
a considerable progress in the mathematicks, especially in
those parts of it that related to his military capacity; and
there was no part of the Belles Lettres which he had not
studyed with great care and exactness. He was much
master in the epistolary way of writeing; for he not onely
expressed himself with great ease and plaineness, but argued
well, and had a great art in giving his thoughts in few words.’
Burnet, who, though a connection of Claverhouse’s,
is very far from displaying any partiality for him,
allows that he was ‘a man of good parts.’ Dalrymple
records that ‘Dundee had inflamed his mind from his
earliest youth, by the perusal of antient poets, historians
and orators, with the love of the great actions they praise
and describe.’ Finally, there is the testimony of the
‘officer’ who wrote the ‘Memoirs of Dundee’ published
in 1714, and who makes direct reference to his ‘liberal
education in humanity and in mathematicks.’
The question of Claverhouse’s scholarship is not one
of special moment in itself; yet it acquires some interest
from the animated controversy to which it has given rise,
and which originated in a hasty comment made by Sir
Walter Scott. The novelist, after referring to a newly
published letter, casually added, ‘Claverhouse, it may be
observed, spells like a chambermaid.’ Subsequent writers,
interpreting this into a general estimate of Dundee’s educational
acquirements, repeated the petty and irrelevant
charge, in season and out of season, almost as though the
quality of his orthography constituted a test by which his
whole character was to be estimated. That Claverhouse
was erratic in his spelling cannot be denied. It may be
questioned, on the other hand, whether, in this respect,
he displayed greater disregard for orthography than the
average gentleman of his day. If he wrote ‘I hop’ for
‘I hope,’ ‘deuk’ for ‘Duke,’ ‘seased’ for ‘seized,’ ‘fisik’ for
‘physic,’ and ‘childring’ for ‘children,’ it does not require
a very extensive acquaintance with the correspondence of
the seventeenth century to know that dukes and earls,
and even lawyers and divines, indulged in vagaries equally
startling. But, if the arbitrary and occasionally whimsical
spelling of his letters affords no proof of exceptional ignorance,
the vigour, clearness, and directness of the style in
which they are written give them a place rather above than
below the epistolatory standard of the time.
After leaving St Andrews, Claverhouse, following the
example set by so many generations of his countrymen,
and notably by his illustrious kinsman, the Marquis of
Montrose, repaired to the Continent, with the intention
of devoting himself to a military career. According to his
earliest biographer, ‘an Officer of the Army,’ he ‘spent
some time in the French service as a volunteer, with great
reputation and applause.’ This is repeated rather than
confirmed by the author of the ‘Memoirs of Sir Ewan
Cameron of Lochiel,’ with the addition, it is true, of
the statement that it was ‘under the famous Marishall
Turenne’ the young soldier received his first training.
Dalrymple, without supplying precise information, records
that Claverhouse ‘entered the profession of arms with an
opinion he ought to know the services of different nations,
and the duties of different ranks,’ that, ‘with this view he
went into several foreign services,’ and that ‘when he
could not obtain a command,’ he served as a volunteer.
The most trustworthy evidence in support of the statement
that Claverhouse served and fought in the armies
of France, is that of James Philip of Almerieclose, his
standard-bearer at Killiecrankie, who, in later years, devoted
a Latin epic to the memory and the praise of the gallant
Graham. Referring to his hero, he says, ‘The French
camps on the Loire, where Orleans lifts her towers, and
on the Seine, where her increased waters lave the city of
Paris, have beheld him triumphant over the defeated
enemy, stained with the blood-marks of relentless war.’
The passage is, unfortunately, one in which the author
has so obviously taken poetical liberty with historical
facts, that his words cannot be taken literally. As the
editor and translator of the poem points out, ‘there could
have been no fighting on the Seine or Loire.’ Whether,
on the other hand, it be probable that ‘camps of instruction
were there, from which young soldiers were sent to
the front,’ is a matter of little moment. Even without
such explanation the passage is valuable as evidence. It
may be accepted as definitively establishing the fact that
it was in France Claverhouse first learnt the art of war.
It has been further conjectured that he may have belonged
to the contingent of 6000 English and Scottish troops,
which, under the leadership of Monmouth, joined Turenne’s
army in 1672. If such were the case, the duration of
his service must have been brief. There is evidence to
prove that, by the summer of 1674, he had transferred his
allegiance to William of Orange, and that he was present
at the battle of Seneff, fought in August of that year; and
there are grounds for believing that he was directly instrumental
in rescuing the Prince from a perilous situation.
Macaulay, it is true, rejects the story as ‘invented’ by
some Jacobite many years after both William and Dundee
were dead. That, however, appears to have been hastily
done, on the erroneous assumption that the account of the
alleged incident went no further back than the Memoirs
of 1714. They, indeed, do state of Claverhouse, that, ‘at
the battle of St Neff, 1674, when the Prince of Orange
was dismounted, and in great danger of being taken, he
rescued him, and brought him off upon his own horse.’
But this does not constitute the sole authority. In addition
to it, there is that of the Memoirs of Lochiel. It
is the more valuable that the author bases his own narrative
on the Latin epic to which, in the following passage, he
refers as one of the sources of his compilation. ‘Besides
the assistance I have from the Earl of Balcarres his
memoirs of the wars, and the several relations I have
had of them from many who were eyewitnesses, I have
before me a manuscript copy of an historical Latin poem
called “The Grameis,” written in imitation of Lucan’s
“Pharsalia,” but unfinished, by Mr Philips of Amryclos,
who had the office of standard-bearer during that famous
expedition’ in the Highlands. From Philips he not only
draws the incident of Seneff, but also gives a rough translation
in English verse, of the passage commemorating
this ‘vigorous exploit.’ It runs thus:—
‘When the feirce Gaule, thro’ Belgian stanks yow fled,
Fainting, alone, and destitute of aid,
While the proud victor urg’d your doubtfull fate,
And your tir’d courser sunk beneath your weight,
Did I not mount you on my vigorous steed,
And save your person by his fatal speed?’
Until recently, Philips’ poem existed in manuscript
only. That circumstance consequently gives the value of
distinct contemporary evidence to another effusion, of
which the author cannot be suspected of having drawn from
the ‘Grameis’ his allusion, unfortunately only a vague one,
to the exploits of Claverhouse whilst serving under the
Prince of Orange. Moreover, it was as early as January
1683, that is several years before the occurrence of the
leading events celebrated in the ‘Grameis,’ that the
anonymous rhymer published ‘The Muse’s New Year’s
Gift, and Hansell, to the right honoured Captain John
Graham of Claverhouse.’ In that poem the following
lines are to be found:—
‘I saw the man who at St Neff did see
His conduct, prowess, martial gallantry:
He wore a white plumach that day; not one
Of Belgians wore a white, but him alone;
And though that day was fatal, yet he fought,
And for his part fair triumphs with him brought.’
Once, at least, during the period of his military service
under the Dutch, Claverhouse returned to Scotland. He
was in Edinburgh in March 1676. From there he wrote
two letters to John Stewart, younger of Garntully, about
the purchase of a horse and the gift of a ‘setting dogue.’
By the beginning of the following month he had again left
the country; for, in a letter written by his directions after
his hurried departure, and dated the 4th of April, the hope
is expressed that ‘this day hie is in Holland.’ He was
not to continue in the pay of the States-General much
longer. The very next year he resigned his commission,
and came home to solicit employment in the British Army.
To account for this apparently sudden determination, the
author of the Memoirs of Lochiel relates a highly dramatic
incident, for which, it must be added, there is no authority
but his own, and of which the details are not such as to
command unhesitating belief. After having given his
account of William’s rescue by Claverhouse, at Seneff, the
chronicler continues:—
‘The Prince, in reward of this service, gave him a
Captain’s commission, and promised him the first regiment
that should fall in the way; and some years thereafter,
there happening a vacancy in one of the Scotch regiments,
he stood candidate for it, not only upon the assurance of
that promise, but also of the letters he procured from King
Charles and the Duke of York, recommending him to the
Prince, in very strong terms. But, notwithstanding of all
this, the Prince preferred Mr Collier, a son of the Earl of
Portmore, to the regiment. The Prince then resided at
his Palace of the Loo; and Captain Grahame, who was
absent while this intrigue was carrying on, chanceing to meet
Mr Collier in the Palace Court, expostulated the matter in
very harsh terms, and gave him some blows with his cane.
‘The Prince either saw or was soon informed of what
passed, and ordering Captain Grahame, who had been
seized by the officer of the guards, to be brought before
him, he asked him how he dared to strick any person
within the verge of his Palace? The Captain answered,
that he was indeed in the wrong, since it was more his
Highness his business to have resented that quarrel than
his; because Mr Collier had less injured him in disappointing
him of the regiment, than he had done his Highness
in making him breck his word. Then replyed the Prince,
in an angry tone, “I make yow full reparation, for I bestow
on yow what is more valuable than a regiment, when I give
yow your right arm!” The Captain subjoyned, that since
his Highness had the goodness to give him his liberty, he
resolved to employ himself elsewhere, for he would not
serve a Prince longer that had brock his word.
‘The Captain having thus thrown up his commission was
preparing in haste for his voyage, when a messenger arrived
from the Prince with two hundred guineas for the horse on
which he had saved his life. The Captain sent the horse
but ordered the gold to be distributed among the grooms
of the Prince’s stables. It is said, however, that his Highness
had the generosity to wryte to the King and the Duke
recommending him as a fine gentleman, and a brave officer,
fitt for any office, civil or military.’
In the “Life of Lieutenant-General Hugh Mackay,” the
account given is more summary: ‘About this time,’ it is
said, ‘the lieutenant-colonelcy of one of the regiments,
forming the Scottish brigade, falling vacant, two candidates
started for the appointment, both excellent officers, but
men of characters widely different. These were Graham
of Claverhouse, then an officer in the Prince’s service,
afterwards notorious for his unrelenting cruelties to the
Covenanters in the West of Scotland, and Mackay,
characterised by Bishop Burnet, as the most pious military
man he ever knew. The Prince preferred Mackay, which
gave such mortal offence to his rival, that he instantly
quitted the service and returned to Scotland, burning with
resentment against the authors of his disappointment.’
Neither of these two narratives is contemporary. But the
more circumstantial embodies the Jacobite legend current
in the early years of the eighteenth century, whilst the
briefer is founded on the tradition preserved in the family
of Claverhouse’s Whig opponent. The one point on which
they both agree may therefore be accepted with some
confidence; and it seems plausible to ascribe Captain
Graham’s withdrawal from the Dutch service to the dissatisfaction
which he felt at the inadequate recognition of
his claims to promotion.
Claverhouse experienced no difficulty in obtaining
employment under his own sovereign. Two letters
bearing on the subject have been preserved. They are
both written by his relative, the Marquis of Montrose;
one of them is addressed to him, the other to the Laird of
Monorgan, who was also a Graham. The former is as
follows:—
‘For the Laird of Claverhouse.
‘Sir,—You cannot imagine how overjoyed I should be,
to have any employment at my disposal that were worthy
of your acceptance; nor how much I am ashamed to offer
you anything so far below your merit as that of being my
Lieutenant; though I be fully persuaded that it will be
a step to a much more considerable employment, and will
give you occasion to confirm the Duke in the just and
good opinion which I do assure you he has of you; he
being a person that judges not of people’s worth by the
rank they are in.
‘I do not know, after all this, in what terms, nor
with what confidence, I can express my desire to have
you accept this mean and inconsiderable offer; whether
by endeavouring to magnify it all I can, and telling
you, that it is the first troop of the Duke of York’s
regiment; that I am to raise it in Scotland; and that I
pretend that none but gentlemen should ride in it; or,
by telling you that I am promised to be very quickly
advanced, and that you shall either succeed to me, or
share with me in my advancement. I can say no more,
but that you will oblige me in it beyond expression.
‘I do not expect any answer to this while I am here; for
I do resolve to be in Edinburgh against the first or second
day of the next month; where, if you be not already, I
earnestly entreat you would be pleased to meet me.—Sir,
Your most affectionate cousin and servant,
'London, February 19th [1677-8].'Montrose.'
From this letter, it has been assumed that Claverhouse
had previously made application to his kinsman and
titular chief. There can, indeed, hardly be a doubt that
it is a reply to a previous request. On the other hand,
however, the second letter, written on the same day, does
not altogether bear out this view. It was thus:—
‘For the Laird of Monorgan.
‘Sir,—I hope now to be able, within a week or ten
days, to give you an account, by word of mouth, of my
resolutions, and the reasons I have for accepting a troop
in the Duke of York’s regiment of horse; so I shall
forbear troubling you with a long letter; only I must tell
you that I have all along met with a great deal of favour
from his Royal Highness, and that he has assured me that
this shall be but a step to a more considerable employment.
‘He has a very good opinion of Claverhouse, and he
bid me endeavour by all means to get him for my
Lieutenant. Therefore, I most earnestly beg that you
would be pleased to represent to him the advantages
he may have by being near the Duke, and by making
himself better known to him. And withal assure him
from me, that, if he will embrace this offer, he shall also
share with me in my advancement and better fortune. I
need not use many words to show you the disparity that
is betwixt serving under me and anybody else, though of
greater family, he being of my house, and descended of
my family.
‘You may say more to this purpose than is fit for me
to do. I shall say no more but that by this you will
infinitely oblige.—Sir, Your most affectionate cousin and
servant,
'London, February 19th [1677-8].'Montrose.'
It is not necessary to look upon this, with Napier, as
‘conclusive against the conjecture that Claverhouse had
applied for this service,’ and as affording proof that the
commission was spontaneously offered him in recognition
of his military abilities. It is more plausible in itself, and
more in accordance with the purport of both letters, to
believe that Claverhouse had solicited employment from
the Duke of York, with whom a recommendation from the
Prince of Orange, who had lately become his son-in-law,
was likely to possess considerable influence; that James
had referred the applicant to the young Marquis, who was
then raising a troop for the Duke’s regiment of horse-guards;
and that he had, at the same time urged Montrose
to secure the services of an officer so brave and so able as
Claverhouse had already shown himself to be.
It is not clear whether Claverhouse was really called
upon to do duty as a mere subaltern. If so, it was but for
a few months. As early as the 21st of November 1678,
the Marquis of Montrose superseded the Marquis of
Athole as commander of the Royal Horse Guards in Scotland;
and the opportunity thus afforded of fulfilling the
promise recently made to his kinsman was not neglected.
Claverhouse was at once promoted to the vacant post, and
thus began that part of his career which was to make him
so prominent in the history of his country.
II THE COVENANT AND THE COVENANTERS
On the 14th of May 1678, a letter addressed to the King
by his Privy Council in Scotland, contained a suggestion
of which the adoption was destined to exercise an important
influence on Claverhouse’s career. It was written in
answer to a prior communication, which it sufficiently
explains, and ran as follows:—
‘We have of late had divers informations of numerous
field-conventicles kept in several places of the kingdom,
who, with armed men, have in many places resisted
your authority, and which by your letter, we find has
reached your ears, and seeing these insolences are daily
iterated, and are still upon the growing hand, and that
your Majesty is graciously pleased to ask our advice, for
raising of more forces,—It’s our humble opinion that,
for the present exigent, there may be two company of
dragoons, each consisting of one hundred, presently raised,
whose constant employment may be for dissipating and
interrupting those rendezvouses of rebellion; and therefore
we have recommended to the Major-General, the speedy
raising of them; and your Majesty may be pleased to give
commissions to such qualified persons as the Major-General
hath, at our desire, given in a list, to command
these two companies; or to what other persons your
Majesty shall think fit.’
In accordance with the advice conveyed in this letter,
measures were forthwith taken for raising two additional
companies. When formed and officered they were sent
to join the troop which Claverhouse already commanded.
At the head of this body of some three hundred men he
was entrusted with the difficult task of ‘dissipating and
interrupting’ the conventicles in the western and south-western
districts of Scotland.
To understand the principles, motives, and aims of those
against whom Claverhouse was now called upon to take
action, it is necessary to recall the circumstances which
accompanied and some of the events which followed the
signing in 1643, of the ‘Solemn League and Covenant for
Reformation and Defence of Religion, the Honour and
Happiness of the King, and the Peace and Safety of the
three kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland.’
In the month of August of that year, the respective committees
of the General Assembly and of the Convention of
Estates had submitted to those bodies a draft of the document,
as it had been drawn up by them, after consultation
and deliberation with the Committee of the English
Parliament. It had been duly sanctioned, and adopted as
the most powerful means, by the blessing of God, for
settling and preserving the true Protestant religion, with a
perfect peace in all his Majesty’s dominions, and propagating
the same to other nations, and for establishing his
Majesty’s throne to all ages and generations.
Two months later—on the 11th of October—the commissioners
of the General Assembly issued an ordinance
for the solemn receiving, swearing, and subscribing of the
League and Covenant. It contained special injunctions to
the Presbyteries that they should take account of the performance
thereof in their several bounds; that they should
proceed with the censures of the Kirk against all such as
should refuse or shift to swear and subscribe, as enemies to
the preservation and propagation of religion; and that they
should notify their names and make particular report of
them to the Commission.
On the next day, the Commissioners of the Convention
of Estates, in their turn issued a proclamation by which,
supplementing the censures of the Church, they ordained
as a penalty on those who should ‘postpone or refuse,’ that
they should ‘have their goods and rents confiscate for the
use of the public,’ and that they should not ‘bruik nor
enjoy any benefit, place nor office within this kingdom.’
The Covenant, which these ordinances thus required the
people of Scotland to subscribe, consisted in an oath
binding them to support the reformed religion in the
Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and
government, according to the Word of God, and the
example of the best reformed Churches; to endeavour
to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms to
the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession
of faith, form of Church government, directory
for worship, and catechising; to strive, without respect
of persons, for the extirpation of popery, prelacy (that
is, Church government by archbishops, bishops, their
chancellors and commissaries, deans and chapters, archdeacons,
and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on
that hierarchy), superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness
and whatsoever should be found to be contrary to sound
doctrine and the power of godliness; to endeavour to
preserve the rights and privileges of the Parliaments, and
the liberties of the kingdoms, and to preserve and defend
the King’s person and authority, in the preservation and
defence of the true religion and liberties of the kingdoms;
to endeavour to discover all such as had been, or should
be, incendiaries, malignants, or evil instruments, by hindering
the reformation of religion, dividing the King from his
people, or one of the kingdoms from another, or making
any factions or parties amongst the people, contrary to
the League and Covenant, that they might be brought
to public trial, and receive condign punishment, as the
degree of their offences should require or deserve, or
the supreme judicatories of both kingdoms, respectively,
or others having power from them for that effect, should
judge convenient; and, finally, to assist and defend all
those that entered into this League and Covenant, and
not to suffer themselves, directly or indirectly by whatsoever
combination, persuasion, or terror, to be withdrawn
from this blessed union and conjunction, whether to make
defection to the contrary part, or to give themselves to a
detestable indifference, or neutrality.
If, at its origin, the Covenant of 1643 was practically
a treaty between the heads of the Presbyterian party in
Scotland and the leading Parliamentarians in England, it
entered upon a new phase after the execution of Charles I.
Notwithstanding the hostile attitude of the Presbyterians
towards the King himself, they were strongly opposed to
the subversion of the monarchical form of government.
On the 5th of February, six days after the King’s death,
and one day earlier than the formal abolition of the
monarchy by the English House of Commons, the
Scottish Estates of Parliament passed an Act by which
Prince Charles, then in Holland, was proclaimed King, in
succession to his father. Following upon this, a deputation
was sent to the Hague to invite Charles to come
over and take possession of the throne of his ancestors.
As a preliminary condition, however, it was required that
he should give adhesion to the principles set forth in the
Solemn Covenant. This he hesitated to do; and the
commissioners returned, well pleased, indeed, with “the
sweet and courteous disposition” of the Prince, but disappointed
at the failure of their mission, owing to the
pernicious influence of the “very evil generation, both of
English and Scots,” by whom he was surrounded.
A second deputation, sent shortly after this, to treat with
the Prince at Breda, was more successful. Charles, seeing
no other way open to him of regaining possession of the
throne, gave his consent to the demands of the commissioners.
In June 1650, he returned to Scotland. On
the 1st of January 1651, he was crowned at Scone.
Before taking the oath of coronation, and after the full
text of the Solemn League and Covenant had been distinctly
read to him, kneeling and lifting up his right hand,
he assured and declared, on his oath, in the presence of
Almighty God, the searcher of hearts, his allowance and
approbation of all it set forth, and faithfully obliged
himself to prosecute the ends it had in view, in his
station and calling. He bound himself in advance to
consent and agree to all Acts of Parliament establishing
Presbyterial government; to observe their provisions
in his own practice and family; and never to make
opposition to them or endeavour to make any change
in them.
It was not till nearly ten years later that Charles II. was
really restored to the throne. The event was hailed with
joy by the Presbyterians, who looked upon it as the accession
of a covenanting king, and who founded their hopes, not
only on the promise made at Scone, but also on a letter
which Charles had forwarded, through Sharp, to the Presbytery
of Edinburgh, to be communicated to all the Presbyteries
in Scotland, and in which he expressed his resolve to
protect and preserve the government of the Church of
Scotland, as settled by law, without violation.
But the law itself was to be modified in such a manner as
to enable the King to violate the spirit of his promise whilst
leaving him a verbal quibble with which to justify his breach
of faith. On the 9th of February an Act was passed annulling
the Parliament and Committees of 1649, that is, declaring
those proceedings to be illegal, by which Presbyterianism
had been established on its firmest foundations. Less
than three weeks later, two other Acts were passed with a
view to preparing the way for a complete revolution in
Church matters. The first of them, known as the Act
Rescissory, had for its objects the annulling of the ‘pretended
Parliaments’ of the years 1640, 1641, 1644, 1645, 1646,
and 1648—a measure which Principal Baillie described at
the time as ‘pulling down all our laws at once which
concerned our Church since 1633.’ The other, which
purported to be ‘concerning religion and Church government,’
was substantially an assertion and recognition of the
King’s claim to be considered as head of the Church. It
declared that it was his full and firm intention to maintain
the true reformed Protestant religion in its purity of
doctrine and worship, as it had been established within
the kingdom during the reigns of his father and of his
grandfather; to promote the power of godliness; to encourage
the exercises of religion, both public and private;
and to suppress all profaneness and disorderly walking; and
that, for this end he would give all due countenance and
protection to the ministers of the Gospel, ‘they containing
themselves within the bounds and limits of their ministerial
calling and behaving themselves with that submission and
obedience to his Majesty’s authority and commands that
is suitable to the allegiance and duty of good subjects.’
A concluding clause provided that, notwithstanding the
Rescissory Act, the ‘present administration by sessions,
presbyteries, and synods—they keeping within bounds
and behaving themselves’—should, ‘in the meantime’
be ‘allowed.’
The official toleration of Presbyterianism lasted till the
27th of May 1662. On that day an Act of Parliament,
after declaring in its preamble that the ordering and disposal
of the external government and policy of the Church
properly belonged to the King, as an inherent right of the
Crown, and by virtue of his royal prerogative and supremacy
in causes ecclesiastical, proceeded to re-establish the ancient
government of the Church by the sacred order of Bishops.
A further step was taken on the 5th of September of
the same year by the imposition of a test on all persons
in public trust. Before entering upon the duties of any
office under the Crown, they were called upon to subscribe
a declaration setting forth that they judged it unlawful in
subjects, under pretence of reformation, or for any motive,
to enter into leagues and covenants; that they more
especially considered the Solemn League and Covenant to
have been contrary to the fundamental laws and liberties
of the kingdom; and that they repudiated any obligation
laid upon them by their former sworn recognition and
acceptance of this bond.
As a sequel, an Act not of Parliament but of Council,
ordained that the Covenant should be burnt by the hand of
the common hangman. Prior to this, however, on the 11th
of June 1662, an Act concerning such benefices and stipends
as had been possessed without presentations from the lawful
patrons deprived the Church of the right claimed by it of
calling and choosing its own ministers. Under its provisions,
no minister admitted subsequently to the year 1649 could
possess any legal claim to his stipend unless he obtained a new
presentation, and collation from the bishop of the diocese.
The number of those that consented to make the
required application was so small that it was thought
necessary to have recourse to the Privy Council for
the purpose of enforcing the new law. On the 1st of
October, an order was issued which deprived the recusant
ministers of their parishes, and required them, with their
families, to remove beyond the bounds of their respective
presbyteries before the first day of the following November.
The Archbishop of Glasgow, at whose instance this coercive
measure was adopted, had asserted that there would not
be ten in his diocese who refused compliance, under
dread of such a penalty. The result falsified his prediction.
Nearly four hundred ministers throughout Scotland
abandoned their benefices, and subjected themselves and
their families to the hardships and privations of banishment
rather than recognise the new modelling of the Church.
In many cases the ejection of the ministers and the
loss of their stipends did not prevent them from continuing
the duties of their office. Secret meetings, either in
private houses or in secluded localities, replaced the
ordinary services of the Church. For the purpose of
checking this violation of the law, the Council, on the 13th
of August 1663, again intervened with an Act. It commanded
and charged all ministers appointed in, or since,
the year 1649, who had not subsequently obtained presentations
from the patrons, and yet continued to preach or to
exercise any duty proper to the functions of the ministry,
either at the parish churches or in any other place, to
remove themselves, their families and their goods, within
twenty days, out of their respective parishes, and not to
reside within twenty miles of them, nor within six miles of
Edinburgh or any cathedral church, or three miles of any
burgh within the kingdom.
In 1665, this Act was extended so as to include the older
ministers, that is, those who had obtained their livings prior
to the year 1649; and, on the same day, a proclamation
against conventicles and meetings for religious exercises was
published. It warned all such as should be present at these
unlawful gatherings, that they would be looked upon as
seditious persons, and should be punished by fining, confining
and other corporal punishments, according to the judgment
of the Privy Council, or any having the King’s authority.
To replace the recusant clergy, a number of ministers,
King’s curates, as they were called, had been appointed by
the bishops. They were so coldly received by the people
that, to provide them with congregations, the Privy Council
commanded all loyal subjects to frequent the ordinary
meetings of public worship in their own parish churches;
and required magistrates to treat those who kept away as
though they were Sabbath breakers, and to punish them by
the infliction of a fine of twenty shillings for each absence.
These measures having proved ineffective, the pecuniary
penalty was greatly increased by a subsequent Act of Parliament.
For refusing to recognise the curates, each nobleman,
gentleman or heritor was to lose a fourth part of his yearly
revenue; every yeoman, tenant or farmer was to forfeit
such a proportion of his free moveables (after the payment
of the rents due to the master and landlord) as the Privy
Council should think fit, but not exceeding a fourth part
of them; and every burgess was to be deprived of the
privilege of merchandising and trading, and of all other
‘liberties within burgh,’ in addition to the confiscation of
a fourth part of his moveable goods. Further, to prevent
any evasion of the law against conventicles, proclamations
issued at various times, prohibited all preaching and
praying in families, if more than three persons, besides
the members of the household, were present; and made
landlords, magistrates and heads of families answerable
for the default of those under their charge to conform to
the episcopal government and ritual.
It was not the intention of those who had instigated this
coercive and penal legislation that it should remain a dead
letter. As a means of enforcing obedience to it and of
levying the fines imposed upon those who would not yield
dutiful submission, troops were sent into the discontented
districts. The south-western counties, in which the Covenanters
were most numerous and most determined, were
entrusted to Sir James Turner. His orders were to punish
recalcitrant families by quartering his men on them, and, if
they remained obstinate, to distrain their goods and gear,
and to sell them in discharge of the fines incurred. It was
the carrying out of these instructions that first led to armed
resistance on the part of the Covenanters.
The immediate cause of the rising, however, is conflictingly
stated by different writers. Kirkton’s version of the
occurrence, which has been reproduced almost literally by
Wodrow, is to the effect that, on the 13th of November
1666, four of the men who had abandoned their homes on
the appearance of the military, coming, in the course of their
wanderings, towards the old clachan of Dalry, in Galloway,
to seek refreshment after long fasting, providentially met,
upon the highway, three or four soldiers driving before them
a company of people, for the purpose of compelling them
to thresh the corn of a poor old neighbour of theirs, who
had also fled from his house, and from whom the church
fines, as they were called, were to be exacted in this way.
‘This,’ says Kirkton, ‘troubled the poor countrymen very
much, yet they passed it in silence, till, coming to the
house where they expected refreshment, they were informed
the soldiers had seized the poor old man, and were about
to bind him and set him bare upon a hot iron gird-iron,
there to torment him in his own house. Upon this they
ran to relieve the poor man, and coming to his house,
desired the soldiers to let the poor man go, which the
soldiers refused, and so they fell to words; whereupon two
of the soldiers rushing out of the chamber with drawn
swords, and making at the countrymen, had almost killed
two of them behind their backs, and unawares; the
countrymen having weapons, one of them discharged his
pistol, and hurt one of the soldiers with the piece of a
tobacco pipe with which he had loaded his pistol instead
of ball. This made the soldiers deliver their arms and
prisoner.’
The accuracy of the account given by Kirkton has been
denied. Burnet distinctly asserts that ‘this was a story
made only to beget compassion’; that after the insurrection
was quashed, the Privy Council sent commissioners to
examine into the violences that had been committed, particularly
in the parish where this was alleged to have been
done; that he himself read the report they made to the
Council, and all the depositions taken by them from the
people of the district, but that no such violence on the
part of the military was mentioned in any one of them.
The wounded soldier himself, one George Deanes, a corporal
in Sir Alexander Thomson’s company, from whose
body ten pieces of tobacco pipe were subsequently extracted
by the surgeon, told Sir James Turner that he was
shot because he would not take the covenanting oath.
Whether premeditated and concerted, or merely ‘an
occasional tumult upon a sudden fray,’ this attack on the
military was the signal for a gathering of the discontented
peasantry of the district. On the morrow, the four countrymen,
one of whom was M’Lelland of Boscob, being joined
by six or seven others, fell upon a second party of soldiers.
One of these, having offered resistance was killed; his
comrades, about a dozen in number, according to Kirkton,
quietly gave up their arms. Within two days the insurgents
had recruited about fourscore horse and two
hundred foot. Proceeding to Dumfries, where Turner
then lay with only a few of his soldiers, the greater number
of them being scattered about the country in small parties,
for the purpose of levying the fines, they seized him, together
with the papers and the money in his possession,
and carried him off as a prisoner. After this, ‘in their
abundant loyalty,’ as Wodrow characterises it, they went
to the Cross and publicly drank to the health of the King
and the prosperity of his Government.
In daily increasing numbers the insurgents marched
towards Edinburgh. At Lanark, where all the contingents
they could expect from the south and west had already
joined them, and where ‘this rolling snow-ball was at the
biggest,’ they were estimated at some three thousand.
Here they renewed the Solemn League and Covenant.
In spite of repeated warnings from men who, whilst fully
sympathising with them, yet understood the hopeless nature
of the enterprise in which they were engaged, the leaders
determined to push on towards the capital. But the
enthusiasm of many amongst their followers was beginning
to wane; and by the time Colinton was reached, the ill-armed
and undisciplined crowd had dwindled down again
to a bare thousand. Then at length, even those who
had previously rejected the well-meant advice of their
more cautious friends, and had declared that, having been
called by the Lord to this undertaking, they would not
retire till he who bade them come should likewise command
them to go, became conscious of their desperate
plight, and consented to a retreat towards the west.
Turning the eastern extremity of the Pentland hills, they
directed their march towards Biggar.
But it was too late. Dalziel, the governor of Edinburgh,
who, at the head of a hastily mustered body of regulars,
had been sent out to intercept them, came upon them at
Rullion Green, on the evening of the 28th of November.
A sharp engagement followed. Twice in the course of it
success seemed to favour the insurgents; but in the end
the military training and the superior weapons of their
opponents prevailed, and the Covenanters were scattered
in headlong flight. Of the soldiers, only five fell. On
the other side there were about forty killed and a hundred
and thirty taken. These prisoners were next day marched
into Edinburgh. They might all have saved their lives
if they had consented to renounce the Covenant; but
their refusal to do so was severely punished. According
to Burnet, who certainly does not exaggerate the number
who suffered the death penalty, ten were hanged upon one
gibbet in Edinburgh, and thirty-five more were sent to be
hanged up before their own doors. Many were transported
across the seas. The torture of the boot and of
the thumbkins—the latter said to have been introduced
by Dalziel, who had learnt their use in Russia, where he
served for a time—was freely applied in the hope of
wringing from the prisoners the admission that the rising
was part of a concerted plot for the subversion of the
existing government. They all strenuously denied it.
That shortly prior to this, a conspiracy had been formed
for this object is a well established fact. A document
discovered by Dr M’Crie in the Dutch archives and published
by him in his edition of the Memoirs of Veitch,
shows that a plan was formed, in July 1666, for seizing on
the principal forts in the kingdom, and that ‘the persons
embarked in this scheme had carried on a correspondence
with the Government of the United Provinces then at war
with Great Britain, and received promises of assistance
from that quarter.’ Another document referred to by the
same writer asserts that the castles of Edinburgh, Stirling,
and Dumbarton were amongst those to be taken possession
of. Whether this Dutch plot and the Galloway insurrection
were connected with each other, is a point with regard
to which historians have maintained conflicting opinions
in accordance with their own sympathies. The strongest
evidence that Napier is able to adduce, on the one side,
is the fact that a Mr Wallace is mentioned as one of those
in correspondence with Holland, and that Colonel James
Wallace was the leader of the insurgents whom Dalziel
routed at Rullion Green. But, on the other hand, it is
pointed out by Dr M’Crie that, as the other names are
obviously fictitious, this coincidence affords no ground
for supposing that the Colonel was the person referred
to.
For many months after the Pentland rout, the harrying
of the late insurgents continued; but, at length, the
political changes which placed the administration of the
country into the hands of Lauderdale, also marked the
inauguration of a more lenient policy towards the Presbyterians.
On the 15th of July 1669, a letter was communicated
to the Council, in which the King signified his
desire that it should authorise as many of the ejected
ministers as had lived peaceably in the places where they
had resided, to return and preach, and exercise the other
functions of their office in the parish churches which they
formerly occupied, providing these were vacant. Ministers
who took collation from the bishop of the diocese and kept
presbyteries and synods, might be allowed to receive their
stipends. The others were not to be permitted ‘to meddle
with the local stipend, but only to possess the manse and
glebe.’
This concession proved of little effect. The few who
availed themselves of the ‘Indulgence’—two and forty in
all, according to Wodrow—were looked upon as renegades
by the irreconcilables, and found no more toleration at their
hands than the curates had done. The moderate Presbyterians
who accepted the ‘indulged’ clergy were denounced
as traitors to the cause. The conventicles which it had
been hoped the new measure would suppress, began to
assume a more desperate character, as the gatherings of
those who, in their unbending determination to abide by
the very letter of the Covenant, declared themselves freed
from their allegiance to a king whom they considered as
perjured, and against whose agents, as malignant persecutors
of the true religion, they believed themselves justified in
adopting the most violent measures. It is of these extremists
that the covenanting party now consisted.
It has been urged that these new developments were
too natural, in the circumstances of the time, not to have
been anticipated, by some, at least, of those who were
responsible for the government of the country. They have
consequently been credited with the deliberate intention
not only of causing a disruption in the ranks of the Presbyterians,
but also of making the expected refusal of the
indulgence a pretext for further and sterner measures of
coercion. If such were the case, the machiavellian policy
was successful. Within six months, the old system of
penal legislation was again adopted. On the 3rd of February
1670, a proclamation prohibiting conventicles under
heavy penalties was issued by the Council. It was
followed in August by an Act of Parliament which made
it illegal for outed ministers not licensed by the Council
or for any other persons not authorised or tolerated by the
bishop of the diocese, to preach, expound Scripture, or
pray in any meeting, except in their own houses and to
members of their own family. Such as should be convicted
of disobedience to this law were to be imprisoned
till they found security, to the amount of five thousand
merks, for their future good behaviour. Persons attending
meetings of this kind were to be heavily fined, according
to their respective conditions, for each separate offence.
Against outdoor meetings, or ‘field conventicles,’ the law
was still more severe. Death was to be the penalty for
preaching or praying at them, or even for convening them.
A reward of five hundred merks was offered to any of his
Majesty’s subjects who should seize and secure the person
of an active conventicler. As a further inducement, a
subsequent proclamation made over to the captor the
fine incurred by the offender he secured.
Amongst the many devices resorted to at this time,
with a view to enforcing conformity, there is one which,
because of its immediate consequences, is deserving of
special mention. In October 1677, the Council addressed
a letter to the Earls of Glencairn and Dundonald and to
Lord Ross, requiring them to call together the heritors of
the shires of Ayr and Renfrew, and to urge on them the
necessity for taking effective measures to repress conventicles.
The answer given to the three noblemen and
forwarded by them to Edinburgh was practically a refusal
though it took the form of a plea of inability on the part
of those whose co-operation had thus been invoked. This
alleged powerlessness was made an excuse for the next
step taken by the Government, that of quartering a body of
eight thousand Highlanders in the disaffected counties,
on those who refused to subscribe a bond by which every
heritor made himself answerable, not only for his wife,
children, and servants, but also for his tenants.
The commission for raising the Highlanders authorised
them to take free quarters, and, if need were, to seize on
horses as well as on ammunition and provisions. They
were indemnified against all pursuits, civil and criminal,
which might at any time be intented against them or anything
they should do, by killing, wounding, apprehending, or
imprisoning such as should make opposition to the King’s
authority, or by arresting such as they might have reason
to suspect. For two months the clansmen availed themselves
to the full of the arbitrary powers with which the
royal warrant invested them. At length the Duke of
Hamilton appealed directly to the King to put an end to
the oppression exercised in his name by the Highland men;
and an express was sent down from London, requiring the
Council to disband them and to send them back to their
homes. This brings events down to 1678, the year in which
Claverhouse was appointed to the command of the dragoons
who were to make another effort to disperse the conventicles
against which so many Acts of Parliament and decrees of
Council had been directed in vain, and which even the
depredations of the Highland host had failed to check.
III DISPERSING THE CONVENTICLERS
By the end of 1678 Claverhouse was at Moffat, expecting
to be joined by one of the newly-levied troops of dragoons—that
under Captain Inglis. From that town he forwarded
to the Earl of Linlithgow, Commander-in-chief of the King’s
forces, the first of a series of despatches which contain a
precise and detailed account of his movements at this time.
As indicating the spirit in which he had undertaken the
duties assigned to him, and the strict and literal obedience
to orders that characterised his execution of them, the
document is both interesting and valuable. It is dated the
28th of December, and runs as follows:—
‘My Lord,—I came here last night with the troop, and
am just going to march for Dumfries, where I resolve to
quarter the whole troop. I have not heard anything of
the dragoons, though it be now about nine o’clock, and
they should have been here last night, according to your
Lordship’s orders. I suppose they must have taken
some other route. I am informed, since I came, that
this country has been very loose. On Tuesday was eight
days, and Sunday, there were great field-conventicles just
by here, with great contempt of the regular clergy, who
complain extremely when I tell them I have no orders to
apprehend anybody for past misdemeanours. And besides
that, all the particular orders I have being contained in
that order of quartering, every place where we quarter must
see them, which makes them fear the less. I am informed
that the most convenient post for quartering the dragoons
will be Moffat, Lochmaben and Annan; whereby the whole
country may be kept in awe. Besides that, my Lord, they
tell me that the end of the bridge of Dumfries is in Galloway;
and that they may hold conventicles at our nose and
we not dare to dissipate them, seeing our orders confine
us to Dumfries and Annandale. Such an insult as that would
not please me; and, on the other hand, I am unwilling to
exceed orders, so that I expect from your Lordship orders
how to carry in such cases. I send this with one of my
troop, who is to attend orders till he be relieved. I will
send one every Monday, and the dragoons one every
Thursday, so that I will have the happiness to give your
Lordship account of our affairs twice a week, and your
Lordship occasion to send your commands for us as often.
In the meantime, my Lord, I shall be doing, according to
the instructions I have, what shall be found most advantageous
for the King’s service, and most agreeable to your
Lordship.—I am, my Lord, your Lordship’s most humble
and obedient servant,
J. Grahame.’
‘My Lord, if your Lordship give me any new orders, I
will beg they may be kept as secret as possible; and sent
to me so suddenly as the information some of the favourers
of the fanatics are to send may be prevented, which will
extremely facilitate the executing of them.’
On the 6th of January 1679, Claverhouse, now at
Dumfries, again addressed a despatch to the Commander.
He appears to have, in the meantime, received an explanation
of the Council’s intention, and an intimation that
his conscientious regard for the exact terms of his commission
did not meet with unqualified approval. This
may be gathered from the following paragraph in his
letter:—
‘My Lord, since I have seen the Act of Council, the
scruple I had about undertaking anything without the
bounds of these two shires, is indeed frivolous, but was not
so before. For if there had been no such Act, it had not
been safe for me to have done anything but what my order
warranted; and since I knew it not, it was to me the same
thing as if it had not been. And for my ignorance of it,
I must acknowledge that till now, in any service I have
been in, I never enquired farther in the laws, than the
orders of my superior officers.’
In another passage, having to report various incidents of
recent occurrence, with respect to some of which it was
intended to make formal complaint, he again gives proof
of his respect for discipline, and manifests his determination
not only to enforce it, but also to compensate those upon
whom injury might be inflicted by any breach of it on the part
of the men under his command. At the same time, he does
not hesitate to make it clearly understood that, whilst ready
to answer for his own conduct, he repudiates responsibility
for the actions of others. His own words are as follows:—
‘On Saturday night, when I came back here, the
sergeant who commands the dragoons in the Castle came
to see me; and while he was here, they came and told me
there was a horse killed just by, upon the street, by a shot
from the Castle. I went immediately and examined the
guard, who denied point blank that there had been any
shot from thence. I went and heard the Bailie take depositions
of men that were looking on, who declared, upon
oath, that they saw the shot from the guard-hall, and the
horse immediately fall. I caused also search for the bullet
in the horse’s head, which was found to be of their calibre.
After that I found it so clear, I caused seize upon him who
was ordered by the sergeant in his absence to command
the guard, and keep him prisoner till he find out the
man,—which I suppose will be found himself. His name
is James Ramsay, an Angusman, who has formerly been a
lieutenant of horse, as I am informed. It is an ugly
business, for, besides the wrong the poor man has got in
losing his horse, it is extremely against military discipline
to fire out of a guard. I have appointed the poor man to
be here to-morrow, and bring with him some neighbours to
declare the worth of the horse, and have assured him to
satisfy him if the Captain, who is to be here to-morrow,
refuse to do it. I am sorry to hear of another accident
that has befallen the dragoons, which I believe your Lordship
knows better than I, seeing they say that there is a
complaint made of it to your Lordship or the Council;
which is, that they have shot a man in the arm with small
shot, and disenabled him of it, who had come this length
with a horse to carry baggage for some of my officers; but
this being before they came to Moffat, does not concern
me.
‘The Stewart-Depute, before good company, told me
that several people about Moffat were resolved to make a
complaint to the Council against the dragoons for taking
free quarters; that if they would but pay their horse-corn
and their ale, they should have all the rest free; that there
were some of the officers that had, at their own hand,
appointed themselves locality above three miles from their
quarter. I begged them to forbear till the Captain and I
should come there, when they should be redressed in
everything. Your Lordship will be pleased not to take
any notice of this, till I have informed myself upon the
place.
‘This town is full of people that have resetted, and
lodged constantly in their houses intercommuned persons
and field preachers. There are some that absent themselves
for fear; and Captain Inglis tells me there are
Bailies have absented themselves there at Annan, and
desired from me order to apprehend them; which I
refused, for they are not included in all the Act of
Council. Mr Cupar, who is here Bailie and Stewart for
my Lord Stormont, offered to apprehend Bell that built
the meeting-house, if I would concur. I said to him that
it would be acceptable, but that the order from the Council
did only bear the taking up the names of persons accessory
to the building of it.’
The meeting-house referred to was situated in the neighbourhood
of Castlemilk, and had been built at the expense
of the common purse of the disaffected. It is described
as a good large house, about sixty feet in length and
between twenty and thirty in breadth, with only one door
and with two windows at each side, and one at either end.
After its purpose had become known to the authorities, it
was fitted up with stakes and with a ‘hek’ and manger, to
make it pass for a byre. In spite of this, an order for its
destruction was issued by the Privy Council, shortly before
Claverhouse’s arrival in the district.
The first duty he was called upon to perform was that
of supplying the squad that was to serve as an escort to
James Carruthers, the Stewart-Depute, who had been
commissioned to carry out the order. The dragoons
themselves took no part in the actual demolition; but
their presence was necessary, not only to overawe resistance,
but also to compel the ‘four score of countrymen,
all fanatics,’ whom Carruthers brought with him, to pull
down the building. ‘The Stewart-Depute,’ Claverhouse
reported, ‘performed his part punctually enough. The
walls were thrown down, and timber burnt. So perished
the charity of many ladies.’
In subsequent despatches Claverhouse gives the most
minute particulars as to the manner in which he has
carried out his orders for the apprehension of various
persons; and does not spare his comments on the lack of
adequate support in the discharge of his arduous and ungrateful
duties. A point upon which he lays great stress
is the insufficiency of the arrangements made for supplying
his men with proper quarters and with forage for their
horses. He was obliged, he said, to let the dragoons
quarter at large; and he was convinced that this was
extremely improper at a time when the Council seemed
resolved to proceed vigorously against the disaffected. He
thought it strange, too, that they who had the honour to
serve the King should have to pay more for hay and straw
than would be asked from any stranger. He was determined
for his part, that his troop should not suffer from
the neglect or indifference of the commissioners appointed
to treat with him. Though very unwilling to disoblige
any gentleman, if his men ran short, he would go to any of
the commissioners’ lands that were near, and requisition
what was required, offering the current rates in payment.
This, he thought, was a step which he was justified in
taking, and he was ready to defend his conduct if called
upon to do so.
Another serious ground for complaint was the want of
proper information. Good intelligence, he said, was the
thing most wanted. The outlawed ministers, men like
Welsh of Irongray, were preaching within twenty or thirty
miles, yet nothing could be done for want of spies to bring
timely and trustworthy information concerning their movements.
On the other hand, the conventiclers received
regular and speedy knowledge of any expedition intended
against them. There was reason to suppose that their informants
were sometimes the troopers entrusted with orders.
Of the treachery of one of these, who did not deliver till
the twentieth a despatch dated the fifteenth, he was so convinced
that, had it not been for the man’s influential patrons,
he would have turned him out of the troop with infamy,
instead of merely putting him under arrest. The result of
such insufficient and unsatisfactory service was well exemplified
in the case of a number of persons whom he had
been instructed to seize in Galloway. He had set out
the very night he received his orders, and had covered
forty miles of country. Of those for whom search was
made, only two were apprehended, and that because they
refused to take the same precautions as the rest for their
safety. ‘The other two Bailies were fled, and their wives
lying above the clothes in the bed, and great candles
lighted, waiting for the coming of the party, and told them
they knew of their coming, and had as good intelligence
as they themselves; and that if the other two were seized
on, it was their own faults, that would not contribute for
intelligence.’
Claverhouse’s complaints produced but slight effect,
though they were repeated until he grew weary of making
them. Failing to obtain satisfaction, he bluntly declared
that he would never solicit more, but that, if the King’s
service suffered in consequence, he would let the blame lie
where it should.
About this time, however, an important measure, and
one which brought down upon him the jealous displeasure
of the Marquis of Queensberry, who resented it as an
infringement of his rights, was adopted in Claverhouse’s
favour. Even if all the magistrates in the disaffected
districts had been men of unimpeachable loyalty to the
Government, the necessity for obtaining their co-operation
would frequently have hampered and delayed the military
authorities. But many of them were soon discovered
to be lukewarm partisans at best; whilst not a few, if
they did not openly side with the conventiclers, aided and
abetted them by a deliberate and studied inactivity. To
remedy this, and to give Claverhouse freer hand, he was,
in March 1679, appointed sheriff-depute of the shires of
Dumfries and Wigtown, and also of the stewartries of
Annandale and Kirkcudbright. Andrew Bruce of Earlshall,
the lieutenant of his own troop of horse, was given
him as a colleague. They were not, however, wholly to
supersede the sheriffs previously in office, but only to sit
with those judges or to supply them in their absence.
Moreover, their powers were limited to putting the laws
into execution only against withdrawers from the public
ordinances, keepers of conventicles, and such as were
guilty of disorderly baptisms and marriages, resetting and
communing with fugitives, and intercommuned persons
and vagrant preachers.
Claverhouse had not been long in the exercise of his
twofold duties before he began to realise that his efforts
were far from producing the desired results. Not only
were conventicles as numerous as before, but there were
also signs which convinced him that passive resistance
was not all he would soon have to encounter. In a
despatch which he wrote from Dumfries on the 21st of
April 1679, he informed the Earl of Linlithgow that Mr
Welsh was accustoming both ends of the country to face
the King’s force, and certainly intended to break out into
an open rebellion. In view of this, he pointed out that
the arms of the militia in Dumfriesshire as well as in
Wigtownshire and Annandale, were in the hands of the
country people, though very disaffected; and that those
taken from the stewartry were in the custody of the town
of Kirkcudbright, the most irregular place in the kingdom.
He consequently suggested that they should be entrusted
to his keeping, and also that his own men should be
provided with more suitable weapons, those which they
had got from the Castle being worth nothing.
A few days later, Lord Ross, writing from Lanark,
conveyed a similar warning. He could learn nothing,
he said, but of an inclination to rise, although there were
none yet actually in arms. This was on the 2nd of
May. On the 5th he forwarded another despatch in which
he had to report an encounter between a small party of
troopers and some peasants of the district. The soldiers
had been sent out to apprehend a man who was reported
to have in his possession some of the ‘new-fashioned arms,’
that is, halberts which were provided with a cleek, or
crooked knife, for the purpose of cutting the dragoons’
bridles, and of which the manufacture was in itself an
indication of what was intended. After seizing the
young fellow, who did not deny that he had been enlisted
as one of those who were to defend the conventicles
in arms, the troopers, instead of returning with their
prisoner stabled their horses and fell a-drinking. Some
of the neighbours, availing themselves of the opportunity,
attacked them with forks, and the like, and wounded
one of them ‘very desperately ill.’
The next day Claverhouse also forwarded his report
from Dumfries. It contained, in addition to an account
of his own movements, the following comment on orders
which he had just received, and which indicated that the
Earl of Linlithgow was also alive to the dangers of the
situation:—
‘My Lord, I have received an order yesterday from
your Lordship, which I do not know how to go about
on a sudden, as your Lordship seems to expect. For
I know not what hand to turn to, to find those parties
that are in arms. I shall send out to all quarters, and
establish spies; and shall endeavour to engage them
Sunday next, if it be possible. And if I get them not
here, I shall go and visit them in Teviotdale or Carrick;
where they say, they dare look honest men in the face.’
On the 3rd of May, a few days before Lord Ross and
Claverhouse drew up their respective reports, there had
happened an event which was destined to bring matters
to an immediate crisis, and which proved the signal for
another, and a far more serious rising than that of 1666.
James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of
Scotland, was murdered on Magus Muir, by a party of
Covenanters.
Of this terrible tragedy, each side has its own account.
On the one hand, there is that which is based on the
narrative subsequently drawn up by Russell, one of the
leading actors in it. According to this version, no premeditation
existed on the part of the nine men concerned.
They were in search of William Carmichael, the Sheriff-depute
of Fifeshire, a man who had made himself obnoxious
by the unrelenting severity which he displayed in carrying
out the laws against the Covenanters. Having missed
him, they were about to separate, when information was
brought them that Sharp’s carriage was approaching.
Interpreting this into ‘a clear call from God to fall upon
him,’ they there and then resolved ‘to execute the justice
of God upon him for the innocent blood he had shed.’
But if the Archbishop’s murder was not determined upon
until the actual moment when circumstances cast him into
the hands of his enemies, Russell’s account shows that it
had been discussed a short time prior to its perpetration.
He states that, on the 11th of April, a meeting was held
to consider what course should be taken with Carmichael
to scare him from his cruel courses; that it was decided
to fall upon him at St Andrews; and that when ‘some
objected, what if he should be in the prelate’s house, what
should be done in such a case, all present judged duty to
hang both over the post, especially the Bishop, it being by
many of the Lord’s people and ministers judged a duty
long since, not to suffer such a person to live, who had
shed and was shedding so much of the blood of the saints,
and knowing that other worthy Christians had used means
to get him upon the road before.’ He further represents
himself as urging the murder of Sharp, in the course of the
hurried consultation held as the primate’s carriage was
approaching, on the ground that ‘he had before been at
several meetings with several godly men in other places of
the kingdom, who not only judged it their duty to take
that wretch’s life, and some others, but had essayed it twice
before.’
Whilst it would appear from this account that no
definite plan had been formed, to be carried out on the
3rd of May, though some of the more desperate of the
Covenanters had come to a general understanding not to
neglect any favourable opportunity ‘to execute the justice
of God’ upon the wretch whom the Lord delivered into
their hands, the other version, accepting the official narrative
published immediately after the murder, asserts a distinct
and premeditated purpose on the part of the assassins.
It founds this on the ‘informations’ which were sent from
St Andrews to the Privy Council, and which purported
to embody the evidence of persons alleged to have been
in communication with the men who perpetrated the crime.
In these it was stated that his Grace was waylaid
by divers parties and could not escape, whether he
went straight to St Andrews or repaired to his house at
Scotscraig; that three days before the murder, several of
those concerned in it met in Magask, at the house of John
Miller, one of the witnesses, where they concerted the
business; that the next night they put up with Robert
Black, another witness, whose wife was a great instigator
of the deed; that at parting, when one of them kissed her,
the woman prayed that God might bless and prosper them,
adding, ‘if long Leslie’—the episcopalian minister of Ceres—‘be
with him, lay him on the green also,’ to which the
favoured individual whom she more particularly addressed,
holding up his hand, answered, ‘this is the hand that shall
do it’; and that further, on the morning of the 3rd of
May, the nine men followed the coach for a considerable
distance, intending to attack it, first on the heath to the
south of Ceres, and then at the double dykes of Magask,
though owing to various circumstances, duly detailed, they
did not get what seemed an available opportunity of doing
so until it reached Magus Muir.
Standing thus, the question of premeditation gave rise to
a long and acrimonious controversy in which recriminations
and invectives were freely bandied, and which, being
characterised, on either side, rather by a determination to
uphold a preconceived opinion than by a desire to arrive
at the plain truth, naturally led to no satisfactory conclusion.
The murder of Archbishop Sharp was followed by further
proclamations against the Covenanters, to whom, as a body,
the Government attributed the crime; and the episcopalian
agents throughout the country, actuated partly by a desire
for revenge, partly by fear for their own safety, displayed
increased zeal in carrying out the repressive enactments of
the Privy Council. This was met on the other side with
corresponding measures for self-defence. Even before the
tragedy at Magus Muir, a determination to repel force by
force had been noted and reported, and conventicles had
ceased to be merely peaceful gatherings of unarmed men.
They now began to assume the appearance of military camps,
to which the numerous smaller congregations that joined
together for mutual protection gave formidable proportions.
That with a view to bringing matters to an issue and
saving themselves by a general rising, Balfour and the
other outlaws who had fled as he had, for protection,
to the west, after the murder of the primate, were further
instrumental in stirring up a spirit of rebellion, scarcely
admits of doubt, and is, indeed, conceded by Wodrow.
But it is probable that they only helped to precipitate
what would not long have been delayed under any circumstances,
and what Robert Hamilton, brother to the Laird
of Preston, and others who, like him, were violently opposed
to the indulgence, had for some time been working to
bring about. Towards the end of May, these men put
forth a manifesto, in which they declared it to be their
duty ‘to publish to the world their testimony to the truth
and cause which they owned, and against the sins and
defections of the times.’
In accordance with this proclamation, they decided that
a party of armed men should go to some public place and
burn the Acts of Parliament passed since 1660 ‘for overturning
the whole covenanted reformation.’ Amongst these
was included ‘that presumptuous Act for imposing an holy
anniversary day to be kept yearly upon the 29th of May,
as a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving for the King’s birth
and restoration,’ whereby the appointers had ‘intruded upon
the Lord’s prerogative,’ and the observers had ‘given the
glory to the creature that is due to our Lord Redeemer,
and rejoiced over the setting up an usurping power to the
destroying the interest of Christ in the land.’
The 29th of May was at hand; and it was thought fitting
that the obnoxious anniversary should witness the public
protest and demonstration. Glasgow was the place originally
chosen for the ‘declaration and testimony of some of
the true Presbyterian party in Scotland,’ and for burning
‘the sinful and unlawful Acts’ passed against them, just as
their own ‘sacred covenant’ had been burned. But a
considerable number of the royal troops previously quartered
in Lanark having been sent up to the city, it was thought
prudent to go no nearer to it than Rutherglen. A party
of the irreconcilables accordingly marched to the royal
burgh. After burning the hated Acts in the bonfire with
which the day was being solemnised, they put it out as a
further protest against the celebration, publicly read their
own declaration and testimony, and affixed a copy of it to
the Market Cross.
On that same Thursday, Claverhouse, now at Falkirk,
sent the Earl of Linlithgow a despatch containing the
following paragraph:—
‘I am certainly informed there is a resolution taken
among the Whigs, that eighteen parishes shall meet Sunday
next in Kilbride Moor, within four miles of Glasgow. I
resolve, though I do not believe it, to advertise my Lord
Ross, so that with our joint force we may attack them.
They say they are to part no more, but keep in a body.’
At once taking measure to carry out the plan thus indicated,
Claverhouse set out for Glasgow. On his way he
received information of the proceedings at Rutherglen
Cross, and thought it his duty to proceed, with his men, to
the scene of the demonstration. The sequel is told in the
next despatch to the Earl of Linlithgow:—
‘Glasgow, June 1st, 1679.
‘My Lord,—Upon Saturday’s night, when my Lord
Rosse came into this place, I marched out; and because of
the insolency that had been done two nights before at
Ruglen, I went thither, and inquired for the names. So soon
as I got them, I sent out parties to seize on them, and
found not only three of those rogues, but also an intercommuned
minister called King. We had them at Strathaven
about six in the morning yesterday; and resolving to convey
them to this, I thought that we might make a little tour, to
see if we could fall upon a conventicle; which we did little
to our advantage. For, when we came in sight of them,
we found them drawn up in battle, upon a most advantageous
ground, to which there was no coming but
through mosses and lakes.
‘They were not preaching, and had got away all their
women and children. They consisted of four battalions of
foot and all well armed with fusils and pitchforks, and three
squadrons of horse. We sent both parties to skirmish; they
of foot and we of dragoons: They run for it, and sent down
a battalion of foot against them: We sent threescore of
dragoons, who made them run shamefully: But, in the end
(they perceiving that we had the better of them in skirmish),
they resolved a general engagement, and immediately
advanced with their foot, the horse following: They came
through the loch, and the greatest body of all made up against
my troop: We kept our fire till they were within ten pace of
us: They received our fire, and advanced to shock: The
first they gave us brought down the Cornet Mr Crafford
and Captain Bleith: Besides that, with a pitchfork, they
made such an opening in my sorrel horse’s belly, that his
guts hung out half an ell; and yet he carried me off a mile;
which so discouraged our men, that they sustained not the
shock, but fell into disorder.
‘Their horse took the occasion of this, and pursued us so
hotly that we got no time to rally. I saved the standards;
but lost on the place about eight or ten men, besides
wounded. But the dragoons lost many more. They are
not come easily off on the other side, for I saw several of
them fall before we came to the shock. I made the best
retreat the confusion of our people would suffer; and am now
laying with my Lord Ross. The town of Strathaven drew
up as we was making our retreat, and thought of a pass to
cut us off; but we took courage and fell on them, made them
run, leaving a dozen on the place. What these rogues will
do, yet I know not; but the country was flocking to them
from all hands. This may be counted the beginning of the
rebellion, in my opinion.—I am, my Lord, your Lordship’s
most humble servant,
J. Grahame.’
‘My Lord, I am so wearied, and so sleepy, that I have
written this very confusedly.’
As to the respective numbers of the combatants engaged
in the battle of Drumclog, as it is commonly called from
the place near which it was fought, and which Claverhouse
forgot to name in his despatch, it is difficult to arrive at a
definite conclusion. Russell, who was in the ranks of the
Covenanters, sets down the ‘honest party’ as consisting
of ‘about fifty horse and about as many guns, and about
a hundred and fifty with forks and halberts’; but that is
not consistent with the details which he himself gives of
the fighting. Sir Walter Scott, who has been followed
by most modern writers, computes the forces opposed to
Claverhouse at about one thousand, horse and foot, and
the regulars at no more than two hundred and fifty. But
even this estimate of the latter is probably excessive. In
a letter written from Mugdock on the 30th of May, the
Marquis of Montrose informed the Earl of Menteith that
he had that day met with Claverhouse, who had been sent
‘with his troop and a troop of dragoons, to guard some
arms and ammunition transported to this country.’ That
may be taken to mean an escort of about two hundred
men. But Captain Creichton, who was then serving as a
lieutenant under Claverhouse, states that he, with Captain
Stewart’s troop of dragoons remained in Glasgow, when
his commanding officer set out to enquire into the Rutherglen
demonstration; and he adds that those who fought
at Drumclog were about one hundred and eighty strong.
Apart from the fact that there is no reason for doubting
his veracity, the number which he gives exactly agrees with
that which may be deduced from the casual reference in
Montrose’s letter; and there is, consequently, good reason
for accepting it as correct. With regard to the insurgents,
it is less easy to make even an approximative calculation.
It is generally admitted, however, that they greatly outnumbered
their adversaries; and this seems implied by
the despatch which Lord Ross forwarded to the commander-in-chief
immediately after Claverhouse’s return to
Glasgow on the memorable Sunday. ‘Be assured,’ he wrote
to the Earl, ‘if they were ten to one, if you command it,
we shall be through them if we can.’ Moreover, it is
difficult to believe that the Covenanting forces could have
increased to some six thousand within a week after
Drumclog, as Hamilton, one of their leaders, boasts they
did, if, on the 1st of June, they numbered no more than
the mere handful of Russell’s estimate.
The passage in which Claverhouse mentions the officers
killed in the engagement has always been read as referring
to only two; and it has caused some surprise that he
should have omitted to report the loss of a third, about
whose death there cannot be a doubt, and who, moreover,
was a kinsman of his—Cornet Graham. Captain Creichton
who, it must be remembered, is speaking of a comrade,
and whose words alone might be looked upon as absolutely
authoritative, states, in his Memoirs, that ‘the rebels finding
the cornet’s body, and supposing it to be that of Clavers,
because the name of Graham was wrought in the shirt-neck,
treated it with the utmost inhumanity; cutting off
the nose, picking out the eyes, and stabbing it through in
a hundred places.’ Andrew Guild, in his Latin poem,
‘Bellum Bothwellianum,’ records the same barbarity.
‘They laid savage hands on him,’ he says, ‘and mutilated
his manly face; having cut off his tongue, his ears, and
his hands, they scattered his brains over the rough stones.’
In an old ballad on the Battle of Loudon Hill—another
name for the fight of Drumclog—Claverhouse’s cornet and
kinsman is twice made to foretell his own death:—
‘I ken I’ll ne’er come back again,
An’ mony mae as weel as me.’
In another Covenanting poem, ‘The Battle of Bothwell
Brig,’ Claverhouse is represented as avenging young
Graham’s death on the fugitives:—
‘Haud up your hand,’ then Monmouth said;
‘Gie quarters to these men for me;’
But bloody Claver’se swore an oath,
His kinsman death avenged should be.
Russell, too, states that Graham was killed, and refers to
the mutilation of the lifeless body, though he accounts for
it in a very remarkable way. The passage is as follows:
‘One Graham, that same morning in Strevan his dog was
leaping upon him for meat, and he said he would give him
none, but he should fill himself of the Whig’s blood and
flesh by night; but instead of that, his dog was seen eating
his own thrapple (for he was killed), by several; and
particularly James Russell after the pursuit, coming back
to his dear friend James Dungel, who was severely wounded,
asked at some women and men who it was; they told that
it was that Graham, and afterwards they got certain word
what he said to his dog in Strevan.’
In the face of such evidence, it is hardly possible to
deny the actual fact of Graham’s death. Neither can it
be looked upon as probable that his kinsman had no
knowledge of it when he wrote his despatch. If, therefore,
Claverhouse really did omit to report it amongst the other
casualties, his silence is difficult to understand. But, it
must be pointed out that the whole question may, after all,
resolve itself into one of punctuation. The insertion of a
single comma makes three persons of ‘the Cornet, Mr
Crafford and Captain Bleith.’ A matter so utterly trifling
in itself would not be deserving of notice if some of
Claverhouse’s irrational detractors, no less than some of
his irrational apologists, had not magnified it out of all
proportion.
Throughout the engagement Claverhouse made himself
conspicuous by his courage, and was exposed to special
danger because of the attention which he attracted. One
of the Covenanters, a Strathaven man, was subsequently
wont to relate that he had concealed himself behind a
hillock and fired eight shots at the leader of the royal
troops; and it may be assumed that, in those days, want
of skill on the part of the marksman was not considered
the cause of his failure. It is also stated by De Foe, that
William Cleland, who, in later years distinguished himself
as a soldier and rose to be Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Cameronian regiment, actually succeeded in catching hold
of Claverhouse’s bridle, and that the latter had a narrow
escape of being taken prisoner. Thanks to his coolness
and presence of mind no less than to his good fortune, he
left the field unscathed, but only when the discomfiture of
his men had become so complete as to render any effort
to rally them wholly hopeless. Like them, he galloped
back to Strathaven; and local tradition still points out
the spot where he shot down one of the townsmen who
endeavoured to stay him in his flight. Some accounts
relate that on his road he had to pass the house where
the outlawed minister King had been left under guard,
when the soldiers set out for Drumclog, and that, as he
did so, his prisoner of the morning ironically invited him
to remain for the afternoon sermon.
Before the engagement, Hamilton, who had assumed the
command of the Covenanters, gave out the word that no
quarter should be given. In spite of this, five out of seven
men who had been captured, were granted their lives and
allowed to depart. ‘This,’ writes a contemporary, ‘greatly
grieved Mr Hamilton, when he saw some of Babel’s brats
spared, after that the Lord had delivered them into their
hands, that they might dash them against the stones.’
When he returned from the pursuit of the routed royalists,
a discussion had arisen as to the fate of the two remaining
prisoners. Hamilton settled it, in so far at least as one
of them was concerned, by killing him on the spot. ‘None
could blame me,’ he wrote in a letter of justification
published five or six years later, ‘to decide the controversy;
and I bless the Lord for it to this day.’
Wodrow gives it as ‘the opinion of not a few,’ that if
the ‘country men’ had pushed their success, followed their
chase, and gone straight to Glasgow that day, they might
easily, with the help of the reinforcements that would have
come to them on the road, as soon as their success became
known, have driven out the garrison, ‘and very soon made
a great appearance.’
Without entering into a futile discussion as to what
might have happened, it may be pointed out that the actual
circumstances of the case scarcely justify so sanguine a
view. When Claverhouse and his troopers rode back to
Glasgow, they had no certainty that, in the flush of victory,
the Covenanters would not continue the pursuit right up to
the city, and endeavour to take the fullest advantage of
their success. Indeed, the conduct of the royalist officers
rather seems to imply that they recognised the possibility
of such a course on the part of the enemy, for they caused
half the men to stand to their arms all night. If, therefore,
the few horsemen on the Covenanting side, who alone could
possibly perform the distance of nearly thirty miles before
dusk, even on a long June day, had ventured on an attack,
it may be believed that they would have met with a reception
calculated to make them regret their rashness.
There is no occasion to assume that any reason but that
dictated by common prudence induced the foremost of the
pursuers to halt at a considerable distance from Glasgow,
in order to await the coming of the unmounted men, with
such recruits as they might have been able to gather on
the way. Statements differ as to the precise place where
the greater number of them determined to stay for the
night; but Wodrow is probably accurate in saying that they
did not press further forward than Hamilton, and that it
was from that town they resumed their march on the morrow.
In the meantime Lord Ross and his officers, Major
White and Captain Graham, had not been idle. With
carts, timber, and such other materials as could be hastily
requisitioned, they erected four barricades in the centre of
the city, and posted their men behind them to await the
expected onset. At daybreak next morning, Creichton,
with six dragoons, was sent out to take up his station at a
small house which commanded a view of the two approaches
to Glasgow, so that he might at once be able to report
which of them the Covenanters decided to take. About
ten o’clock he saw them advance to the place which he
had been instructed to watch, and there, by a most injudicious
manœuvre, divide themselves into two bodies. Of
these, one, under Hamilton, marched towards the Gallowgate;
whilst the other took a more circuitous road ‘by the
Wyndhead and College.’ There may have been a vague
intention of taking the military between two fires, but the
movements were ill concerted, and resulted in two disjointed
attacks, which were both easily repulsed.
As Creichton returned to inform Claverhouse of the
enemy’s dispositions, he was followed close to the heels by
that detachment which was making for the Gallowgate
bridge. When they reached the barricade which had been
raised on that side, they were received by Claverhouse
and his men with a volley which killed several, and threw
the remainder into confusion. The soldiers following up
this first advantage, and jumping over the carts that formed
the obstruction, then charged the wavering Covenanters,
and drove them out of the town. They had time to do
this and to return to their original position before those
of the ‘country men,’ who had marched round by the
north, came down by the High Church and the College.
These were allowed to come within pistol shot; and when
the soldiers fired into them at such close range, it was
with the same effect as before.
The second party was also forced to fall back. They
appear to have done so in better order than Hamilton’s men,
for they were able to rally in a field behind the High Church,
where they remained till five o’clock in the afternoon,
unmolested by the soldiers, from whose sight they were concealed,
and who, not knowing when they might again be
attacked, and fully aware that the majority of the citizens
were hostile to them, contented themselves with remaining
on the defensive. Prudence prevailed with the Covenanters
too, and without making any further attempt to carry the
barricade, they retired to Toll Cross Moor. Finding that
Claverhouse, who had been informed of the movement, had
come out after them, they continued their retreat as far as
Hamilton, protecting their rear so effectively with their cavalry,
that Graham deemed it advisable to fall back upon Glasgow.
At Drumclog, and subsequently at Glasgow, unforeseen
circumstances had imposed a leading and conspicuous part
on Claverhouse. The measures which the Government
was now called on to adopt for the purpose of quelling
an insurrection of formidable proportions, were necessarily
of such magnitude, that he naturally fell back to his own
subordinate position, that of a captain of dragoons. To
represent him as having incurred the displeasure of his
chiefs, and as having been superseded in consequence,
is contrary to fact, and wholly unfair to him. Proof
is at hand that no blame was laid upon him for the
defeat of Drumclog. In a letter written by the Council to
Lauderdale on the 3rd of June, it was admitted that he
had been overpowered by numbers; and six days later,
through Lauderdale, the Chancellor conveyed the King’s
thanks to Lord Ross and to Claverhouse for their great
diligence and care, and his assurance that he would be
very mindful of their conduct on all occasions.
Creichton, who did not supply Swift with the materials
for his memoirs till many years later, and who, therefore,
cannot always be implicitly depended upon as regards
details of minor importance, states that the morning after
the attack ‘the Government sent orders to Claverhouse to
leave Glasgow and march to Stirling.’ But Wodrow, who
founds his narrative on letters which he met with in the
Council Registers, and which he duly quotes, makes no
special reference to Claverhouse. He simply records the
fact that ‘my Lord Ross and the rest of the officers of the
King’s forces, finding the gathering of the country people
growing, and expecting every day considerable numbers
to be added to them, and not reckoning themselves able
to stand out a second attack, found it advisable to retire
eastward.’ He indicates, day by day, the marching and
counter-marching of the royalist troops, and narrates all
the steps that were taken to bring together a body sufficiently
strong to disperse the Covenanting insurgents.
From all this it is evident that there was no room for independent
action on the part of Claverhouse from the time
of his leaving the West to that of his return to it with the
Duke of Monmouth, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief,
and who, on the 22nd of June, encountered
the Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge. In the course of
the engagement which followed, no opportunity was given
him of playing a prominent part. Sir Walter Scott asserts
on two different occasions, that the horse were commanded
by Claverhouse; and, in his well-known description of the
battle, he adds the detail that ‘the voice of Claverhouse
was heard, even above the din of conflict, exclaiming to
the soldiers—“Kill, kill—no quarter—think of Richard
Grahame.”’ The historical truth is, that Claverhouse was
simply a captain of horse, as were also the Earl of Home,
and the Earl of Airlie, and that he was himself under the
command of his kinsman Montrose, Colonel of the Horse
Guards. Beyond stating this no accounts of the encounter
make any reference to him. In so far as he is personally
concerned there is no reason for recalling the incident of
the fight which effectively put an end to the Covenanting
insurrection. His presence at it is the single, bare fact
that requires mention.
There are no official documents extant to enable us
to follow Claverhouse’s movements during the period
immediately subsequent to Bothwell Bridge. All that has
been stated with regard to his doings at this time rests on
the authority of Wodrow, who himself admits, though not,
it is true, for the purpose of questioning their accuracy, that
the traditions embodied in his narrative were vague and uncertain.
‘Everybody must see,’ he says, ‘that it is now almost
impossible to give any tolerable view to the reader, of the
spulies, depredations and violences committed by the soldiers,
under such officers as at that time they had. Multitudes
of instances, once flagrant are now at this distance lost; not
a few of them were never distinctly known, being committed
in such circumstances as upon the matter buried them.’
The order of the Privy Council, in accordance with
which Claverhouse again proceeded to the Western
Counties, to begin his ‘circuit,’ as Wodrow styles it, a
few days after the engagement which had proved so
disastrous to the Covenanters has disappeared. It may,
however, be assumed that the powers conferred upon him
were wide; and there is no reason to suppose that he was
instructed to deal leniently with those who had been in
arms against the royal troops. Although no proof can be
adduced in support of Wodrow’s statement, that Claverhouse
‘could never forgive the baffle he met with at
Drumclog, and resolved to be avenged for it’; and although
it would be rash to accept, except on the very strongest
evidence, the further assertion that he was one of those
who solicited Monmouth ‘to ruin the West Country, and
burn Glasgow, Hamilton and Strathaven, to kill the
prisoners, at least, considerable numbers of them, and to
permit the army to plunder the western shires, who, they
alleged, had countenanced the rebels,’ the principles which
he unhesitatingly set forth in subsequent despatches, and
in accordance with which in the following July, he consented
to go to London, as an envoy from the Privy
Council, to represent to the King the unwisdom of
adopting Monmouth’s more conciliatory policy, and of
granting the Covenanters favours, ‘to soften the clamour
that was made upon the Duke of Lauderdale’s conduct,’
quite justify the assumption that he fully approved of
severe measures against the actual rebels, and felt neither
scruple nor compunction in carrying them out.
But, when this has been admitted, it is only fair to bear
in mind that there were others besides Claverhouse, and
‘more bloody and barbarous than he,’ engaged in the
odious work of hunting down and punishing the Bothwell
outlaws, and preventing their friends and sympathisers from
harbouring and concealing them. If, instead of indiscriminately
attributing to him every alleged act of cruelty
and rapacity, as partisan writers have not unfrequently
done, care had been taken to ascertain whether he was
even indirectly concerned in it, and whether he was so
circumstanced that he could prevent the perpetration of it,
there can be but little doubt that the list of atrocities imputed
to him at this date would assume less terrible proportions.
Nor should it be forgotten that many of the instances
of severity recorded against Claverhouse, harsh as they
may have been, did not go beyond the letter, or, indeed,
the spirit of the law. It was his duty to yield implicit
obedience to the commands of his superiors. To condemn
in him that loyalty which has always been looked upon
as the essential quality of a soldier, and to hold him
personally responsible for carrying out with all the zeal
and energy of his nature the policy of the Government to
which he owed allegiance, is inconsistent and unjust.
To object that, even as a soldier, he was not bound to
support a cause which he knew to be bad, is to ignore
what his very enemies recognised—that he was no reckless
and ungodly persecutor of religion, but, on the contrary, a
man of deep convictions and of strict, almost puritanical,
practice. No estimate of his character can be adequate
and impartial, which does not take into account the essential
fact that he was as sincere—as fanatical, if the word
be insisted upon—as those whom he treated as rebels.
IV REJECTED ADDRESSES
There is a section of the extant correspondence of Claverhouse
which opens about the end of 1678 and extends
through several years, and which stands in remarkable
contrast with the military despatches of the same period.
It consists of letters addressed to William Graham, eighth
and last Earl of Menteith. That nobleman, though twice
married, had no issue. His nearest male relative was his
uncle, Sir James Graham, whose only children were two
daughters. With a view to settling the succession to the
earldom, Menteith favoured a matrimonial alliance between
Lady Helen, the younger of them, and some member of
the Graham family. Sir William Fraser, who discovered
and published the letters, is of opinion that the first
thoughts of such a scheme were suggested to the Earl
by his kinsman, John Graham of Claverhouse. The
following passage in the earliest letter of the extant
collection, though obviously not the first of the correspondence,
seems to bear out this view:—
‘My Lord, as your friend and servant, I take the liberty
to give you an advice, which is, that there can be nothing
so advantageous for you as to settle your affairs, and
establish your successor in time, for it can do you no
prejudice if you come to have any children of your own
body, and will be much for your quiet and comfort if you
have none; for whoever you make choice of will be in
place of a son. You know that Julius Cæsar had no need
to regret the want of issue, having adopted Augustus, for
he knew certainly that he had secured to himself a thankful
and useful friend, as well as a wise successor, neither of
which he could have promised himself by having children;
for nobody knows whether they beget wise men or fools,
besides that the ties of gratitude and friendship are stronger
in generous minds than those of nature.
‘My Lord, I may, without being suspected of self-interest,
offer some reasons to renew to you the advantage of that
resolution you have taken in my favour. First, that there is
nobody of my estate and of your name would confound their
family in yours, and nobody in the name is able to give
you those conditions, nor bring in to you so considerable an
interest, besides that I will easier obtain your cousin german
than any other, which brings in a great interest, and continues
your family in the right line. And then, my Lord, I may
say without vanity that I will do your family no dishonour,
seeing there is nobody you could make choice of has toiled
so much for honour as I have done, though it has been my
misfortune to attain but a small share. And then, my Lord,
for my respect and gratitude to your Lordship, you will have
no reason to doubt of it, if you consider with what a frankness
and easiness I live with all my friends.
‘But, my Lord, after all this, if these reasons cannot
persuade you that it is your interest to pitch on me, and if
you can think on anybody that can be more proper to restore
your family and contribute more to your comfort and satisfaction,
make frankly choice of him, for without that you
can never think of getting anything done for your family:
it will be for your honour that the world see you never
had thoughts of alienating your family, then they will look
no more upon you as the last of so noble a race, but will
consider you rather as the restorer than the ruiner, and your
family rather as rising than falling; which, as it will be the
joy of our friends and relations, so it will be the confusion
of our enemies.’
Claverhouse’s proposal found favour with the Earl of
Menteith. He wrote a very earnest letter to his ‘much
honorrd Unkle,’ who resided in Ireland; and formally
made an offer of marriage in Claverhouse’s name. He
described the ‘noble young gentleman’ in glowing terms.
He was, the Earl said, ‘exceeding well accomplished with
nature’s gifts,’—as much so as any he knew. ‘All that is
noble and virtuous’ might be seen in him; and as a
further and not inconsiderable recommendation, it was
added that he had ‘a free estate upwards of six hundred
pound sterling yearly of good payable rent, near by Dundee,’
and also that he was ‘captain of the standing troops of
horse in this kingdom,’ which was ‘very considerable.’
To crown all this, he was a Graham; and it would be
‘a singular happiness’ to the family to form an alliance
with ‘such a gentleman as he.’ To persuasion the matchmaking
Earl added something not very far removed from
a menace, and concluded his letter with the following
vigorous words:—
‘For if ye give and bestow that young lady on any other
person bot he, I sall never consent to the mariag unless it
be Cleverus, whom I say again is the only person of all I
know fitest and most proper to marie yor daughter.’
Claverhouse, notwithstanding the important matters that
were engaging his attention at the time, was willing to go
over to Ireland to prosecute his suit in person. He would
not, however, presume to do so until a line from Sir James
and his lady brought the assurance that he should be
welcome. In the meantime, he sent a messenger, probably
with letters of his own, whose delay in returning with an
answer called forth the following rather desponding letter,
which bears date, Dumfries, February 14th, 1679:—
‘My dear Lord,—I have delayed so long to give a
return to your kind letter, expecting that my man should
return from Ireland, that I might have given your Lordship
an account of the state of my affairs; but now that I begin
to despair of his coming, as I do of the success of that
voyage, I would not lose this occasion of assuring your
Lordship of my respects. I have received letters from
my Lord Montrose, who gives me ill news, that an Irish
gentleman has carried away the Lady, but it is not certain,
though it be too probable. However, my Lord, it shall
never alter the course of our friendship, for if, my Lord,
either in history or romance, either in nature or the fancy,
there be any stronger names or rarer examples of friendship
than these your Lordship does me the honour to name in
your kind and generous letter, I am resolved not only to
equal them, but surpass them, in the sincerity and firmness
of the friendship I have resolved for your Lordship. But,
my Lord, seeing it will, I hope, be more easy for me to
prove it by good deeds in time to come, than by fine words
to express it at present, I shall refer myself to time and
occasion, by which your Lordship will be fully informed
to what height I am, my dear Lord, your Lordship’s most
faithful and most obedient servant,
J. Grahame.’
Claverhouse’s fears were not without foundation. His
offer was declined. As the letter conveying Sir James’s
refusal has not been preserved, it is impossible to learn
what reasons he assigned for it. The first intimation to
be found of his adverse decision occurs in a letter addressed
to him, in the following November, by his nephew, who
again approached him with a matrimonial scheme, this
time in favour of Montrose. The terms of the wholly
unromantic proposal were, that the Earldom of Menteith
should, failing heirs male, be entailed upon the young
Marquis, and that he, in return, should marry Helen
Graham, and should allow the Earl a life annuity of a
hundred and fifty pounds. Matters went so far that the
necessary charter had been submitted to the King for
signature, when Montrose broke off his engagement under
circumstances which Claverhouse details in an indignant
letter addressed from London to the Earl of Menteith,
on the 3rd of July 1680:—
‘My Lord,—Whatever were the motives obliged your
Lordship to change your resolutions to me, yet I shall
never forget the obligations that I have to you for the
good designs you once had for me, both before my Lord
Montrose came in the play and after, in your endeavouring
to make me next in the entail, especially in so generous a
way as to do it without so much as letting me know it.
All the return I am able to make is to offer you, in that
frank and sincere way that I am known to deal with all
the world, all the service that I am capable of, were it with
the hazard or even loss of my life and fortune. Nor can
I do less without ingratitude, considering what a generous
and disinterested friendship I have found in your Lordship.
‘And your Lordship will do me, I hope, the justice to
acknowledge that I have shown all the respect to your
Lordship and my Lord Montrose, in your second resolutions,
that can be imagined. I never inquired at your
Lordship nor him the reason of the change, nor did I
complain of hard usage. Though really, my Lord, I must
beg your Lordship’s pardon to say that it was extremely
grievous to me to be turned out of the business, after your
Lordship and my Lord Montrose had engaged me in it,
and had written to Ireland in my favour; and the thing
that troubled me most was that I feared your Lordship
had more esteem for my Lord Montrose than me, for you
could have no other motive, for I am sure you have more
sense than to think the offers he made you more advantageous
for the standing of your family than those we were on.
‘Sir James and I together would have bought in all
the lands ever belonged to your predecessors, of which
you would have been as much master as of those you
are now in possession; and I am sorry to see so much
trust in your Lordship to my Lord Montrose so ill-rewarded.
If you had continued your resolutions to me, your Lordship
would not have been thus in danger to have your estate
rent from your family; my Lord Montrose would not have
lost his reputation, as I am sorry to see he has done; Sir
James would not have had so sensible an affront put upon
them, if they had not refused me, and I would have been,
by your Lordship’s favour, this day as happy as I could
wish. But, my Lord, we must all submit to the pleasure
of God Almighty without murmuring, knowing that everybody
will have their lot.
‘My Lord, fearing I may be misrepresented to your
Lordship, I think it my duty to acquaint your Lordship
with my carriage since I came hither, in relation to those
affairs. So soon as I came, I told Sir James how much
he was obliged to you, and how sincere your designs were
for the standing of your family; withal I told him that my
Lord Montrose was certainly engaged to you to marry
his daughter, but that from good hands I had reason to
suspect he had no design to perform it; and indeed my
Lord Montrose seemed to make no address there at all
in the beginning, but hearing that I went sometimes there,
he feared that I might get an interest with the father, for
the daughter never appeared, so observant they were to
my Lord Montrose, and he thought that if I should come
to make any friendship there, that when he came to be
discovered I might come to be acceptable, and that your
Lordship might turn the tables upon him. Wherefore
he went there and entered in terms to amuse them till I
should be gone, for then I was thinking every day of
going away, and had been gone, had I not fallen sick.
He continued thus, making them formal visits, and talking
of the terms, till the time that your signature should pass;
but when it came to the King’s hand it was stopped upon
the account of the title.
‘My Lord Montrose who, during all this time had
never told me anything of these affairs, nor almost had
never spoken to me, by Drumeller and others, let me
know that our differences proceeded from mistakes, and
that if we met we might come to understand one another,
upon which I went to him. After I had satisfied him of
some things he complained of, he told me that the
title was stopped, and asked me if I had no hand in it;
for he thought it could be no other way, seeing Sir James
concurred. I assured him T had not meddled in it, as
before God, I had not. So he told me he would settle
the title on me, if I would assist him in the passing of it.
I told him that I had never any mind for the title out of
the blood. He answered me, I might have Sir James’s
daughter and all. So I asked him how that could be.
He told me he had no design there, and that to secure me
the more, he had given commission to speak to my Lady
Rothes about her daughter, and she had received it kindly.
I asked how he would come off. He said upon their not
performing the terms, and offered to serve me in it, which
I refused, and would not concur. He thought to make
me serve him in his designs, and break me with Sir
James and his Lady: for he went and insinuated to them
as if I had a design upon their daughter, and was carrying
it on under hand. So soon as I heard this, I went and
told my Lady Graham all. My Lord Montrose came
there next day and denied it. However, they went to
Windsor and secured the signature, but it was already
done. They have not used me as I deserved at their
hands, but my design is not to complain of them, and
they had reason to trust entirely one whom your Lordship
had so strongly recommended. After all came to all, that
Sir James offered to perform all the conditions my Lord
Montrose required, he knew not what to say, and so, being
ashamed of his carriage, went away without taking leave
of them; which was to finish his tricks with contempt.
‘This is, my Lord, in as few words as I can, the most
substantial part of that story. My Lord Montrose and
some of his friends endeavoured to ruin that young lady’s
reputation to get an excuse for his carriage. But I made
them quickly quit those designs, for there was no shadow
of ground for it. And I must say she has suffered a
great deal to comply with your Lordship’s designs for her;
and truly, my Lord, if you knew her, you would think
she deserved all, and would think strange my Lord
Montrose should have neglected her.
‘My Lord, I know you want not the best advice
of the nation, yet I think it not amiss to tell you
that it is the opinion of everybody that you may
recover your estate, and that you ought to come and
make your case known to the King and Duke. Your
family is as considerable as Caithness or Maclean, in
whose standing they concern themselves highly. My Lord,
you would by this means recover your affairs; you would
see your cousin; and you and Sir James would understand
one another, and take right measures for the standing of
your family. If you let your title stand in the heirs
male, your family must of necessity perish, seeing in all
appearance you will outlive Sir James, and then it would
come to the next brother, who has neither heirs nor estate,
so that your only way will be to transfer the title to that
young lady, and get the father and mother to give you
the disposing of her. The Duke assures me, that if my
Lord Montrose would have married her, the title should
have passed, as being in the blood, and that it may
be done for anybody who shall marry her with your
consent.
‘My Lord, if I thought your Lordship were to come up,
I would wait to do you service; for your uncle is old and
infirm. My Lord, I hope you will pardon this long letter,
seeing it is concerning a business touches you so near,
and that of a long time I have not had the happiness to
entertain your Lordship. Time will show your Lordship
who deserves best your friendship.
‘My Lord, things fly very high here; the indictments
appear frequently against the honest Duke, and I am
feared these things must break out. I am sorry for it;
but I know you, impatient of the desire of doing great
things, will rejoice at this. Assure yourself, if ever there
be barricades again in Glasgow, you shall not want a call;
and, my Lord, I bespeak an employment under you, which
is to be your lieutenant-general, and I will assure you we
will make the world talk of us. And, therefore, provide me
trews, as you promised, and a good blue bonnet, and I will
assure you there shall be no trews trustier than mine.
‘My Lord, despond not for this disappointment, but
show resolution in all you do. When my affairs go wrong,
I remember that saying of Lucan, “Tam mala Pompeii
quam prospera mundus adoret.” One has occasion to
show their vigour after a wrong step to make a nimble
recovery. You have done nothing amiss, but trusted too
much to honour, and thought all the world held it as
sacred as you do.
‘My dear Lord, I hope you will do me the honour to
let me hear from you, for if there be nothing for your
service here I will be in Scotland immediately, for now
I am pretty well recovered. I know my Lord Montrose
will endeavour to misrepresent me to your Lordship, but
I hope he has forfeited his credit with you, and anything
he says to you is certainly to abuse you. My Lord, I
have both at home and abroad sustained the character of
an honest and frank man, and defy the world to reproach
me of anything. So, my Lord, as I have never failed in
my respect to your Lordship, I hope you will continue
that friendship for me which I have so much ambitioned.
When I have the honour to see you I will say more of
my inclination to serve you. I will beg the favour of a
line with the first post.
‘I am, my Lord, your Lordship’s most faithful and
humble servant,
J. Grahame.
‘Excuse this scribbling, for I am in haste, going to
Windsor, though I write two sheets.’
This long letter was followed at short intervals, by
others to the same effect, full of protestations on the
part of Claverhouse of his desire to serve the Earl. It
would appear, however, that Menteith was not fully
satisfied as to his correspondent’s sincerity and disinterestedness.
No direct reply to the latter’s denunciation
of Montrose has been preserved; but there is a communication
addressed to the young Marquis himself, in which
the Earl expresses himself very strongly and very plainly
with regard to the ‘malicious letters’ too often written
to him, and in which he assures him that his generous
actings and noble endeavours for the standing and good
of the Menteith family, vindicate to the world his Lordship’s
honour and reputation from the false and unjust
aspersions that some unworthy and seditious persons,
though they were of no mean quality, would make all
men believe.
It is true that the Earl of Menteith himself had good
reason for wishing to conciliate Montrose. He was not
without hope that the Marquis would ‘effectuate a speedy
and right course and method for the relieving of the
pressing debts of his poor, though ancient, family.’
Moreover, he had a special favour to beg, and one
which illustrates how greatly fallen from its high estate
the noble house of Menteith really was. The wording
and the spelling of the letter which contained it are
scarcely less remarkable than the request itself.
‘My Deir Lord,—After cerious consideration with
myself, I thinck most fiting and proper for me that I
com to Edinburgh, God willing, agane the siting of
the Parliment, the twenti-awght of the nixt month. In
ceass that I should stay from the Parliment, his Royall
Hyghnes might tak exceptiones, and be offended at me
if I ware not at the doune sitting thairoff, and possablie
might doe me much hearme in that bussines your
Lordship hes in hand conserning my affaer with the
King. Therfor I am fullie resolued to be at Edinburgh
agane the twenty of Jwllay at fardast, wherfor I humblie
intreat your Lordship to prowid and get the lene from
sume Earle thair robs, fite mantle, and wellwat coats,
and all things that belongs to Parliment robs. I will
heave four footmen in liwra. Ther is no doubt but ther
is sewerall Earles that will not ryd the Parliment. Therfor
be humblye pleased to get the lene to me of sume
Earle’s robes onley for a day to ryde in the Parliment,
and they shall be cearfulie keipt be me that none of
them be spoylt, for all the robs that belonged to my
grandfather was destroyed in the Einglish tyme. The
last tyme when I reid the Parliment, I cearied the
Secepter, and I head the lene of the deces’d Earle of
Lowdian’s robes, but it may be that this Earle will reid
himself. I hop your Lordship will get the lene of robs
to me from sume Earle or other, as also the lene of a
peacable horse, because I am werie unable in both my
foot and both my hands as yet. I thought good to
acqwant your Lordship of this beforhand in a letter by
itself. Hoping to receave tuo lines of ane answer of
returne thairto from your Lordship, I pray let me know
iff his Hyghnes will be Woiceroy at this Parliment, or
who it is that will represent the King. I expect all the
news from your Lordship, but on no termes doe not keip
the bearar heirof, who is my gardner; he must surlie be
at hom agan Thursdays night, so not willing to give farder
trouble, I remaine wncheangablie, my deir Lord,—Your
Lordship’s most affectionat cousine and faithful servant,
‘Menteith.’
The intricacy of a wooing in which there does not seem
to have been an excess of love-making, is made more
puzzling by a letter addressed by Isabella, wife of Sir James
Graham, to the Earl of Menteith. It was written about a
month later than his own obsequious epistle to Montrose;
and yet it shows that at that time a match between Claverhouse
and Lady Helen was again under consideration.
Lady Isabella informed his Lordship that she had so far
complied with his desires as to waive the propositions of
two matches, though the worse of the suitors had two
thousand pounds a year, besides a troop of horse, and a
fair prospect of many thousands more. At the same time,
she bade him bear in mind that, unless he were very willing
to assist as far as he could towards the recovering of such
lands as formerly belonged to his ancestors, she would
decline all thoughts of matching her daughter in Scotland,
where she would be a daily spectator of the ruin of the
noble family she came from. Her Ladyship’s very outspoken
letter also referred to the dilatoriness that had so
far marked the whole course of the negotiations, and let it
be understood that, in her opinion, the responsibility for
much of it lay with the Earl.
The delay with which Lady Graham found fault may, in
its most recent phase at least, have been due to rumours
and reports which had reached Menteith, to the effect that
Claverhouse had spoken disparagingly of him to the Duke
of Lauderdale; for the next letter in the correspondence
contains an energetic, almost passionate denial of such
conduct. The writer swears before Almighty God, and
upon his salvation, that he has never given either a good
or a bad character of the Earl to Lauderdale, and that he
has not even mentioned his person or affairs to him; he
declares himself ready to spend his blood in revenge of so
base and cowardly an injury on the ‘infamous liar’ who
has traduced him, and to whom he begs his letter may be
shown. From Claverhouse’s special insistence on the fact
that he had never cast a doubt on the Earl’s capacity for
affairs, it may be presumed that this was one of the points
with regard to which he was charged with having ‘said
things.’ Another letter to the Earl, written on the same
day, but as a distinct and more confidential communication,
suggests a suspicion that Menteith had been very
near committing disastrous blunders in his efforts to
urge Claverhouse’s suit. In answer, doubtless, to Lady
Isabella’s pointed letter, the Earl had written both to her
and to her daughter, and had commissioned the suitor
himself to deliver these communications to the ladies.
Claverhouse, however, thought it wiser to refrain from
doing so, for reasons which he thus explained:—
‘I have not dared to present them (the letters) because
that in my Lady’s letter you wished us much joy, and that
we might live happy together, which looked as if you
thought it a thing as good as done. I am sure my Lady,
of the humour I know her to be, would have gone mad
that you should think a business that concerned her so
nearly, concluded before it was ever proposed to her; and
in the daughter’s you was pleased to tell her of my affections
to her, and what I have suffered for her; this is very
galant and obliging, but I am afraid they would have misconstrued
it, and it might do me prejudice; and then in
both, my Lord, you were pleased to take pains to show
them almost clearly they had nothing to expect of you, and
took from them all hopes which they had, by desiring them
to require no more but your consent.’
The question of conditions and settlements being thus
approached, Claverhouse hastens to affirm his own absolute
disinterestedness. ‘I will assure you,’ he writes, ‘I need
nothing to persuade me to take that young lady. I would
take her in her smock.’ He is not sure, however, of such
unselfish and generous treatment from the other side; and
he consequently requests the Earl to hold out hopes to
them, though without binding himself in any way. ‘When
you say you give them your advice to the match,’ he writes,
‘tell them that they will not repent it, and that doing it at
your desire, you will do us any kindness you can, and look
on us as persons under your protection, and endeavour to
see us thrive—which obliges you to nothing, and yet
encourages them.’
This plain suggestion of a course which it would tax a
casuist’s ingenuity to distinguish from double-dealing and
deception, is hardly creditable to Claverhouse under any
circumstances. For his sake it may be hoped that the
excuse for it lay in the fact that by this time he had really
fallen in love, and was, as he said, anxious to win the
young lady for her own sake. If such were not the case,
there would be an almost repulsive insincerity in his closing
appeal, ‘For the love of God write kindly of me to them.
By getting me that young lady you make me happy.’
Two months later negotiations were still dragging on—they
had now extended, from first to last, through fully
three years, from the end of 1678 to the end of 1681.
On the 11th of December, Claverhouse again appealed to
the Earl to come to some settlement of his affairs, either
one way or the other, for, in the meantime, his own age
was slipping away, and he was losing other occasions, as
he supposed the young lady also was doing. The Grahams,
he feared, had gone back to Ireland; and, if it were so, he
proposed to invite them to come over to his house in
Galloway. But it would be necessary to offer something
definite to induce them to do so, for, ‘my Lady Graham
was a very cunning woman, and certainly would write back
that she would be unwilling to come so far upon uncertainties.’
He therefore further suggested that the Earl should
communicate directly with her Ladyship. That ‘they would
take it much more kindly, and be far the readier to comply’
was the reason urged for this. But another was hinted.
Claverhouse was ashamed to write, not knowing what to
say, seeing that after all he had promised on Menteith’s
behalf, his Lordship had not yet come to a final decision.
Claverhouse’s letter does not appear to have produced
any effect. As late as the beginning of March 1682,
matters were still in the same unsettled and unsatisfactory
state. The Earl had not yet resolved on any decisive
action, and was doubtless endeavouring to make a bargain
as favourable as possible to himself, when he received a
short but urgent letter from Claverhouse. It asked for an
early meeting, and indicated the reason for it in these
words: ‘I have had one in Ireland whom I shall bring
along with me, and you shall know all. Send nobody to
Ireland; but take no new measures till I can see you.’
There are no letters from Claverhouse relative to subsequent
negotiations. It appears from other documents,
however, that Sir James Graham had come to believe in
the existence of a plot between the two suitors, to get the
better of both him and the Earl. Everything, he declared,
had been contrived by the hand of Claverhouse; and it
was his ambitious desire to make himself the head of their
ancient family that had brought them all the trouble of my
Lord Montrose’s business. There was, he asserted, an
agreement that Montrose should use his interest with the
Earl for a settlement of his honours and estates upon
Claverhouse, who, on his side, had bound himself to make
over the estates privately to Montrose. The letter setting
all this forth in tones of the bitterest resentment was
written from Drogheda in March 1683. Before that,
however, Lady Helen had made further matrimonial
arrangements impossible. She had married Captain Rawdon,
son of Sir George Rawdon, and nephew, as well as
heir apparent to the Earl of Conway. And so an Irish
gentleman, who was possibly no myth when Montrose
wrote about him four years earlier, carried away the lady.
V MATTERS CIVIL, MILITARY AND MATRIMONIAL
The letters which enable us to trace the course of Claverhouse’s
matrimonial negotiations are also the documents
upon which we have mainly to depend for our knowledge
of his movements during the period immediately subsequent
to the ‘circuit’ which he made in the south-western
counties after the Battle of Bothwell Bridge. From these
we learn that he was in London during the summer of
1680; and a letter from Charles Maitland of Hatton to
Queensberry, suggests a probable motive for the journey to
town. ‘Claverhouse’s commission as to the rebels’ goods,’
he wrote, ‘is recalled by the Council; so your man will
have room for his payment; that ye need not fear.’ This
measure, with which, to judge from the tenor of Maitland’s
remarks, Queensberry was not improbably connected,
appears to have followed upon a charge of misappropriation
of public monies, brought against Claverhouse by the
Treasurer, and intended to supply an excuse for preventing
him from entering into possession of the forfeited estate of
Patrick Macdowall of Freugh, bestowed upon him by royal
grant in consideration of ‘his good and faithful services.’
It is warrantable to suppose that the immediate object of
his journey to London was to appeal from the Council’s
decision to the King himself. In any case, there is
evidence that he availed himself of his stay in the English
capital to bring the matter before his sovereign, and to
plead his cause in person. The result may be gathered
from a letter addressed by Charles to the Lords Commissioners
of the Treasury, on the 26th of February 1681.
‘As to what you have represented concerning Claverhouse,
particularly in reference to the commission granted by you
unto him for uplifting and sequestrating not only the rents,
duties, and movables belonging to Freugh, but of all the
rebels in Wigtownshire who have been in the rebellion,
whereof you say he hath made no account yet, we have
spoke to him about it, and he doth positively assert, that,
while he was in Scotland, he received not one farthing
upon that account, and that if anything have since been
recovered by those whom in his absence he hath entrusted
with the execution of that commission, he believes it to be
so inconsiderable as it will not much exceed the charges
that must necessarily be laid out in that affair. However,
we do expect that he will meet with no worse usage from
you, upon that occasion than others to whom you have
granted the like commissions.’ The letter also conveyed
his Majesty’s ‘express pleasure’ that the Commissioners
should remove the stop that was put upon the gift of forfeiture,
and should cause the same to be passed in the
Exchequer at their very next meeting.
In October 1681, also, Claverhouse was in London; and
though there is nothing to show whether his stay there had
been continuous, the fact that there is no record of his
doings in Scotland during the interval, may be taken as
negative, yet strong, evidence of his absence from the
country. There is a curious document to prove that, on
the 26th of the next month he crossed the Firth of Forth
from Burntisland to Leith. It is a poem entitled ‘The
Tempest,’ and written by Alexander Tyler, the minister of
Kinnettles, who describes it as ‘being an account of a
dangerous passage from Burntisland to Leith in a boat
called the Blessing, in company of Claverhouse, several
gentlewomen, ministers and a whole throng of common
passengers upon the 26th of November 1681.’ On the
11th of the following month, Claverhouse dates a letter
from Edinburgh; and, from that time, his activity and his
influence again begin to be felt.
The Earl of Queensberry, writing from Sanquhar to
Lord Haddo on the 2nd of January 1682, reports that in
his part of the country all is peaceable, ‘save only that in
the heads of Galloway some rebels meet.’ Their numbers
being inconsiderable, and their business ‘only to drink and
quarrel,’ neither Church nor State need, in his judgment,
fear them; still, he is of opinion that ‘the sooner garrisons
be placed, and a competent party sent with Claverhouse
for scouring that part of the country, the better.’ ‘Besides,’
he adds, ‘I’m told field-conventicles continue in Annandale
and Galloway, but all will certainly evanish upon
Claverhouse’s arrival, as I have often told.’ It would
appear from this, that Captain Graham had returned to
Scotland for a special and definite purpose; and this view
is borne out by his appointment on the 31st of January to
be heritable sheriff of Wigtownshire, in the place of Sir
Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, and heritable bailie of the
regality of Tongland, instead of Viscount Kenmure, both
the former possessors having been deprived of their commissions
in consequence of their refusal to take the
prescribed test. In terms of his appointment, Claverhouse
was to have jurisdiction within the shire of Dumfries and
stewartries of Kirkcudbright and Annandale; but, with
regard to these districts, it was specially provided that
the powers conferred upon him were in no way to be
prejudicial to the rights of the heritable sheriff or steward,
and that he was ‘only to proceed and do justice,’ when he
was ‘the first attacher,’ that is to say, only in cases with
regard to which no legal proceedings had already been
taken.
Claverhouse had not long assumed his new duties before
he discovered that the ‘rebels’ and ‘conventiclers’ were
not the only people with whom he had to deal, and that
a task far more difficult than hunting them down or scattering
their meetings would be to expose the connivance of
some of the leading families, and to check the disorders
arising from it. As early as the 5th of March, in a letter
to Queensberry, he wrote, ‘Here, in the shire, I find the
lairds all following the example of a late great man,
and still a considerable heritor among them, which is,
to live regularly themselves, but have their houses constant
haunts of rebels and intercommuned persons, and
have their children baptized by the same; and then lay all
the blame on their wives; condemning them and swearing
they cannot help what is done in their absence. But I am
resolved this jest shall pass no longer here; for it is laughing
and fooling the Government; and it will be more of
consequence to punish one considerable laird, than a
hundred little bodies. Besides, it is juster; because these
only sin by the example of those.’
At the date of this communication, Claverhouse had
already begun to carry out the policy to which it referred;
and a letter written four days earlier supplies important
details as to the course which he had adopted. ‘The way
that I see taken in other places, is to put laws severely,
against great and small, in execution, which is very just;
but what effects does that produce, but more to exasperate
and alienate the hearts of the whole body of the people?
For it renders three desperate where it gains one; and
your Lordship knows that in the greatest crimes it is
thought wisest to pardon the multitude and punish the
ringleaders, where the number of the guilty is great, as in
this case of whole countries. Wherefore, I have taken
another course here. I have called two or three parishes
together at one church, and after intimating to them the
power I have, I read them a libel narrating all the Acts of
Parliament against the fanatics; whereby I made them
sensible how much they were in the King’s reverence, and
assured them he was relenting nothing of his former severity
against dissenters, nor care of maintaining the established
government; as they might see by his doubling the fines
in the late Act of Parliament; and, in the end, told them
that the King had no design to ruin any of his subjects he
could reclaim, nor I to enrich myself by their crimes; and,
therefore, any who would resolve to conform, and live
regularly, might expect favour; excepting only resetters
and ringleaders. Upon this, on Sunday last, there was
about three hundred people at Kirkcudbright church; some
that for seven years before had never been there. So that
I do expect that within a short time I could bring two parts
of three to the church.’
But though there seemed to be some hope of influencing
the people, if they were left to themselves,
Claverhouse was fully alive to the fact that it was vain to
think of any settlement so long as their irreconcilable
ministers were able to exercise their influence. No sooner
was he gone, than they came in, he said, and all repented
and fell back to their old ways. With a view to remedying
this, he strongly and repeatedly urged the necessity of
having a constant force of dragoons in garrison; and, in
the meantime, he took vigorous measures to carry out the
work entrusted to him. To quote his own summary of a
report presented by him to the Committee of the Privy
Council, ‘The first work he did, was to provide magazines
of corn and straw in every part of the country, that he
might with conveniency go with the whole party wherever
the King’s service required; and, running from one
place to another, nobody could know where to surprise
him; and in the meantime quartered on the rebels,
and endeavoured to destroy them by eating up their
provisions, but that they quickly perceived the design,
and sowed their corns on untilled ground. After which
he fell in search of the rebels; played them hotly with
parties; so that there were several taken, many fled the
country, and all were dung from their haunts; and then
rifled so their houses, ruined their goods, and imprisoned
their servants, that their wives and children were brought
to starving; which forced them to have recourse to the
safe conduct; and made them glad to renounce their
principles, declare Bothwell Bridge an unlawful rebellion,
swear never to rise in arms against the King, his heirs
and successors, or any having commission or authority
from him, upon any pretext whatsomever, and promise
to live orderly hereafter.’
Three months of this repressive and coercive policy
produced results which Claverhouse himself declared
to be beyond his expectation. Writing to Queensberry,
on the 1st of April 1682, he said, ‘I am very happy in
this business of this country, and I hope the Duke will
have no reason to blame your Lordship for advising him
to send the forces hither. For this country now is in
perfect peace: all who were in the rebellion are either
seized, gone out of the country, or treating their peace;
and they have already so conformed, as to going to the
church, that it is beyond my expectation. In Dumfries,
not only almost all the men are come, but the women
have given obedience; and Irongray, Welsh’s own parish,
have for the most part conformed; and so it is over all
the country. So that, if I be suffered to stay any time
here, I do expect to see this the best settled part of the
Kingdom on this side the Tay. And if those dragoons
were fixed which I wrote your Lordship about, I might
promise for the continuance of it.
‘Your Lordship’s friends here are very assisting to me in
all this work; and it does not contribute a little to the progress
of it, that the world knows I have your Lordship’s
countenance in what I do. All this is done without having
received a farthing money, either in Nithsdale, Annandale,
or Kirkcudbright; or imprisoned anybody. But, in end,
there will be need to make examples of the stubborn
that will not comply. Nor will there be any danger
in this after we have gained the great body of the people;
to whom I am become acceptable enough; having passed
all bygones, upon bonds of regular carriage hereafter.’
The measures adopted by Claverhouse met with the
fullest approval of the Government, and the results
achieved through them were deemed so satisfactory as to
call for special recognition. Wodrow states that on the
15th of May, ‘Claverhouse got the Council’s thanks for his
diligence in executing his commission in Galloway.’
Further evidence of the favour in which Claverhouse
was held is afforded by the instructions given by the
Council to General Dalziel, in view of the military visitation
of the shires of Lanark and of Ayr, which he was
appointed to hold. He is directed ‘to repair to the town
of Ayr, and there to meet with the Earl of Dumfries,
and the Commissioners of that shire, where the laird of
Claverhouse is to be present, and there to confer with
them anent the security of that shire.’ After having
complied with this, he is to return to the shire of Lanark,
and the laird of Claverhouse with him, ‘and there to
consider what further is necessary to be done, as to the
settling of the peace of both these shires.’ Finally, when
these matters have been fully considered and discussed
by them, he and Claverhouse ‘are to come in with all
possible diligence, and give an account to the Lord
Chancellor’ of their procedure, ‘to be communicated to
his Majesty’s Privy Council.’
When Claverhouse was returning from Edinburgh to
Galloway, at the conclusion of this mission, there occurred
an incident which must have convinced him that, even
if, as he said, he had become acceptable enough to the
great body of the people, there was a remnant of desperate
men, whom his repressive measures had only inspired with
a still fiercer hatred of him. His own account of it
is contained in a letter to Queensberry, to whom he says:
“I thought to have waited on your Lordship before this,
but I was stayed at Edinburgh two days beyond what I
designed, which has proved favourable for me. Yesterday
when I came at the Bille, I was certainly informed that
several parties of Whigs in arms, to the number of six or
seven score, were gone from thence but six hours before.
They came from Clydesdale upon Monday night, and
passed Tweed at the Bille, going towards Teviotdale, but
went not above three miles farther that way. They
stayed thereabout, divided in small parties, most all on
foot, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, till Friday
morning, when they passed the hills towards Clydesdale.
Some say they had a meeting with Teviotdale folks;
others would make me believe that they had a mind
for me. They did ask, in several places, what they heard
of me, and told they were sure my troop was far in, in
Galloway. Others say they were flying the West for fear
of the diligence the gentry is designed to use for their
discovery. I could believe this, were they not returned.
I spoke with the minister, and several other people in
whose houses they were; but he kept out of the way.
They did no prejudice in his house, further than meat and
drink. They gave no where that I could learn any
account of their design there; only, I heard they said they
were seeking the enemies of God, and inquired roughly
if anybody there kept the church. The country keeps
up this business. I heard nothing of it till I was within
two miles of the Bille, and that was from a gentleman on
the road, who had heard it at a burial the day before.
There was a dragoon all Tuesday night at the change-house
at the Bille, and the master of the house confessed
to me he let him know nothing of it. They pretend it
is for fear of bringing trouble to the country. I sent from
the Bille an express to acquaint my Lord Chancellor with
it; for I thought it fit the quarters should be advertised
not to be too secure, when these rogues had the impudence
to go about so.’
Queensberry was as fully convinced as Claverhouse
that there had been a plot, which the unforeseen delay
in Edinburgh had alone prevented from being put to
execution. Writing to the Chancellor a few days later,
he said: ‘I doubt not but your Lordship has full account
of Clavers’ re-encounter at the Bille. It was good he did
not come a day sooner; for certainly their design was
against him.’
In the course of the year 1682, the jealousy aroused by
Claverhouse’s appointment as Sheriff-Principal of Wigtownshire,
and by the special power bestowed upon him to
hold criminal courts, culminated in an open quarrel
between him and the family of Stair, of which the head
was Sir James Dalrymple, who, but a short time previously,
had fallen into disgrace, and had been virtually deposed
from his office of President of the Court of Session, for
not conforming with the Test Act. According to the
summary given of the case by Fountainhall, who was one
of the counsel for the Stair family, Captain Graham of
Claverhouse having imprisoned some of the Dalrymples’
tenants in Galloway for absenting themselves from the
parish church and attending conventicles, Sir John, the
ex-president’s son, took up the matter, and presented a
bill of suspension to the Privy Council, alleging that he,
as heritable Bailie of the Regality of Glenluce, within
which the peasants lived, had already taken cognizance
of their case; and that Claverhouse, not being the first
attacher, was precluded by the limitations and restrictions
of his commission, from taking action in the matter, and had
no claim to the ‘casualities and emoluments of the fine.’
Claverhouse replied that it was he who had first cited the
offenders, and that Sir John’s action was collusive. When
the matter was first brought before the Privy Council, it
was ordained that the imprisoned tenants should be set
at liberty, after consigning their fines, which Fountainhall
denounces as ‘most exorbitant,’ into the hands of the
clerk. The point of jurisdiction was reserved; but in the
meantime, the Council administered a reprimand to the
Dalrymples, and told them in very plain terms, that
‘heritable Bailies and Sheriffs who were negligent themselves
in putting the laws in execution, should not offer
to compete with the Sheriffs commissioned and put in by
the Council, who executed vigorously the King’s law.’
But it was not Claverhouse’s intention that his opponent
should escape so easily. He met the charges
made against him with a bill of complaint, in which
the gravest accusations followed each other in overwhelming
array. The leading counts in the indictment
bore that Sir John Dalrymple had weakened the
hands of the Government in the county of Galloway, by
traversing and opposing the commission which the King’s
Council had given Claverhouse; that he had done his
utmost to stir up the people to a dislike of the King’s
forces there; that he kept disloyal and disaffected persons
to be bailies and clerks in his regality, and had not
administered the test to them till long after January 1682,
contrary to the Act of Parliament; that he had imposed
on delinquents mock fines, not the fiftieth or sixtieth part
of what the law required, for the sole purpose of anticipating
and forestalling Claverhouse; that he and his father
had offered Claverhouse a bribe of £150 sterling, out of
the fines, to connive at the irregularities of his mother,
Lady Stair, of his sisters, and of others; that he had
laughed insolently at the proclamation of a court, made
by Claverhouse, and had ordered his tenants not to
attend it; that he had traduced and defamed Claverhouse
to the Privy Council; and that he had accused him of
cheating the King’s Treasury, by exacting fines and not
accounting for them.
When Sir John Dalrymple’s answers to these charges
had been read, the Chancellor gave some indication of
the temper and feeling of the Council by reproving him
‘for his tart reflections on Claverhouse’s ingenuity,’ and
by denying his right to adduce witnesses, whilst, on the
other side, Claverhouse was allowed to call whom he
chose, in support of the charges brought by him against
Sir John. Fountainhall states that ‘there was much
transport, flame, and humour in this cause;’ and he
mentions that, at one phase of the proceedings, when
Dalrymple alleged that the people of Galloway had turned
orderly and regular, Claverhouse, alluding to the latest
Edinburgh novelty of the time, replied that there were
as many elephants and crocodiles in Galloway as loyal
subjects. According to Sir John himself, Claverhouse
went much further than a direct denial of his opponents’
assertions, and, in the presence of the Committee of
Council appointed to examine witnesses, threatened to
give him a box in the ear.
As might have been foreseen from the tone and tenor
of the whole proceedings, the judgment of the Council,
pronounced on the 12th of February 1683, was a complete
triumph for Claverhouse. Not only was it found that he
had done nothing but what was legal and consonant with
his commission and instructions; but, in addition to that,
the Chancellor complimented him, and, expressing wonder
that he, not being a lawyer, had walked so warily in so
irregular a country, conveyed to him the Council’s thanks,
as an encouragement. With regard to Sir John Dalrymple,
on the other hand, the finding of the Council, set forth
under five specific heads, was, generally, to the effect that
he had exceeded his commission, weakened the authority
of the King and of the Council, and interfered with the
due administration of the law. In punishment of his
conduct, he was deprived of his jurisdiction and office, as
bailie of the regality of Glenluce, and fined in the sum
of £500 sterling. Further, it was ordered that he should
be submitted prisoner in the Castle of Edinburgh, and
detained there, not merely till the money was paid, but
during the Council’s pleasure. His incarceration was
not, however, of long duration. He was liberated on
the 20th of the same month, after paying the fine, acknowledging
his rashness, and craving the Council’s pardon.
Whilst the matter between Claverhouse and Dalrymple
was still pending, neither the Duke of York nor the King
appears to have felt conscious of any impropriety in giving
expression to his personal sentiments and sympathy. The
former, writing to Queensberry at the beginning of
December, said: ‘I am absolutely of your mind as to
Claverhouse; and think his presence more necessary in
Galloway than anywhere else; for he need not fear anything
Stairs can say of him, his Majesty being so well satisfied
with him.’ On the 25th of the same month, Charles, to
show his appreciation of Claverhouse’s ‘loyalty, courage, and
good conduct,’ appointed him to be Colonel of a regiment
of horse, which was formed for his special benefit, and also
gave him the captaincy of a troop in the same regiment.
Shortly after his promotion Claverhouse undertook a
journey to the English court, partly on public business, as
the bearer of despatches from the Council, and partly as a
private suitor, not only on his own behalf but also in the
interest of others who had not been slow to recognise the
favour in which he stood, and were anxious to avail themselves
of his influence. At this time, the Committee
which, in June 1682, had been appointed to investigate
the charges of peculation and malversation brought against
Charles Maitland of Hatton, younger brother and heir
presumptive to the Duke of Lauderdale, whom the family
influence had raised to the responsible position of General
of the Scottish mint, had not yet presented its report; but
there existed no doubt that the decision would prove
adverse to Hatton, who had, in the meantime, become Earl
of Lauderdale, and greedy suitors were already preparing
to put forward their claims to a share of the spoils which
the ruin of the family would place at the King’s disposal.
Amongst these were Queensberry who, though but lately
raised to a marquisate, already aspired to a dukedom, and
Gordon of Haddo, who was anxious to obtain a grant of
money, either a thousand pounds sterling a year, or twenty
thousand pounds sterling, which were thought to be the
equivalent, to enable him to maintain the double dignity
of High Chancellor and of Earl of Aberdeen recently conferred
upon him.
Claverhouse, too, meant to avail himself of the opportunity
thus offered him, for the purpose of adding to his
own estates in Forfarshire the neighbouring lands of Dudhope,
and of obtaining the constabulary of Dundee. The
main object of his visit to England was to look after these
several interests; and the letters written by him from Newmarket,
where the King and the Duke of York were staying
at the time, give his correspondents in Scotland a full and
detailed account of the manner in which he discharged his
commission, in the intervals of ‘cock-fighting and courses.’
When he returned to Scotland, about the middle of
May 1683, he was able to convey to those concerned
satisfactory assurances, which the sequel justified, as
to the success of the extensive job which they had
planned between them. He had been preceded by a
royal letter in which Charles informed his ‘right trusty
and right well-beloved cousins and counsellors’ of his
desire that Colonel John Graham of Claverhouse, in consideration
of his loyalty, abilities, and eminent services,
should be received and admitted a Privy Councillor.
Claverhouse was accordingly sworn in, on the 22nd of the
month, and at once took an important part in carrying out
the further punitive measures which had been determined
upon during his stay at the English Court, and of which
he was, in all probability, the instigator.
More than twelve months earlier, on the report that an
‘indulgence’ was to be granted, he had protested to
Queensberry against such a course, and had expressed a
hope that nobody would be so mad as to advise it. There
is every reason to suppose that, as soon as the opportunity
occurred, he laid before the King opinions consonant with
this, and was directly instrumental in the appointment of
a Circuit Court of Justiciary for the enforcement of the
Test Act. It was his views which the royal proclamation
embodied in the statement that the indemnities, indulgences,
and other favours granted to the fanatic and disaffected
party had hitherto produced no other effect than to encourage
them to further disorders and to embolden them
to abuse the royal goodness; it was his conviction to
which it gave utterance in the assertion that neither
difference in religion, nor tenderness of conscience, but
merely principles of disloyalty and disaffection to the
Government moved them to disturb the quiet of the King’s
reign and the peace of his kingdom; and it was his experience
of the evasions and subterfuges used by them
which dictated the steps to be taken, not only for the
punishment of obstinate recusants, but also for the encouragement
of the well-intentioned whom circumstances
might hitherto have prevented from formally signifying
their submission and promising obedience.
The first sitting of the Circuit Court of Justiciary was
to be held at Stirling on the 5th of June. A few days
previously, the Privy Council issued an order that Colonel
John Graham of Claverhouse should go along with the
Justices during their whole progress in the Justice Air, and
should command the forces in every place visited by them,
with the exception of Glasgow and Stirling, where it was
supposed the Lieutenant-General would be present. To
this circumstance we owe it that a report of the only case
in which sentence of death was pronounced, can be given
in his own words. It is contained in a letter to the Lord
Chancellor, and is deserving of notice, not merely on
account of the facts which it relates, for those may be
gathered from other documents, but also because of the
sentiments and principles which the writer found opportunity
to express in it, and which help us to understand the spirit
by which Claverhouse was actuated, and the view which he
took of both duty and expediency in carrying out the law.
As a brief recapitulation of Boog’s case, the writer says:
‘He was actually in the rebellion; continued in that state
for four years; and now comes in with a false, sham
certificate to fool the judges. For, being desired to give
his oath that he had taken the bond, he positively refused.
Being asked if Bothwell Bridge was a rebellion, refused to
declare it so. Or the Bishop’s murder, a murder. And
positively refused, in the face of the Court, the benefit of
the King’s indemnity by taking the Test. Upon which
the Judges, moved by the outcry of all the bystanders, as
by their conviction of the wickedness of the man, referred
the matter to the knowledge of an inquest, who brought
him in guilty. After which, he begged to acknowledge his
folly; and offered to take the Test, with the old gloss,—“as
far as it consisted with the Protestant religion, and the
glory of God.” And after that was refused him, offered in
end to take it any way. By all which it clearly appears,
that he would do anything to save his life, but nothing to
be reconciled to Government.’
After having thus summarised the heads of the case,
Claverhouse proceeds to justify the action of the Government
in not allowing men to take the Test after they were
condemned. All casuists agree, he says, that an oath
imposed where the alternative is hanging cannot in any
way be binding; and it may consequently be supposed
that they who refused it when they had the freedom of
choice, and took it after being condemned, did it only
because they thought themselves not bound to keep it.
In point of prudence, too, he argues, such leniency would
be misplaced and pernicious; it would leave it in the
power of the disaffected to continue all their tricks up to
the very last day fixed for taking benefit of the indemnity,
and then, if they should be apprehended and condemned,
enable them to escape the punishment of their treason by
taking the Test. Against this he protests as turning the
whole thing into ridicule; ‘for great clemency has, and
ought to be, shown to people that are sincerely resolved
to be reclaimed, but the King’s indemnity should not be
forced on villains.’ As to the effect which severity in
Boog’s case might produce, Claverhouse scouts the idea
that it would deter others from ‘coming in’; and in support
of his opinion to the contrary, he points to the actual
fact that twenty have taken the Test since the man was
condemned, and that the ‘terror of his usage’ is generally
looked upon as likely to induce many more to submit.
Referring to the rescue of a prisoner, which had recently
been effected by a party of armed men, and in the course
of which one of the King’s guards had been killed—a
crime for which Wharry and Smith were subsequently
executed in Glasgow and hung in chains near Inchbellybridge,
between Kirkintilloch and Kilsyth, where their
‘monument’ may still be seen—Claverhouse continues,
‘If this man should not be hanged, they would take
advantage, that they have disappointed us by rescuing the
other, and give us such apprehensions that we durst not
venture on this.’ Then he gives expression to a sentiment
which should never be lost sight of in forming an estimate
of his character and conduct: ‘I am as sorry to see a man
die, even a Whig, as any of themselves. But when one
dies justly, for his own faults, and may save a hundred to
fall in the like, I have no scruple.’
At the beginning of July 1683, Claverhouse returned
to Edinburgh. For the next ten months his labours
mainly consisted in attendance at the meetings of the Privy
Council, and do not bring him specially into prominence.
Towards the close of the comparatively quiet period
he again appears in the character of a suitor. On this
occasion, his matrimonial plans met with more success
than those of which Lady Helen Graham had been the
object. By what may seem a singular freak of fate, Jean,
youngest daughter of the late Lord Cochrane, the lady on
whom he had bestowed his affections, belonged to a family
of strong Covenanting sympathies. Her father had, in the
earlier days of the religious troubles, refused the Bond, and
protested against the illegality of the clause which obliged
masters to answer for their servants’ attendance at church.
Her mother, a Kennedy by birth, professed the stern and
uncompromising Presbyterianism of her house. Her grandfather,
Lord Dundonald, had been the subject of an inquisition
for keeping a chaplain who prayed God to bless the
rebels in the West with success. And her uncle, Sir John
Cochrane, was an outlawed rebel and a suspected traitor.
The circumstances of Claverhouse’s wooing were not
overlooked by his enemies and ill-wishers. Amongst
them was the Duke of Hamilton, whose professed loyalty
does not appear to have placed him above suspicion, and
whose daughter, Lady Susannah, was at this very time
sought in marriage by Lord Cochrane, Claverhouse’s prospective
brother-in-law. This coincidence afforded the
Duke an opportunity of which he ingeniously availed himself
to direct attention to the nature of the alliance contemplated
by Claverhouse. The way in which he did so
is indicated by the following passage from a letter addressed
by the latter to Queensberry. Referring to his intended
marriage, he says: ‘My Lord Duke Hamilton has refused
to treat of giving his daughter to my Lord Cochrane till he
should have the King and the Duke’s leave. This, I
understand, has been advised him, to goad me. Wherefore
I have written to the Duke, and told him that I would
have done it sooner, had I not judged it presumption in
me to trouble his Highness with my little concerns; and
that I looked upon myself as a cleanser, that may cure
others by coming amongst them, but cannot be infected
by any plague of Presbytery; besides, that I saw nothing
singular in my Lord Dundonald’s case, save that he has
but one rebel on his land for ten that the rest of the lords
and lairds of the South and West have on theirs; and that
he is willing to depone that he knew not of there being
such. The Duke is juster than to charge my Lord
Dundonald with Sir John’s crimes. He is a madman, and
let him perish; they deserve to be damned would own
him. The Duke knows what it is to have sons and
nephews that follow not advice.
‘I have taken pains to know the state of the country’s
guilt as to reset; and if I make it not appear that my Lord
Dundonald is one of the clearest of all that country, and
can hardly be reached in law, I am content to pay his fine.
I never pleaded for any, nor shall I hereafter. But I must
say I think it hard that no regard is had to a man in so
favourable circumstances—I mean considering others—upon
my account, and that nobody offered to meddle with
him till they heard I was likely to be concerned in him.’
After further comments and protests in this tone of suppressed
indignation, he concludes his letter with the following
emphatic words: ‘Whatever come of this, let not
my enemies misrepresent me. They may abuse the Duke
for a time, and hardly. But, or long, I will, in despite of
them, let the world see that it is not in the power of love,
nor any other folly, to alter my loyalty.’
There is a remarkable proof of the annoyance which
Claverhouse felt at the attacks directed against him, and,
perhaps, also of his secret consciousness that if the political
position of his intended bride’s family did not wholly
justify them, it at least supplied that element of partial
truth which makes slander doubly dangerous. On the
same day he wrote another letter to Queensberry, and dealt
once more and at considerable length with his approaching
marriage. After again expressing his opinion as to the real
motive and meaning of Hamilton’s ostentatious scruples,
and repeating the assurance that he was proof against the
infection of Presbyterianism, he asserted, if not the absolute
at least the comparative, loyalty of the Cochrane family,
in which he saw very little but might be easily rubbed off,
and added what was even more important, an emphatic
declaration of the soundness of Lady Jean’s own sentiments.
‘And for the young lady herself, I shall answer for her.
Had she not been right principled, she would never in
despite of her mother and relations, have made choice of a
persecutor, as they call me. So, whoever thinks to misrepresent
me on that head, will find themselves mistaken.
For both in the King’s and the Church’s cause, drive as
fast as they think fit, they will never see me behind. However,
my Lord, malice sometimes carries things far; so I
must beg your Lordship will defend me if you find anything
of this kind stirring.’
This was written on the 19th of May 1684. On the
9th of the following month, the marriage contract between
Colonel John Graham of Claverhouse and Lady Jean
Cochrane was signed in Paisley. The bride’s mother had,
apparently, proved relentless in her opposition to the ‘persecutor.’
Her signature does not appear on the document.
The lady’s dowry consisted of forty thousand merks—rather
more than two thousand pounds sterling. Her
jointure was fixed at five thousand merks, or about two
hundred and seventy-six pounds yearly. As heritable
security for it, the bridegroom’s lands and houses were set
forth in imposing array. Amongst them was included the
estate of Dudhope which, with the Constabulary of Dundee,
had come into Claverhouse’s possession a few months earlier,
after prolonged litigation, and in spite of a private bargain
which Aberdeen and Lauderdale had made between them,
and which but for the direct interposition of the King’s
authority, would have prevented his acquiring the long
coveted lands.
Whilst Claverhouse was in Paisley, events were leading
up to a sudden and dramatic interruption of the bridal
festivities. On Sunday, the 8th of June, that is, the day
before that upon which the marriage contract was signed,
General Dalziel, the commander of the forces in Glasgow,
received information, as he was ‘at the forenoon’s sermon,’
that a conventicle was being held near the Black Loch, a
small lake in Renfrewshire, about eight miles south-east of
Paisley. He at once sent out forty men, of whom twenty
were dragoons, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel
Winrhame. They were informed that a party of about a
hundred, mostly men armed with guns and swords, had
assembled at Drumlech-hill, and had thence proceeded
through the moors, in a south-westerly direction. But,
though traces of them were found at Allanton, at Cambusnethan,
and at Crossford, where they passed the water, the
nature of the country made it impossible to come up with
them. After marching all night in fruitless pursuit,
Winrhame returned to Glasgow on the Monday with his
wearied men.
On the previous Saturday, Claverhouse had informed
Dalziel of his departure for Paisley, so that there might be
no delay in conveying orders to him, if he were required
for special duty. Possibly out of consideration for the
bridegroom, it was not to him, but to Lord Ross, who was
one of the wedding guests, and had acted as witness for his
brother-officer the day before, that, on the Tuesday morning,
the General sent information of what had taken place.
When the purport of the letter was communicated to
Claverhouse, he had no hesitation as to his own course
of action. With a growl at the ‘dogs,’ who ‘might have
let Tuesday pass,’ and a vow that he would, some time or
other, be revenged on them for ‘the unseasonable trouble’
they were causing him, he made hasty preparation, and set
out on the rebels’ track. Tuesday night and Wednesday
all day he scoured the country, leaving ‘no den, no knowe,
no moss, no hill unsearched.’ Beyond catching sight of
two men, who were running to the hills, but who, on account
of the marshy nature of the ground, could not be overtaken
he was not more successful than Winrhame had been. On
reaching Strathaven, he decided to ride back to Paisley, and
gave over the command to Colonel Buchan, with instructions
to follow more leisurely and, on his march, to search
the skirts of the hills and moors on the Clydesdale side.
On the Friday morning Buchan sent his superior officer
a report of the stirring incidents of the previous day.
After Claverhouse had left him, he had met a man from
whom he learnt that there were numbers of rebels in arms
in the heart of the hills, on the Clydesdale side, and who
gave him a description of the two leaders—one a lusty,
black, one-eyed man, with a velvet cap; the other a good-like
man, who wore a grey hat. Buchan at once made for
the place which had been indicated. On the way to it, a
party of foot, that he had sent out on his right, accidentally
came upon the armed Covenanters. Four soldiers, who
formed a kind of advance-guard, were fired on by seven
men that started up suddenly, out of a glen, and one of
them was wounded. The other three, after discharging their
pieces without effect at their assailants, thought it safer
not to venture in pursuit over the treacherous ground.
Hastening back, they informed their colonel of the encounter;
but, though Buchan made all possible diligence,
he could not succeed in even catching sight of the fugitives.
He could only learn that they had made for Cumnock, and
he himself proceeded with all speed in the same direction,
in the hope of preventing their passing into Galloway.
By noon that same Friday, Claverhouse had again taken
a hurried leave of his bride, and was on the road to
Ayrshire. From that point his movements may best be
narrated in his own terse words: ‘I went immediately to
Mauchline, and from this to Cumnock, where we learned
that on Thursday night they had passed at the bog-head,
near Airdsmoss, and were then only fifty-nine in arms.
They were running in great haste, barefooted many of
them, and taking horses in some places, to help them
forward. We heard they went from that to a place called
the Hakhill, within two miles of Cumnock, and from that
to the Gap, which goes to the hills lying betwixt the
Sanquhar and Moffat. But we could never hear more of
them. I sent on Friday night for my troop from Dumfries,
and ordered them to march by the Sanquhar to the
Muirkirk, to the Ploughlands, and so to Straven. I sent
for Captain Strachan’s troop from the Glenkens, and
ordered him to march to the old castle of Cumnock, down
to the Lorne, and through the country to Kilbride, leaving
Mauchline and Newmills on his left, and Loudon-hill on
his right. By this means they scoured this country, and
secured the passages that way.
‘Colonel Buchan marched with the foot and dragoons
some miles on the right of my troop, and I, with the Guards
and my Lord Ross and his troop up by the (Shaire?).
We were at the head of Douglas. We were round and
over Cairntable. We were at Greenock-head, Cummer-head,
and through all the moors, mosses, hills, glens, woods;
and spread in small parties, and ranged as if we had been
at hunting, and down to Blackwood, but could learn nothing
of those rogues. So the troops being extremely harassed
with marching so much on grounds never trod on before, I
have sent them with Colonel Buchan to rest at Dalmellington,
till we see where these rogues will start up. We
examined all on oath, and offered money, and threatened
terribly, for intelligence, but we could learn no more.’
No further information is available as to the result of
Claverhouse’s search. That a number of people residing
in the district were apprehended about this time, however,
appears from the fact that the next recorded appearance
of the ‘rogues’ denounced by him had for its object the
rescue of some prisoners whom he had sent from Dumfries
to Edinburgh under the escort of a detachment of his
dragoons. A carefully planned ambush was laid by a
number of armed men, amongst whom some English
borderers were said to be. The spot chosen as most
favourable for it was near Enterkin hill, ‘where there is a
very strait road and a deep precipice on both sides.’
Taken at a disadvantage in this narrow pass, the soldiers
of whom several were killed at the first discharge, had but
slight chance of success against superior numbers. The
accounts of the encounter differ from each other as regards
several details; but they leave no doubt about this one
fact, at least, that the dragoons were worsted, and that it
was with at most two of their prisoners only that they
succeeded in reaching Edinburgh.
This daring act of aggression called forth fresh measures
on the part of the Government. On the 1st of August,
the Privy Council passed an Act redistributing the cavalry
through the country, with a view to the more effectual
suppression of ‘all such rebellious courses for the future.’
Claverhouse’s troop of Guards, and that of his friend
Lord Ross, together with two troops of dragoons, respectively
commanded by Captain Inglis and Captain Cleland,
were ordered for service in Ayrshire. In addition to this,
Claverhouse was appointed, with Lieutenant-Colonel Buchan
as his second, to command all the forces, ‘foot, and horse,
and dragoons, in the shires of Ayr and Clydesdale.’
Further, to the effect that discovery might be made of
the rebels in arms, and of such as had been present at
field conventicles, the two officers were empowered and
commissioned to call for and examine upon oath, all
persons able to supply any information, and to use all
legal diligence for that purpose.
In accordance with his new commission, Claverhouse
again swept the south-western shires in every direction.
If the actual capture of rebels be taken as the standard by
which to estimate the result of his efforts, it appears to
have been absolutely null. In spite of the promptitude of
his movements, and in spite, too, of the care which he took
to conceal them, it was impossible for him to secure secrecy.
No sooner was his arrival known at any point than the news
of his presence was spread through the surrounding country;
and when his search through the wild moorlands and over
the pathless hills began, those whom he hoped to surprise
were either in safe hiding or beyond the reach of his troopers.
‘They have such intelligence,’ he wrote to Queensberry on
the 5th of August, ‘that there is no surprising them’; and
he added, with something of despondency in his tone, ‘I
fear we do nothing.’ But, on the other hand, his success
in temporarily clearing the district of conventiclers appears
to have been rapid. Before the end of the same month
he was able to delegate his duties to his subordinates, and
to retire for a short time to Dudhope.
During his stay he had occasion to exercise, probably for
the first time, his power as Constable of Dundee. The way
in which he did so is set forth in the Register of the Privy
Council:—‘Edinburgh, 10th September 1684.—Whereas,
it being represented to the Lords of his Majesty’s Privy
Council by Colonel Graham of Claverhouse, Constable of
Dundee, that there are several prisoners in the Tolbooth of
that burgh for petty or small thefts, or picking, which will
be fitter to be punished arbitrarily than by death; the said
Lords do therefore give full power and commission to the
said Colonel Graham of Claverhouse, Constable of Dundee,
to restrict the punishment appointed by law, against such
persons within his jurisdiction already made prisoners, or
that shall hereafter be made prisoners upon account of the
foresaid petty and small thefts, or picking, to an arbitrary
punishment, such as whipping, or banishment, as he shall
find cause.’
VI THE KILLING TIME
The last year of the reign of Charles II. was marked by a
recrudescence of fanaticism on the part of the Covenanting
extremists. It found expression in an ‘apologetical declaration’
drawn up by Renwick, and ordered to be affixed, as
though it were a royal proclamation, ‘upon a sufficient and
competent number of the public market-crosses of the
respective burghs, and of the patent doors of the respective
kirks within this kingdom.’ This document disowned the
authority of Charles Stuart, and threatened to inflict the
severest punishment, not only on those who were actively
employed in enforcing the penal laws, ‘such as bloody
militia men, malicious troopers, soldiers and dragoons,’ but
also on the ‘viperous and malicious bishops and curates,’
and all such sort of counsellors and ‘intelligencers.’
This ‘declaration’ was dated the 28th of October 1684,
and was promulgated on the 8th of November. It appeared
so outrageous even to some of the Covenanters themselves,
that they denounced it as ‘but a State invention, set on
foot by the soldiers, to make that party odious and themselves
necessary.’ But before many days these sceptics
were to be convinced ‘of the reality of this declared war.’
On the 20th of November news reached Edinburgh that,
the night before, some of the desperate fanatics had broken
in upon two of the King’s Life Guards—Thomas Kennoway
and Duncan Stewart—who were lying at Swyne Abbey, beyond
Blackburn, in Linlithgowshire, and murdered them
most barbarously. ‘This,’ adds Fountainhall, one of the
contemporary chroniclers of the incident, ‘was to execute
what they had threatened in their declaration.’
This was not the only act of violence by which Renwick’s
proclamation was followed. Within the next month there
occurred two others, of which the scene lay within the district
committed to the care of Claverhouse. The prompt and
successful measures which he took to punish the perpetrators
supply the elements of fact which partisan writers have distorted
and exaggerated into one of the most wanton atrocities
of the ‘killing times’; and much may be learnt from an
examination of the whole episode in its successive phases.
It opens with the murder of the curate of Carsphairn
on the night between the 11th and the 12th of
December. The victim was Mr Peter Peirson. The
worst of the unsubstantiated charges brought against him
by Wodrow, who, whilst professing to abhor and detest
the crime, is nevertheless at great pains to find extenuating
circumstances in the ‘unwarrantable provocations this ill
man gave,’ amount to this, that he was a surly, ill-natured
man, and horridly severe; that he was very blustering and
bold, and used openly to provoke the poor people by
saying in public companies, ‘He feared none of the Whigs,
nor anything else but rats and mice’; that he was openly
a favourer of popery, and not only defended the doctrine
of purgatory, but also declared openly that Papists were
much better subjects than Presbyterians; that he was
a notorious informer and instigator of all the violent
measures resorted to in that part of the country; and
that he kept a number of fire-arms loaded in his chamber—a
precautionary measure for which justification might be
found in the fact that the curate lived at the manse alone,
without so much as a servant with him.
Towards the end of the year 1684, a number of the
‘wanderers’ who were hiding in the neighbourhood ‘entered
into a concert with an express proviso of doing no harm to
Mr Peirson’s person, to meet together and essay to force
him to give a written declaration that he would forbear
instigating their enemies and other violent courses, and
deter him from them in time to come, still expressly declaring
they would do him no bodily harm.’ In view of the sequel,
even as it is narrated by Wodrow himself, it would be superfluous
to discuss the veracity of the whole statement as to
the innocent ‘concert,’ and still more so to inquire into
the sincerity of the alleged declaration. It may, however,
be incidentally recalled that the murderers of Archbishop
Sharp were asserted by Covenanting apologists to have
come together for the harmless purpose of intimidating
the obnoxious Carmichael, or as it was still more mildly
expressed, of scaring him from his cruel courses, when
chance threw the prelate in their way.
On the occasion, now under consideration, the circumstances
that led to the tragic termination of the
peaceful errand on which M’Michael, Padzen, Mitchell,
Herron, Watson and some others were engaged are
thus set forth: ‘One night, having notice that Mr
Peirson was at home, they came to the manse and sent
those named above to desire Mr Peirson to speak with
some friends who were to do him no harm. One account
says, and it is not inconsistent with the other, that two of
them who were sent, got in and delivered the commission,
which put Mr Peirson in a rage, and, drawing a broadsword,
and cocking a gun or pistol, he got betwixt them
and the door; upon which they called, and M’Michael and
Padzen came to the door and knocked. The other account
makes no mention of this circumstance, but says when they
knocked at the door, Mr Peirson opened it himself, and,
with fury, came out upon them with arms; and James
M’Michael, as he said, laying his account with present
death if he had not done it, resolved, if he could, to be
beforehand with him, and firing a pistol at him, shot him
dead on the spot. The rest, at some distance, hearing a noise,
came running up crying, “take no lives”; but it was too late.’
A few days after the murder of the curate, a body of
‘Wanderers’ committed a more open act of violence in
the town of Kirkcudbright. According to Sir Robert
Dalziel’s official report to Queensberry, upon the Tuesday
morning preceding the 18th of December, they invaded
the town, to the number of a hundred and eight, broke
open the prisons, carried away such prisoners as would go
with them, and all the arms they could seize on, together
with the town drum. It was then that Claverhouse set
out in pursuit of the rioters. The accounts of his expedition
are interesting in their variations from each other and from
actual facts.
In the volume entitled ‘A Cloud of Witnesses for the
Royal Prerogatives of Jesus Christ,’ there is a section
specially devoted to an enumeration of those ‘who were
killed in the open fields, without trial, conviction, or any
process of law, by the executioners of the Council’s murdering
edict.’ On the authority of ‘A Short Memorial of the
Sufferings and Grievances of the Presbyterians in Scotland,’
printed in the year 1690, it is there stated that Claverhouse
coming to Galloway, in answer to the Viscount of Kenmure’s
letter, with a small party, surprised Robert Stewart, John
Grier, Robert Ferguson, and James MacMichael, and instantly
shot them dead at the water of Dee. It is added
that their corpses having been buried, were, at his command,
raised again.
The same incident is reported by De Foe, with the addition
of certain details that enhance its atrocity. In his summary
of the cold-blooded cruelties perpetrated by the most furious
persecutor of the ‘poor people,’ he has the following entry:
‘Four more men who were betray’d to him, being hid in a
house at the water of Dee, and were at the time his men came
praying together; he caused them to be dragged just to the
door, and shot them dead as they came out, without any
enquiry whether they were the persons that he came to
apprehend; their being found praying to God was, it seems,
sufficient testimony of their party and offence; after this,
coming to the same place, at two or three days’ distance, and
understanding the people of the town had buried the
bodies, he caused his men to dig them up again, and
commanded that they should lye in the fields: the names
of these four were John Grier, Robert Ferguson, Archibald
Stewart, and Robert Stewart.’
It will be noticed that the name of Archibald Stewart
figures in this list instead of that of James MacMichael.
Whether accidental or intentional the substitution is of
considerable importance, as the sequel will show.
Without any intention of palliating the conduct of
Claverhouse, Wodrow helps to place it in a different light.
‘Let me add,’ he says, ‘that December 18th, Claverhouse
when ranging up and down Galloway, with a troop, came
to the water of Dee; and at Auchinloy, came upon some
of the people, who were lurking and hiding, unexpectedly,
and surprised six of them together; for what I can find,
they had no arms. According to the instructions lately
given by the Council, he shot four of them upon the spot
in a very few minutes, Robert Ferguson and James MacMichan
from Nithsdale, and Robert Stewart and John
Grier, Galloway men; afterwards their friends carried off
their bodies to Dalry and buried them. Some accounts
before me say that by orders from Claverhouse, a party
came and uncovered their graves and coffins, and they
continued so open four days till the party went off. And
it appears certain, that James MacMichan’s body, after it
was buried, was taken up and hung up on a tree. This
was strange barbarity and spite. The other two, Robert
Smith in Glencairn parish, and Robert Hunter, Claverhouse
carried with him to Kirkcudbright, and called an assize, and
made a form of judging them, and caused execute them
there. They would not permit these two to write anything,
not so much as letters to their relations. There were two
more in the company who escaped and happy it was for them
it was so, for probably they would have gone the same way.’
Wodrow admits that ‘it may be the rescue of some
prisoners of Kirkcudbright by some of the wanderers
a little before this, was the pretext for all this cruelty.’
But he says no word from which it can be gathered that
the party which broke open the Tolbooth of Kirkcudbright
could reasonably be suspected of including some of the
men who murdered Peirson. He gives no hint of his
knowledge that it was whilst pursuing these rioters that
Claverhouse came upon the Deeside fugitives; and it
almost seems as though, by a slight change of name, he
wished to conceal the fact that the James Macmichan,
whose body was treated with such ‘strange barbarity and
spite,’ was no other than the James Macmichael whom
he himself names as the actual murderer of Peirson.
The information which he failed to supply may be got from
Fountainhall, who, in his ‘Historical Notices,’ under date
of the 20th of December, announces the receipt of letters
from Claverhouse, reporting that he had met with a party
of the rebels, who had skulked, that he had followed them,
killed five, and taken three prisoners, some of whom were
the murderers of the minister of Carsphairn, and that he
was to judge and execute the three prisoners by his
justiciary powers.
Such is the origin and development of one of those
‘atrocities’ to which Claverhouse owes the opprobrious
epithet of ‘bloody.’
For an impartial judgment of the extent of Claverhouse’s
personal connection with some of the incidents
of this particular period, it must be remembered that early
in the year Colonel Douglas was appointed on special
duty against the ‘Western fanatics.’ In addition to this,
on the 27th of March, the judicial powers previously held
by Claverhouse were also conferred on Douglas, as Justice
in all the southern and western shires. The instructions
given him by the Privy Council contained a special clause
referring to the treatment of women that might be brought
before him or any of the members of his Commission.
Only such as had been active in a signal manner in
treasonable courses were to be examined; and those if
found guilty, were to be drowned.
It was in accordance with this provision that Margaret
Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson were condemned to death.
Whether the sentence was actually carried out, or whether
the account of their drowning on the sands of the Solway
Firth given by Wodrow and repeated by Macaulay be wholly
apocryphal, as Napier maintained, is a question into which
it is not necessary to enter, though the difficulty of believing
that so circumstantial a narrative can be a mere Covenanting
fiction may readily be admitted. But it is not unimportant
to point out that Claverhouse was neither directly nor
indirectly concerned either in the trial, the sentence, or
the execution, and that, though still nominally a Privy
Councillor when Douglas superseded him, he was absent
from the meeting at which his rival was appointed
Justice, and at which the drowning of women was
ordered.
From the command of his own regiment, Claverhouse
had not been removed. In the discharge of the duties
which this position laid on him, he was brought into
immediate connection with another incident which is
commonly adduced as illustrative of the atrocities committed
during the ‘killing time,’ but of which the real
nature, terrible at best, it cannot be denied, is materially
affected by the truth or the falseness of the details which
have found their way into some accounts of the event.
Claverhouse’s report of the occurrence is contained in the
following despatch forwarded to Queensberry from Galston
on the 3rd of May 1685.
‘On Friday last, amongst the hills betwixt Douglas and
the Ploughlands, we pursued two fellows a great way
through the mosses, and in the end seized them. They
had no arms about them, and denied they had any. But,
being asked if they would take the abjuration, the eldest
of the two, called John Brown, refused it. Nor would he
swear not to rise in arms against the King, but said he
knew no king. Upon which, and there being found bullets
and match in his house, and treasonable papers, I caused
shoot him dead; which he suffered very unconcernedly.
‘The other, a young fellow and his nephew, called
John Brownen offered to take the oath; but would not
swear that he had not been at Newmills in arms, at
rescuing of the prisoners. So I did not know what to
do with him. I was convinced that he was guilty, but
saw not how to proceed against him. Wherefore, after he
had said his prayers, and carbines presented to shoot him,
I offered to him that if he would make an ingenuous
confession, and make a discovery that might be of any
importance for the King’s service, I should delay putting him
to death, and plead for him. Upon which he confessed that
he was at that attack at Newmills, and that he had come
straight to this house of his uncle’s, on Sunday morning.
‘In the time he was making this confession, the
soldiers found out a house in a hill, under ground, that
could hold a dozen of men, and there were swords
and pistols in it; and this fellow declared that they
belonged to his uncle, and that he had lurked in that
place ever since Bothwell, where he was in arms. He
confessed that he had a halbert, and told who gave it
him about a month ago, and we have the fellow prisoner.
He gave an account of the names of the most part who
were there. They were not above sixty, and they were
all Galston and Newmills men, save a few out of Straven
parish. He gave also an account of a conventicle kept
by Renwick at the back of Cairntable, where there were
thirteen score of men in arms, mustered and exercised,
of which number he was with his halbert. He tells us
of another conventicle, about three months ago, kept near
Loudon hill; and gives account of the persons who were
at both, and what children were baptized; particularly
that at Cairntable, which was about the time that Lieutenants
Murray and Creichton let them escape. He also
gives account of those who gave any assistance to his
uncle; and we have seized thereupon the goodman of the
upmost Ploughlands; and another tenant, about a mile
below that, is fled upon it.
‘I doubt not, if we had time to stay, good use might
be made of his confession. I have acquitted myself, when
I have told your Grace the case. He has been a month or
two with his halbert; and if your Grace thinks he deserves
no mercy, justice will pass on him. For I, having no
commission of Justiciary myself, have delivered him up to
the Lieutenant-General, to be disposed of as he pleases.’
Such a report is not that of a man anxious to urge
excuses for an action which he felt in his conscience to be
unjustifiable. Nor can there be any doubt that, from his
point of view, Claverhouse had done nothing but what a
soldier’s duty required of him. Immediately after the proclamation
of Renwick’s manifesto, and the subsequent
murder of the two guardsmen at Swyne Abbey, it had been
enacted that ‘Any person who owns or will not disown the
late treasonable declaration on oath, whether they have
arms or not, be immediately put to death, this being
always done in the presence of two witnesses, and the
person or persons having commission to that effect.’
Such was the law; and the blind obedience to orders
which Claverhouse looked upon as a part of his duty as
a soldier, on which he prided himself, and which, as has
been seen, he declared in so many words to be his one
guiding principle, left him no option as to enforcing it in
the case of John Brown. With respect to the nephew, on
the other hand, the same spirit of strict discipline forbade
him to inflict summary punishment, not because he thought
him less guilty than the uncle, but because he had complied
with the letter of the law. If further action were to
be taken in the case, it would have to be by those who
possessed that power of justiciary of which he had been
deprived.
This John Brown who was executed in due form of
martial law is the ‘Christian Carrier’ whom Wodrow
accuses Claverhouse of having killed with his own hand.
After representing Brown as a man of ‘shining piety,’ who
‘was no way obnoxious to the Government, except for not
hearing the Episcopal minister,’ and after stating that he
was apprehended whilst ‘at his work, near his own house
in Priestfield, casting peats,’ the historian continues:
‘Claverhouse was coming from Lesmahagow, with three
troops of dragoons: whether he had got any information
of John’s piety and nonconformity, I cannot tell, but he
caused bring him up to his own door, from the place where
he was. I do not find they were at much trouble with
interrogatories and questions; we see them now almost
wearied of that leisurely way of doing business, neither do
any of my informations bear that the abjuration oath was
offered him. With some difficulty he was allowed to pray,
which he did with the greatest liberty and melting, and
withal, in such suitable and scriptural expressions, and in
a peculiar judicious style, he having great measures of the
gift, as well as the grace of prayer, that the soldiers were
affected and astonished; yea, which is yet more singular,
such convictions were left in their bosoms, that, as my
informations bear, not one of them would shoot him, or
obey Claverhouse’s commands, so that he was forced to
turn executioner himself, and in a fret shot him with his
own hand, before his own door, his wife with a young
infant standing by, and she very near the time of her
delivery of another child. When tears and entreaties could
not prevail, and Claverhouse had shot him dead, I am
credibly informed the widow said to him, “Well, sir, you
must give an account of what you have done.” Claverhouse
answered, “To men I can be answerable, and as for
God, I’ll take Him into mine own hand.” I am well
informed that Claverhouse himself frequently acknowledged
afterwards that John Brown’s prayer left such impressions
upon his spirit that he could never get altogether worn off,
when he gave himself liberty to think of it.’
A comparison of the two accounts might suffice to
establish their respective credibility. But another test is
available. There is a third version of the death of John
Brown. It is given by Patrick Walker, a pedlar and
Covenanting martyrologist, who implies that he himself
got it from Brown’s widow, ‘sitting upon her husband’s
gravestone.’ Apart from minor discrepancies between his
narrative and that of Wodrow, there are at least three
important points with regard to which it directly confirms
Claverhouse’s report. It not only asserts that the carrier,
when brought to his house, was examined by his captor,
but it also adds that though a man of a stammering speech,
he yet answered distinctly and solidly. In contradiction
of the statement that ‘with some difficulty he was allowed
to pray,’ it represents Claverhouse as saying to him, ‘Go
to your prayers, for you shall immediately die.’ Most
important of all, however, it affirms distinctly and circumstantially
that ‘Claverhouse ordered six soldiers to
shoot him,’ and that ‘the most part of the bullets came
upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground.’
Within a week after the shooting of John Brown, there
occurred another execution, the responsibility for which
has been laid on Claverhouse by several of the writers who
chronicle the sufferings of the Covenanters at this time
The first of them is Alexander Shields. ‘The said Claverhouse,’
he says, ‘together with the Earl of Dumbarton and
Lieutenant-General Douglas, caused Peter Gillies, John
Bryce, Thomas Young (who was taken by the Laird of
Lee), William Fiddisone, and John Buiening to be put to
death upon a gibbet, without legal trial or sentence, suffering
them neither to have a Bible nor to pray before they
died.’ De Foe, whilst deepening the atrocity of the deed,
allows no one to share the guilt of it with Claverhouse.
According to him, somebody had maliciously told Graham
that five men who lay in ‘several prisons,’ to which they
had been committed by ‘other persecutors,’ were ‘of the
Whigs that used the field meetings; upon which, without
any oath made of the fact, or any examination of the men,
without any trial or other sentence than his own command,
his bloody soldiers fetched them all to Mauchline, a village
where his headquarters were, and hanged them immediately,
not suffering them to enter into any house at their coming,
nor at the entreaty of the poor men would permit one to
lend them a Bible, who it seems offered it, nor allow them
a moment to pray to God.’
The case of two of these men, that of Peter Gillies
and John Bryce has been cited by Macaulay as one
of the instances of the crimes by which Claverhouse
and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the
Western Lowlands into madness. His account, based
on that given by Wodrow, refutes the statement made
by De Foe as to the absence of all legal formality. He
admits that the two artisans were tried by a military
tribunal consisting of fifteen men; and thus sets aside
what both Shields and De Foe put forward as the crowning
atrocity of the deed. But, on the other hand, by
mentioning the execution amongst other alleged instances
of Claverhouse’s cruelty, he leaves the reader under the
impression that it was he and his dragoons who acted as
judge and jury. Now Wodrow distinctly states that, on
being taken to Mauchline, Gillies and Bryce, ‘with some
others, were examined by Lieutenant-General Drummond,’
and that ‘an assize was called of fifteen of the soldiers,’
with Drummond himself as ‘Commissioner of Justiciary.’
Claverhouse’s name does not once occur in Wodrow’s
detailed account of the incident, and evidence to connect
him directly and personally with the trial or execution is
consequently wanting.
The last instance drawn from ‘the history of a single
fortnight,’ of that lamentable month of May 1685, is the
summary execution of Andrew Hislop, in Eskdale Muir.
There are two accounts of it. One of them is to be found
in ‘The Cloud of Witnesses.’ The other is given by
Wodrow. About Hislop himself, the latter tells us that
he was but a youth, and lived with his mother, to whom
one of the ‘suffering people’ had come for shelter, and
in whose house he had died. For her charity towards
the proscribed Covenanter, and for affording his body
burial, the poor widow brought down upon herself the
vengeance of the Laird of Westerhall, who though ‘once
a Covenanter, a great professor and zealot for the presbyterian
establishment,’ had become a violent persecutor of
his former brethren, ‘as all apostates generally are.’ To
signalise his loyalty, Westerhall pulled down the woman’s
cottage, carried off everything that was portable, and drove
her with her children into the fields. Her eldest son
Andrew, however, was reserved for a worse fate, as to the
actual circumstances of which there are conflicting narratives.
That contained in the book commonly known as ‘The
Cloud of Witnesses’ states that Westerhall delivered him up
to Claverhouse, ‘and never rested until he got him shot by
Claverhouse’s troops.’ Wodrow, though he was acquainted
with this account, and actually refers to it, so far departs
from it as to make Claverhouse the lad’s captor. ‘Claverhouse,’
he says, ‘falls upon Andrew Hislop in the fields,
May 10th, and seizes him, without any design, as appeared,
to murder him, bringing him prisoner with him to Eskdale,
unto Westerhall that night.’
To the first account, which is that favoured by Macaulay,
there is this objection, that Claverhouse had been deprived
of his judicial power, and, for that very reason had refused
to deal with John Brown’s nephew, and delivered him up to
the Lieutenant-General. Westerhall, on the other hand, is
stated by Wodrow to have been ‘one empowered by the
Council’; and that is probably why the historian inverts the
parts played by the two respectively. But, against accepting
his account, there is the difficulty of understanding how
Westerhall allowed Hislop to escape from his clutches in
the first instance. Whichever may be the true statement
of the case, the sequel is practically identical according
to both versions. ‘Claverhouse,’ says Wodrow, ‘in this
instance was very backward, perhaps not wanting his own
reflections upon John Brown’s murder, and pressed the delay
of the execution. But Westerhall urged till the other yielded,
saying, the blood of this poor man be upon you, Westerhall,
I am free of it.’ Thereupon, it is stated, Claverhouse
ordered a Highland gentleman, who, with his company,
was temporarily under his orders, to provide the firing-party.
But the Captain, continues the account, peremptorily
refused, and drawing off his men to a distance, swore he
would fight Claverhouse and his dragoons rather than act
the part of executioner. Three troopers were then called
out, and Hislop fell before their fire.
There are circumstances that make it difficult to accept
this statement of the case. If Claverhouse was averse to
the summary execution of Hislop, it may very safely be
assumed, on the strength of what is known concerning his
character, that nothing but his respect for superior authority
and the blind obedience to it, which he repeatedly declared
to be his guiding principle as a soldier, would have induced
him to take any part in it. In that case, the whole
responsibility would be removed from him, and laid upon
Westerhall, whose orders he merely carried out. But this
substitution is not possible. As Claverhouse cannot but
have known, Westerhall was not in a position to act as
judge in the case; and there would consequently have been
no breach and no infringement of the strictest discipline in
disregarding commands which he was not justified in giving.
Wodrow, as has been seen, states that Westerhall was
‘one empowered by the Council.’ The commission to
which this refers had been granted on the 3rd of
January 1684; and, it may be incidentally mentioned
that the power which it gave him to judge desperate
rebels, could not be exercised by him individually and
alone, but in conjunction with two other colleagues. But
what Wodrow either overlooked or ignored, is the fact that,
on the 21st of April 1685, General Drummond was invested
with the whole authority previously held conjointly by the
commissioners; and that the royal warrant by which this
supersession was effected, expressly declared that all former
commissions granted either by the King or by the Privy
Council for trying or punishing criminals, were void and
extinct. It consequently follows that if Claverhouse acted
as he is alleged to have done, he did not merely consent,
sullenly or otherwise, to the carrying out of a cruel and
iniquitous, but strictly legal sentence, he actually became
an accomplice in a deliberate murder of which he did not
approve and which he could have prevented by taking up
the same position as the Highland gentleman is said to
have assumed. Were this the case, the shooting of Hislop
would be one of the most indefensible of the atrocities with
which Claverhouse has been charged. And yet we do
not find that those who were watching his conduct at the
time with all the keenness of enmity, and who would
gladly have availed themselves of such an opportunity for
doing him an ill turn, took any notice of the occurrence.
Still more convincing is it, that the Covenanting writers
who record the incident, whilst bitter enough in their
denunciations of Claverhouse’s inhumanity, are absolutely
silent as to the lawlessness of his action. This difficulty
has been met by the suggestion that there were probably
other proceedings, of which the accounts omit to make
mention; that Hislop was asked to take the oath, and,
by refusing to do so, made himself amenable to the full
penalty of the law. Such an assumption clears both
Westerhall and Claverhouse of the actual guilt of murder.
It does not free the latter from the charge of having acted
with a weakness and a subserviency as unjustifiable in
themselves as they seem foreign to his nature. Under
the circumstances, the least that can be claimed for him
is an open verdict. To convict him on such evidence as
has been adduced, and to do so for the purpose of
vindicating the veracity of writers who are not even in
accord with each other would be palpably unjust.
Matthew Meiklewrath is another of the victims of this
terrible time; and if the account of his death given by
De Foe were as accurate as it is circumstantial, no term
but that of murder could be applied to the outrage alleged
to have been committed by Claverhouse. ‘At Comonel,
in the County of Carrick,’ states the chronicler of his misdeeds,
‘he saw a man run hastily across the street before
his troop, and as he might suppose did it to escape from or
avoid them, though, as the people of the place related it,
the poor man had no apprehensions of them, but as he took
all occasions for his bloody designs, he commanded his men
to shoot this person, without so much as examining him, or
asking who he was.’ The refutation of this charge of wanton
barbarity is to be found in the epitaph quoted in ‘The
Cloud of Witnesses’ from a stone in the churchyard where
Meiklewrath was interred:—
‘In this parish of Colmonel,
By bloody Claverhouse I fell,
Who did command that I should die,
For owning covenanting Presbytery.
My blood a witness still doth stand,
‘Gainst all defections in this land.’
The cases that have been cited do not exhaust the black
list that might be drawn up from the accounts already
referred to. They may suffice, however, to show, not
indeed that Claverhouse performed the odious duties imposed
upon him by his position otherwise than sternly and
remorselessly, but, at least, that the most notorious of the
instances which represent him as going far beyond even
what the merciless laws required or authorised, as delighting
in suffering and revelling in bloodshed, are demonstrably
exaggerations, and that impartial investigation, whilst it may
lead us to deplore the relentless severity with which he
carried out the orders of the Government, does not justify
us in holding him up to obloquy as a monster of cruelty.
VII UNDER KING JAMES
Charles II. died at the beginning of February 1685, and
was succeeded by his brother. As Duke of York James
had been Claverhouse’s chief patron; as King, one of his
first actions was to express his disapproval of the conduct
to which his favourite had been urged by a ‘high, proud
and peremptory humour.’ This was the result of a quarrel
with Queensberry, of which the origin, trifling in itself,
went back to the beginning of the previous December.
At a meeting of the Privy Council, held on the 11th
of that month, there was read a complaint presented
by some soldiers whom Queensberry’s brother, Colonel
James Douglas had turned out of his regiment, and who
alleged that their commanding officer ‘had taken the
arrears of their pay, and clothed and shoed some of the
rest of the soldiers therewith.’ The complainant’s cause
was taken up by Claverhouse, on the ground that the
treatment to which they had been submitted would discourage
others from entering into his Majesty’s service.
This the High Treasurer resented as reflecting on the
manner in which his brother had done his duty; and thus,
says Fountainhall, grew the difference between him and
Claverhouse.
Whatever may have been the intrinsic merits of the case,
and it is but fair to state that Douglas had otherwise shown
himself a zealous and capable officer, there can be no doubt
that Claverhouse had put himself in the wrong, by allowing
his temper to get the better of him. This he himself
admitted in a letter which he wrote to James, and in which
he endeavoured ‘to excuse his warmth by saying he took
what was said as levelled at him.’ But after reading this
account and comparing it with that which he also received,
not from Queensberry, but from ‘both the Chancellor and
Lundy,’ the Duke was obliged to express his regret ‘that
Claverhouse was so little master of himself the other day at
Council,’ and promised that when he came to Scotland he
would let the offender know that his behaviour was not
approved of.
James’s accession prevented his leaving London at the
time, as he had apparently intended to do. It was also
the cause of Queensberry’s being summoned to Court. It
may be assumed that during his stay the quarrel with
Claverhouse formed the subject of conversation between
him and the King; but there is nothing to show that he
solicited further satisfaction than had already been given
him by the appointment of Douglas to the command of the
forces in the western shires, in supersession of Colonel
Graham. When he returned to Scotland at the end of
March as Lord High Commissioner to the Scottish Parliament,
he does not appear to have known that it was the
King’s intention to take further cognizance of the matter.
It was from Secretary Murray that he learnt Claverhouse’s
exclusion from the Privy Council, ‘to show him and others
that his Majesty would support his Minister, and not suffer
any to do unfit or misbecoming things.’ The letter conveying
the information was written on the 5th of April.
Four days later a new Commission was produced at the
Board, from which none of the former Privy Councillors
but Claverhouse was omitted. Amongst the better informed,
there was no doubt that this was ‘because of the discords
between him and the High Treasurer and his brother,’ as
Fountainhall asserts. But the same authority states the
‘pretence’ to have been ‘that having married into the
Lord Dundonald’s fanatic family, it was not safe to commit
the King’s secrets to him.’
While thus indicating his dissatisfaction with Claverhouse,
James felt that the whole quarrel was too petty to justify
him in punishing with lasting disgrace a faithful servant
whose valuable help he had repeatedly acknowledged.
He was at special pains to let him understand that if he
tendered an apology to Queensberry he should be restored
to place and favour. There is no direct evidence of
submission on Claverhouse’s part; but, that his better
sense, or, to put it at its lowest, a saner appreciation of
his own interest soon prevailed over his pride may be
gathered from the fact that a royal letter, dated the 11th
of May, reinstated him as Privy Councillor.
Within a fortnight of his reappointment he received
further proof of the value set on his services. About this
time news had arrived of Argyle’s intended invasion of
Scotland, and it would seem that Claverhouse had communicated
some important information with regard to it,
in a despatch to the Lord Commissioner. The document
is not known to be extant; but its purport is indicated by
the reply which it elicited from the Secret Committee of
Council, and which was written on the 23rd of May. ‘If
there be any danger by horse,’ he was told, ‘it must be
from the Border’; and he was authorised to propose what
he judged expedient with a view to meeting the emergency,
and instructed to inform the Earl of Dumbarton, who had
just received his commission as Commander-in-Chief, of
the measures which he intended to adopt. He was also to
keep in touch with Fielding the deputy-governor of Carlisle.
This clearly shows that the danger which he apprehended and
had pointed out threatened the disaffected western counties.
The discretionary powers with which the letter of the
Council invested Claverhouse implied the recognition,
not very willing, it may be assumed, on the part of
all the ‘affectionate friends and servants’ who signed
it, and at the head of whom Queensberry figured as
Commissioner, of his special fitness to cope with it. But
the most striking and interesting passage in the document
consists of a couple of lines, thrown in almost casually,
and curtly announcing his promotion. ‘The King has
sent commissions to Colonel Douglas and you as Brigadiers,
both of horse and foot. Douglas is prior in date.’
When it is remembered in what relation Claverhouse
had stood to Queensberry and his brother, but a short
time before, the ungracious tone of this communication
becomes highly suggestive. The suspicions which it
arouses are amply confirmed by a full statement of the
case, as it is set forth by Secretary Murray in a confidential
letter to Queensberry. There could be no more striking
proof of the feelings of ill-will and of envy which Claverhouse
had to contend against, on the part of the Government,
or of the intrigues that were resorted to by his
opponents:—
‘The King ordered two commissions to be drawn, for
your brother and Claverhouse to be Brigadiers. We were
ordered to see how such commissions had been here, and
in Earl Middleton’s office we found the extract of one
granted to Lord Churchill, another to Colonel Worden,
the one for horse, the other for foot. So Lord Melfort
told me the King had ordered him to draw one for your
brother for the foot, and Claverhouse for the horse. I
told him that could not be; for by that means Claverhouse
would command your brother. To be short, we were
very hot on the matter. He said he knew no reason
why Colonel Douglas should have the precedency unless
that he was your brother. I told him that was enough;
but that there was a greater, and that was, that he was an
officer of more experience and conduct, and that was the
King’s design of appointing Brigadiers at this time. He
said Claverhouse had served the King longer in Scotland.
I told him that was yet wider from the purpose; for there
were in the army that had served many years longer than
Claverhouse, and of higher quality; and without disparagement
to any, gallant in their personal courage. By this
time I flung from him, and went straight to the King, and
represented the case. He followed and came to us. But
the King changed his mind, and ordered him to draw the
commissions both for horse and foot, and your brother’s
two days date before the other; by which his command is
clear before the other. I saw the commissions signed this
afternoon, and they are sent herewith by Lord Charles
Murray. Now, I beseech your Grace, say nothing of this
to any; nay, not even to your brother. For Lord Melfort
said to Sir Andrew Forrester, that he was sure there would
be a new storm on him. I could not, nor is it fit this
should have been kept from you; but you will find it best
for a while to know, or take little notice; for it gives him
but ground of talking, and serves no other end.’
Even if Queensberry was as discreet as his correspondent
advised him to be, there is no reason for supposing that
Melfort considered himself bound to keep Claverhouse in
ignorance of the stormy scene described by Murray. But
although the newly-promoted Brigadier must have been well
aware of the device by which his enemies had found means
of coupling a slight with what was intended to be a mark
of royal favour, he had the wisdom and the self-restraint to
show no consciousness of it. A letter which he wrote to
Queensberry on the 16th of June, bears testimony to his
calm and self-respecting conduct, whilst, at the same time,
it shows that the Lord Commissioner was as spitefully
intent as ever on finding opportunities or excuses for
annoying and humiliating him.
Documents for the reconstruction of the whole case are
not available. All that can be ascertained is that, in carrying
out the precautionary measures which his additional powers
justified and which the emergency required, he had requisitioned
the assistance of some of Queensberry’s tenants. This
had been construed into an offence, and made the subject of
a report to the commander-in-chief who had no course open
to him but that of intimating the Duke’s displeasure to his
subordinate. The reply, addressed to Queensberry himself
was respectful but dignified. ‘I am sorry,’ he wrote, ‘that
anything I have done should have given your Grace occasion
to be dissatisfied with me, and to make complaints against
me to the Earl of Dumbarton. I am convinced your Grace
is ill informed; for after you have read what I wrote to you
two days ago on that subject, I daresay I may refer myself
to your own censure. That I had no design to make great
search there anybody may judge. I came not from Ayr
till after eleven in the forenoon, and went to Balagen, with
forty heritors against night. The Sanquar is just in the
road; and I used these men I met accidentally on the road
better than ever I used any in these circumstances. And
I may safely say, that, as I shall answer to God, if they had
been living on my ground, I could not have forborne drawing
my sword and knocking them down. However, I am
glad I have received my Lord Dumbarton’s orders anent
your Grace’s tenants, which I shall most punctually obey;
though, I may say, they were safe as any in Scotland
before.’
With this explanation, the matter appears to have been
dismissed from Claverhouse’s mind; and the remainder of
his letter is taken up with remarks concerning certain dispositions
intended by the other commanders who, like
himself, were watching the progress of the threatened
invasion. His outspoken, but well-grounded criticism of
them showed that the rebuke administered to him had not
reduced him to a condition of cringing subserviency, and
that the obedience which he was prepared to yield to those
in authority above him did not include a readiness to bear
responsibility for the result of measures which seemed to
him ill-advised.
The extant correspondence between Claverhouse and
Queensberry closes with a letter bearing date of the 3rd of
July 1685. It is a report as to the manner in which an
order from the Secret Committee with regard to the disposal
of the moveables of rebels for the maintenance of
the royal forces had been carried out. It is a straightforward
and business-like statement, setting forth how the
money already received had been laid out, and requesting
instructions with respect to the sums still due.
Apart from the desire which every honourable man would
feel, and with which Claverhouse may be credited, of placing
himself above suspicion in all that concerned the management
of the funds that came into his hands, he had special
reason for exercising exceptional care in the matter in view of
the humiliating treatment to which he had been subjected
shortly before. In the preceding month of March, Queensberry,
as High Treasurer had given orders to the cash-keeper
to charge Claverhouse on a bond he had given to
the Exchequer, for the fines of delinquents in Galloway.
Claverhouse had replied that his brother, the Sheriff-depute,
was gathering them in, and craved for delay,
whereupon he was allowed five or six days’ grace. He
objected that considering the distance, such a concession
was as unreasonable as giving no time at all. To this the
Treasurer had retorted, ‘Then you shall have none.’
Claverhouse had paid the money; but he was not content
to remain under the imputation which Queensberry’s action
towards him implied. He had repeatedly applied for leave
to proceed to London, for the purpose of explaining his
conduct to the King, both in this transaction and in other
matters which had been made the grounds of complaints
against him, and which had led to his temporary disgrace.
He had been persistently refused, and it was not till the
end of the year that he had an opportunity of pleading his
cause before James. Then, however, he did it to good
purpose. According to Fountainhall, ‘the King was so ill-satisfied
with what the Treasurer had exacted of Claverhouse,
that he ordered the Treasurer to repay it.’
On the 24th of December 1685, Claverhouse returned
to Edinburgh in company with the Earl of Perth. The
Chancellor had recently abjured Protestantism, and stood
in high favour with the King. But if, as Halifax sarcastically
remarked, his faith saved him at Court, it made
him impossible in Scotland. Within a few weeks of his
arrival, on Sunday, the 31st of January, there was a popular
demonstration against the avowed and public meetings
for the celebration of Mass and other acts of ‘Papish
worship.’ The disorderly crowd, in which the apprentices
of Edinburgh figured conspicuously, fell upon one of the
priests, and compelled him, under threats of death, to
renounce popery, and, on bended knees, to take the test
oath. Others, as they came from church, were roughly
treated and had mud thrown at them.
One of the victims of this popular violence was the Chancellor’s
wife. The Earl was so incensed at the outrage that
he caused some of the boys to be apprehended; and, next
day, by order of the Council, one of them was taken to be
whipped through the Canongate. But whilst the sentence
was being carried out, the apprentices again mustered in large
numbers, assaulted the executioner, and rescued their companion.
Encouraged by their success, they became so riotous
that the soldiers were called out. The crowd was fired upon,
and three persons were killed. Next day further punishment
was inflicted on the rioters. A woman and two men
were flogged through the city; but the authorities had
become so apprehensive of violence that the streets were
lined with ‘two thick ranks and defiles of musketeers and
pikemen.’
Even the military could not be depended upon. A
grenadier was remitted to a court-martial for saying he
would not fight in the quarrel against the Protestants;
and a drummer having been denounced by some Catholics
for drawing his sword and declaring that he could find it
in his heart to run it through them was summarily shot.
Later, a fencing-master was condemned to death and hanged
for publicly giving expression to his approval of the tumult.
Another man who was brought before the magistrates on
a charge of speaking against the Papists, would perhaps
have shared the same fate, had it not been proved on his
behalf, that he was sometimes mad.
The protest of the street was taken up by the pulpit. A
fortnight later, ‘Mr Canaires, lately Popish,’ but now
minister at Selkirk, preached a violent sermon in the High
Church of Edinburgh. In the course of it he gave utterance
to the opinion ‘that no man, without renouncing his
sense and reason,’ could embrace such doctrines as those
of the Pope’s infallibility or of transubstantiation. At the
next meeting of the Council, the Chancellor moved that
notice should be taken of this seditious language. Fountainhall
records that ‘Claverhouse backed the Chancellor
in this. But, there being a deep silence in all the rest of
the Councillors, it was passed over at this time.’
With this incident, which the unquestioned sincerity of
his own religious belief makes it impossible to regard in
any light but that of a protest against the insult offered to
his sovereign, Claverhouse disappears for a time from the
scene. There is no record of personal action on his part
for a space of nearly three years. The only two events
that have to be chronicled are his promotion, in 1686, to
the rank of Major-General, still in subordination to his
rival Douglas, and his appointment, in March 1688, to be
Provost of Dundee, a dignity which, in conjunction with
his Constable’s jurisdiction, made him absolute there.
Early in the month of September 1688, a royal messenger
arrived in Edinburgh, bearing a letter in which James
informed the Secret Committee of the Privy Council of the
Prince of Orange’s designs on England. The news was
wholly unexpected. So incredible did it at first seem, that
suspicions of a device for raising money were aroused by
it. The precautionary measures which the announcement
made it incumbent on the Government to take for the
security of the country, were nevertheless adopted without
delay. On the 18th, a proclamation was issued, calling out
the militia regiments and requiring all fencible men to hold
themselves in readiness for active service as soon as they
should see the light of the beacons that were to be kindled
the moment a hostile fleet was sighted from the coast.
These preparations were nullified by a second despatch
from London, which ordered all the regular troops to
proceed at once to England, where they were to be under
the orders of the Earl of Feversham, the commander-in-chief
of the King’s forces. This new plan of action,
suggested by James Stewart of Goodtrees, a notorious
plotter who had actually been condemned to death for his
connection with Argyle’s rebellion, and whose antecedents
were not such as to justify the King’s confidence in him,
was received with consternation in Edinburgh. The
Council and Secret Committee, relying on the loyalty of
the army, felt satisfied of their power to keep the nation in
due respect; but they were fully alive to the danger which
would arise if the country were denuded of troops. They
accordingly sent a remonstrance to the King, at the same
time that they submitted a feasible and efficient scheme of
defence of their own. Its main features consisted in the
retention of the regular forces in their several garrisons, for
the maintenance of internal order, and in the protection of
the Border by means of an army of thirteen thousand men,
to be formed by a combination of the militia with the
Highland clans.
This judicious advice was summarily rejected; and a
further command was sent to the Council to carry out the
former instructions. According to Balcarres, the order
was positive and short, advised by Mr James Stewart at a
supper, written upon the back of a plate, and immediately
dispatched by an express. In the memoirs which the same
writer addressed and presented to James in his exile, the
sequel is thus narrated: ‘With a sorrowful heart to all your
servants, your orders were obeyed, and about the beginning
of October they began their march, three thousand effective
young men, vigorous, well-disciplined and clothed, and to a
man hearty in your cause, and willing out of principle as
well as duty, to hazard their lives for the support of the
Government, as then established, both in Church and State.’
Of the army that marched into England, Claverhouse
led the cavalry, which consisted of his own regiment of six
troops, of Livingstone’s troop of royal Horse Guards, and
of Dunmore’s regiment of dragoons. The infantry was
under the orders of Douglas, who, in virtue of his rank as
Lieutenant-General, was also entrusted with the supreme
command of the whole force. The arrangements for the
march appear to have been as inadequate as the order for
it had been ill-advised. Writing to Queensberry on the
7th of October, Douglas reported that he had reached
Moffat the evening before, with considerable difficulty,
owing to the bad state of the roads. He was unprovided
with ammunition, and all he knew concerning his present
business was, that horses for his baggage were to be
furnished him in England, during forty days, and that it
was the King’s wish that he should march to Preston and
remain there till further orders.
At Aleson Bank, which he reached three days later,
further cause for worry and annoyance awaited him. Conflicting
instructions from the King and from Dumbarton
left him in doubt whether he was to take the east or the west
road to London. In any case, Claverhouse was to proceed
to York with the cavalry; and Douglas’s comment on this
was that he had never seen such a course adopted before,
to send away all the horse, and leave two regiments of
foot open to the insults of foreigners, who were expected
to land horse and dragoons.
Fully a month had elapsed since the departure of Douglas
and Claverhouse from Scotland before they reached London.
After a few days’ halt they started for Salisbury, where
James had assembled an army of twenty-four thousand
men, to oppose the Prince of Orange, who had landed at
Torbay, on the 5th of November, and was advancing
towards the capital. It was whilst on his march to join
his sovereign that Claverhouse received a further and final
token of royal favour by being created Viscount Dundee.
He had left London on the 10th, and the patent of his
peerage bore the date of the 12th of November 1688.
Before setting out for the camp at Salisbury, James had
summoned his principal officers to him—Churchill, lately
promoted Lieutenant-General, Grafton, colonel of the First
Guards, Kirke and Trelawny, colonels of the Tangier
regiments—and had received from them assurances of
fidelity. Before the end of the month they had all
deserted to William. Amongst the officers of the Scottish
contingent, there was one also whose loyalty was unequal
to the strain which circumstances put upon it. This was
Lieutenant-General Douglas. When he went to England
with the army, he was ignorant of the treasonable designs
of some of his English brother officers; but he had not
conversed long with Churchill, Kirke, and the others before
he grew ‘one of the hottest of the party.’
Balcarres, who brings the charge against him, asserts, on
the authority of Dundee himself, that he proposed to his
subordinate to betray the royal cause, and to take his
regiment over with him. Before broaching the subject,
however, he took the precaution of exacting an oath of
secrecy. Though bound in honour to conceal his chief’s
disloyal overtures, Dundee may be supposed to have
imposed conditions which Douglas thought it prudent to
accept, and in accordance with which he maintained a show
of allegiance for some time longer.
The Earl of Dumbarton was amongst the faithful few.
In his sturdy loyalty he offered, with his single regiment
of Scottish infantry to make a stand against the invading
forces of William. A more practical suggestion was made
by Dundee. With a generous confidence, says Dalrymple
in his “Memoirs,” he advised his Majesty either to fight the
Prince, or to go to him in person and demand his business
in England. But James chose to adopt a more spiritless
course, and retired from Salisbury. According to the
account given by Creichton, who was serving at the time
in Dunmore’s regiment of dragoons, Dundee was ordered
to bring up the Scottish horse to Reading, where he joined
Dumbarton with his forces, and remained for nine or ten
days. ‘They were in all about ten thousand strong.
General Douglas, with his regiment of Foot Guards,
passing by Reading, lay at Maidenhead, from whence
one of his battalions revolted to the Prince, under the
conduct of a corporal whose name was Kemp. However,
Douglas assured the King that this defection happened
against his will; and yet when the officers were ready to
fire upon the deserters, his compassion was such that he
would not permit them.’ After this, continues the same
narrator, the Earl of Dumbarton and Dundee, with all the
officers who adhered to the King, were ordered to meet his
Majesty at Uxbridge, where he intended to fight the Prince.
When the forces had assembled at the place appointed,
each party sent an officer to the Earl of Feversham,
to receive his commands. Creichton says that it was
he who attended on the part of Dundee, and that he
was ordered with the rest to wait till the King came
to dinner, his Majesty being expected within half-an-hour.
But matters took an unexpected turn. The Earl, to his
great surprise, received a letter from the King, signifying
that his Majesty had gone off, and had no further service
for the army. When Creichton returned with this news,
neither Dundee, nor Linlithgow, nor Dunmore could forbear
bursting into tears. It is further stated that Dundee,
acting upon a suggestion of which Creichton claims the
credit, had resolved to make his way back to Scotland,
when the townspeople, anxious to rid themselves as soon
as possible of the military, raised the report that the Prince
of Orange was approaching. After preparation to receive
him had been hastily made, Creichton was again dispatched
by Dundee, to discover whether the alarm were true. The
orderly was met on the way by a messenger whom William
had entrusted with a letter, of which the contents, quoted
from memory, are said to have been as follows:—
‘My Lord Dundee,—I understand you are now at
Watford, and that you keep your men together. I desire
you will stay there till further orders, and upon my honour,
none in my army shall touch you.
‘W. H. Prince of Orange.’
From this point, there is some doubt as to Dundee’s
movements. He may, very probably, have gone on to
London; and there is evidence of his having been there
shortly after the King’s flight. He was one of those who
attended a meeting of the Scottish Privy Councillors,
which had been hastily summoned by Balcarres to consider
the situation, but which effected nothing beyond
affording Hamilton an opportunity of displaying his
‘usual vehemency.’ If an account quoted by Napier
from ‘Carte’s Memorandum Book’ is to be credited,
Dundee must, shortly after this, when the news of
James’s arrest at Faversham reached the capital, have
gone to meet his luckless master at Rochester, and there
advised him to summon his disbanded army together again,
undertaking to raise ten thousand men himself, and to
march through all England with the royal standard at
their head.
There is better evidence of a final interview with James
after his return to London. Besides Dundee himself,
Colin Earl of Balcarres was also present at it. The Earl
had come for the purpose of making a last attempt to
move the King to active resistance, promising that if he
would but give the word, an army of twenty thousand
men would be ready to receive his orders. The King,
however, had rejected the proposal; and, as it was a fine
morning, expressed a wish to take a walk. Balcarres and
Dundee accompanied him, ‘When he was in the Mall, he
stopped and looked at them, and asked how they could
be with him, when all the world had forsaken him, and
gone to the Prince of Orange. Colin said, their fidelity
to so good a master would ever be the same, they had
nothing to do with the Prince of Orange. Lord Dundee
made the strongest professions of duty. “Will you two,
as gentlemen, say you have still attachment to me?”
“Sir, we do.” “Will you give me your hands upon it,
as men of honour?” They did so. “Well, I see you
are the men I always took you to be; you shall know all
my intentions. I can no longer remain here but as a
cypher, or be a prisoner to the Prince of Orange, and
you know there is but a small distance between the
prisons and the graves of Kings. Therefore, I go to
France immediately; when there, you shall have my
instructions. You, Lord Balcarres, shall have a commission
to manage my civil affairs, and you, Lord Dundee,
to command my troops in Scotland.”’
After the departure of James, both the noblemen remained
in London for a time. It is stated by Dalrymple
that both of them were asked by William to enter his
service. ‘Dundee,’ he says, ‘refused without ceremony.
Balcarres confessed the trust which had been put in him,
and asked the King if, after that, he could enter the service
of another. William generously answered, ‘I cannot say
that you can;’ but added, ‘Take care that you fall not
within the law, for otherwise I shall be forced, against my
will, to let the law overtake you.’
Bishop Burnet puts a different complexion on the matter
as regards Dundee; and it is his account that has led
Macaulay to accuse the latter of having been less ingenuous
than his friend Balcarres. The Bishop distinctly states
that he himself had been employed by Dundee to carry
messages from him to the King, to know what security
he might expect, if he should go and live in Scotland
without owning his government. ‘The King said, if he
would live peaceably and at home, he would protect him:
to this he answered that, unless he was forced to it, he
would live quietly.’
It is not easy to believe that this is an absolutely
accurate account of what actually took place. But the
result, which scarcely amounts to a promise on the part
of Dundee, as Macaulay interprets it, but rather appears
in the light of a compromise on either side, is probably
not far removed from the truth. It did not place Dundee
in a special and exceptional position; it only put him
on the same footing as all who were included in
the general amnesty, not more generously than wisely,
granted by William to the former adherents of the
dethroned King. Of a personal interview between
Dundee and William, there is no actual evidence.
By the beginning of 1689 there was no reason for further
stay in England; and Dundee turned northwards again
with Balcarres, and with the remnant of the cavalry at the
head of which he had ridden to London in the autumn—a
few troopers who had kept by their old chief even after
their regiment was disbanded.
VIII BEFORE THE STRUGGLE
When Dundee reached Edinburgh, in the last days of
February, the disturbances that had broken out shortly
before had been quelled, owing mainly to the judicious
and vigorous measures taken by the College of Justice;
and to all outward appearance, at least, the capital was
in a state of great tranquillity. But the excitement,
though less demonstrative than it had been in the earlier
weeks of the year, was still intense, and increased with
the approach of the date fixed for the meeting of the
Convention of the Estates, which was to determine
whether England and Scotland were to be ruled by one
sovereign, or whether there was to be a renewal between
them of the hostilities of former centuries.
The Duke of Hamilton, the most influential of the
Scottish noblemen who had offered their services to
William, was making his arrangements in view of the
coming crisis. He had brought in several companies of
foot, which he billeted in the town. There seemed to
be good reason to believe that before long he would be
able to quarter them in the Castle. The command of the
old fortress had been entrusted by James to the Duke
of Gordon, ‘a man weak and wavering in courage, but
bound by shame and religion.’ He had committed the
almost inconceivable error of failing to provision the Castle,
when he determined to hold it, and whilst the opportunity
of procuring necessaries from the townspeople was still
open to him. He had learnt that all the castles and
forts in England had been given up, some of them, it was
reported, by order of the exiled King himself; and no
communication from any of his own party had brought
him encouragement to further resistance. When, on the
faith of a letter from William, he was offered indemnity
and full assurance of protection, he agreed to what, under
the circumstances, seemed to him to be an honourable
capitulation. He was in the very act of evacuating the
Castle, his furniture was actually being removed from it,
when Dundee and Balcarres came to him. By representing
to him the service which he might still render
to the royal cause, and by appealing to his honour,
they succeeded in persuading him to hold out until the
Convention had given indications of its designs.
When the Estates met, on the 14th of March, Hamilton
secured a first victory for his party by getting himself
appointed President. At his suggestion, negotiations were
again opened with Gordon, by the intermediary of the
Earls of Lothian and Tweeddale. They were so far
successful that the wavering Governor promised to
surrender on the following day. But, when the time
came, he again evaded his engagement by insisting upon
terms which he knew could not be accorded him. It was
Dundee who had again worked the change. He had gone
to the Castle and assured Gordon that the King’s friends
had resolved to desert the Edinburgh Convention, and
to summon another at Stirling, in virtue of the powers
given to the Archbishop of St Andrews, Balcarres, and
himself by a royal warrant received from Ireland. It is
asserted by Dalrymple that ‘Balcarres, but still more
Dundee,’ then urged the Governor to fire upon the city,
in order to dissolve the Convention. From the account
given by Balcarres, however, it would appear that this
advice was given by the King’s ‘friends’ immediately after
Dundee had ridden off with his fifty troopers. For
failing to keep his engagement with the Convention,
Gordon was declared a traitor. As the heralds made
their proclamation in due form, under the very walls of
his fortress he spiritedly retorted that they ought in decency
to have doffed the King’s livery before they proscribed
the King’s governor.
It was true that, as Dundee had told Gordon, the
adherents of James had determined to desert the Convention.
Their resolution was the result of an incident
that had taken place at a recent sitting of that Assembly.
Two letters had been received, one from the new King
William, the other from the late King James. The former
was read and ‘answered in strains of gratitude and respect.’
The latter met with a different reception. The members
of the Orange party were at first unwilling that its contents
should be made known. They urged that the nation
would be in a miserable condition if the despatch should
prove to be an order for the dissolution of the Convention.
Many of their opponents admitted this. But they were
confident that James had written ‘in terms suitable to the
bad situation of his affairs in England,’ and had given such
full satisfaction in matters of religion and liberty as would
induce even most of those who had declared against him
to return to their duty; and they consequently pressed
that the message should be heard. It was not, however,
until a unanimous vote had declared the Convention to be
a legal and free meeting, and, as such, not to be dissolved
by any order the letter might contain, that permission was
granted. To the consternation of the Jacobites, and the
joy of their enemies, it was found that the despatch, in
which the hand and style of the obnoxious Melfort were
recognised, ‘was written in the terms of a conqueror and
a priest, threatening the Convention with punishment in
this world and damnation in the next.’ There could no
longer be any doubt as to what the result of the Convention
would be.
The futility of making any further attempt to influence
the Estates in favour of James was not the only reason that
made Dundee desire to leave Edinburgh. He had received
information that a number of his old enemies, the Covenanters,
had formed a plot to assassinate him and Sir
George Mackenzie. There can be no doubt that George
Hamilton of Barns had brought up four hundred armed
citizens from Glasgow, and had lodged them about the
Parliament House; but it is alleged that the object of this
measure was merely to prevent Dundee himself from carrying
out a design which he had formed of seizing certain
members of the Convention. At the next meeting of the
Estates he made known what he had learnt, offered to
point out the very house in which his intending murderers
were concealed, and demanded that they should be brought
to justice. A majority of the House refused to take cognisance
of what was slightingly described as a private
matter, until affairs of greater moment had been dealt
with; and Hamilton, who saw a welcome chance of
getting rid of a troublesome adversary, cast sneering
reflections upon the courage that could be alarmed by
imaginary dangers.
This was on the eve of the day fixed upon by the
Jacobite members for their departure from Edinburgh.
In the meantime, however, the Marquis of Athole had
pleaded for a further delay, and this had been agreed to
at a meeting from which Dundee happened to be absent.
When informed of the new arrangement, he refused to be
bound by it. In vain Balcarres urged that his departure
would give the alarm, and frustrate their designs. He
replied that he had promised to meet a number of his
friends outside the city, and that he did not wish to
disappoint them. It was then that, going forth, he
gathered his fifty troopers about him and galloped through
the streets of Edinburgh. To a friend who called out to
inquire where he was going, he is reported to have cried
back, as he waved his hat, ‘Wherever the spirit of
Montrose shall direct me.’
Dundee’s road to Stirling skirted the base of the Castle
rock. As he approached he was recognised by the Duke
of Gordon, who was ‘in a manner blocked up by the
western rabble,’ and who signalled that he desired to speak
with him. Equipped as he was, he performed the almost
incredible feat of scrambling up the precipitous crag, as far
as a postern gate, at which he held conference with the
Governor. In the course of the conversation he urged the
Duke to delegate the command of the stronghold to his
subordinate Winrhame, an experienced and trustworthy
soldier, and to retire into the Highlands for the purpose of
raising his clansmen in support of King James. But
Gordon’s timidity suggested a ready and plausible excuse.
A soldier, he said, could not in honour quit the post that
had been assigned to him.
Whilst the two noblemen were conferring together under
such unusual circumstances, they were noticed from the
city. The troopers who were waiting below for their
adventurous leader were magnified into a great body of
horse, and it was assumed that Dundee’s motive for braving
the danger of such a climb, and defying the outlawry under
which the Governor had been placed by the Convention,
was to concert an attack in which he would be supported
by the fire of the Castle batteries. The rumour spread and
reached the ears of Hamilton. In all probability he knew
it to be unfounded; but he also saw how he could avail
himself of it to serve his own ends, and he did not neglect
the opportunity which chance offered him. The Convention
was sitting. With assumed indignation he exclaimed that
it was high time they should look to themselves, since their
enemies had the audacity to assemble in force, with hostile
intent. Pretending to believe that there was danger within
as well as without, he commanded the doors to be shut
and the keys to be laid on the table before him, so that
the traitors in their midst should be held in confinement
until all danger from them was over. Then, by his orders,
the drums were beat and the trumpets sounded through the
city. At the signal, the armed men who had been brought
in from the west, and hitherto kept concealed in garrets and
cellars, swarmed out into the streets, where their fierce and
sullen looks further increased the alarm of the townspeople,
who gathered in great crowds about the Parliament House.
When the tumult and confusion had lasted for some
hours, and long after the unconscious cause of it had
resumed his ride, Hamilton, judging that the proper
pitch had been reached, caused the doors to be thrown
open again. As the members came out into the square,
the Whigs ‘were received with the acclamations, and
those of the opposite party, with the threats and curses
of a prepared populace.’ The President had attained the
object he had in view. As Dalrymple reports, ‘terrified
by the prospect of future alarms, many of the adherents
of James quitted the Convention and retired to the
country; more of them changed sides; only a very few
of the most resolute continued their attendance.’ The
Whigs were left to themselves to settle the government
of the country.
Whilst the Convention was still sitting with doors closed
to prevent the egress of the Jacobite members, information
was brought by Lord Montgomery, that Dundee had been
seen going towards Queensferry after his defiant conference
with the outlawed Duke of Gordon. Thereupon Major
Buntin with a troop of horse was dispatched in pursuit.
At the same time it was ordered that an express should be
sent with a letter signed by the President, calling upon the
deserter to return to the meeting by the following Friday.
Whether it be true that the Major ‘never came within
sight’ of the fugitive, or that he was scared by a threat
of being sent back to his masters ‘in a pair of blankets,’
the result of his mission was the same.
The messenger may have found the means of delivering
his letter at Linlithgow, where the Viscount made his first
halt. It was possibly he who brought back the information
which, on the next day, the 19th of March, caused the
Convention to issue an order for the heritors and militia of
Edinburgh and Linlithgow to assemble and ‘dislodge’ Lord
Dundee. To give legal justification to these proceedings,
an official proclamation was made by herald, charging both
Dundee and Livingstone who accompanied him, to return
to the Convention, within twenty-four hours, under pain of
treason. Next day, a further report was received in Edinburgh,
in consequence of which the Magistrates of Stirling
were called upon to take suitable measures for seizing on
the Viscount, who was understood to be in their neighbourhood.
He had, in reality, ridden straight through
to Dunblane, where he had an interview with Drummond
of Balhaldy, who, as Lochiel’s son-in-law, was doubtless
able to give him useful information as to the condition
of the Highlands, and where he also wrote to the Duke of
Hamilton, as President of the Convention, a letter which
has not been preserved, and which may never have reached
its destination. About the end of that eventful week, he
reached his own home, at Dudhope. But, even here, he
was not out of reach of heralds and their proclamations.
On the 27th of March it was duly notified to him, with
official blast of trumpet, that he was to lay down his arms,
under penalty of being dealt with as a rebel to the State.
His reply was almost suggested by the terms of the herald’s
summons. Dundee had no thought of accepting the new
Government, and had never made a secret of his opposition
to it. That he was fully prepared to take the field, if he saw
a favourable opportunity of doing so, may be looked upon
as the natural and necessary sequel to his acceptance of the
trust verbally committed to him at his last meeting with
James. But, so far, he had done nothing that justified the
charge of having taken up arms. From that point of view,
he had no difficulty in giving an explanation and a defence
of his conduct. He did so in the following letter:—
Dudhope, March 27, 1689.
‘May it please your Grace,—The coming of an herald
and trumpeter, to summon a man to lay down arms that is
living in peace at home seems to me a very extraordinary
thing, and, I suppose, will do so to all that hears of it.
While I attended the Convention at Edinburgh, I complained
often of many people being in arms without
authority, which was notoriously known to be true; even
the wild hillmen; and no summons to lay down arms
under the pain of treason being given them, I thought it
unsafe for me to remain longer among them. And because
a few of my friends did me the favour to convey me out of
the reach of these murderers, and that my Lord Livingstone
and several other officers took occasion to come away at
the same time, this must be called being in arms. We
did not exceed the number allowed by the Meeting of
Estates. My Lord Livingstone and I might have had
each of us ten; and four or five officers that were in
company might have had a certain number allowed them;
which being, it will be found we exceeded not. I am sure
it is far short of the number my Lord Lorne was seen to
march with. And though I had gone away with some
more than ordinary, who can blame me, when designs of
murdering me was made appear? Besides, it is known
to everybody that, before we came within sixteen miles
of this, my Lord Livingstone went off to his brother my
Lord Strathmore’s house; and most of the officers, and
several of the company, went to their respective homes or
relations. And, if any of them did me the favour to come
along with me, must that be called being in arms. Sure,
when your Grace represents this to the Meeting of the
States, they will discharge such a groundless pursuit, and
think my appearance before them unnecessary. Besides,
though it were necessary for me to go and attend the
Meeting, I cannot come with freedom and safety; because
I am informed there are men of war, and foreign troops
in the passage; and, till I know what they are, and what
are their orders, the Meeting cannot blame me for not
coming. Then, my Lord, seeing the summons has proceeded
on a groundless story, I hope the Meeting of
States will think it unreasonable I should leave my wife
in the condition she is in. If there be anybody that
notwithstanding of all that is said, think I ought to
appear, I beg the favour of a delay till my wife is brought
to bed; and, in the meantime, I will either give security,
or parole, not to disturb the peace. Seeing this pursuit
is so groundless, and so reasonable things offered, and the
Meeting composed of prudent men and men of honour,
and your Grace presiding in it, I have no reason to fear
further trouble.—I am, may it please your Grace, your
most humble servant,
Dundee.’
‘I beg your Grace will cause read this to the Meeting
because it is all the defence I have made. I sent another
to your Grace from Dunblane, with the reasons of my
leaving Edinburgh. I know not if it be come to your
hands.’
It is hardly probable that Dundee seriously expected
Hamilton and the Convention to be influenced in the
course they were bent on adopting by a letter which,
as regarded the past, contained little or nothing but what
they had heard already, and which in respect to the
future, bound the writer for a very limited period, in
consideration of purely private and domestic, and not
of political circumstances, except, perhaps, the circumstance
that the instructions without which he was not
to venture on any act of open hostility had not yet come
from Ireland.
He cannot have been greatly surprised to learn that on
the 30th of March he had formerly been declared a
traitor.
Within less than a fortnight there occurred an incident
which supplied Hamilton not only with a justification of the
action he had taken, but also with a reason for adopting
further measures against Dundee. The Viscount’s commissions
as Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief in
Scotland had been dispatched from Ireland. They were
accompanied with letters from Melfort to both Dundee and
Balcarres. To the former he wrote, ‘You will ask, no doubt,
how we shall be able to pay our armies: but can you ask
such a question while our enemies, the rebels, have estates
to be forfeited? We will begin with the great, and end with
the small ones.’ The same sentiments were expressed in
even stronger terms in his letter to the latter. ‘The estates
of the rebels will recompense us. You know there were
several Lords whom we marked out, when you and I were
together, who deserved no better fates; these will serve as
examples to others.’ According to Balcarres, he added
the senseless threat, ‘when we get the power we will make
these men hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ Whether
by the folly or the knavery of the bearer of them, these
compromising documents fell into the hands of Hamilton.
He communicated them to the Convention. When they
had been read, he rose and cried out in an impetuous
voice, ‘You hear, you hear, my Lords and Gentlemen, our
sentence pronounced. We must take our choice, to die,
or to defend ourselves.’
The President had not waited for the decision of the
Assembly. In virtue of the power given him at an earlier
meeting, to imprison whomsoever he suspected to be acting
against the common interest, he had sent a hundred men
of the Earl of Leven’s regiment into Fifeshire, and a like
number into Forfarshire, to apprehend the two noblemen.
Balcarres had already been brought back to Edinburgh
and cast into prison. The knowledge that Dundee still
had a number of his old troopers with him, did not help
to stimulate the zeal of those to whom the duty of effecting
his capture had been committed. Moreover, there lay
between him and them two rivers, which necessitated a
circuitous march. There had, consequently, been ample
time for him to be informed of their approach; and when
they reach Dudhope, they learnt that their errand would be
fruitless. Taking what was destined to be a last farewell of
his wife and of his infant son, he retired towards the north.
But his retreat was not a flight. One of those who
sallied forth with him, has described in scholarly Latin
hexameters, how the gallant Graham mounted on his
charger, brilliant in scarlet, in the face of the town, drew
out in long line his band of brave youths, all mounted and
in bright armour; how, on the very top of the Law of
Dundee, he unfurled the royal banner for the Northern
war; and how he triumphantly led the little troop of those
who dared stand for the King in his misfortunes, over the
lofty ridges of the Seidlaws, by Balmuir and Tealing, to
his wife’s jointure-house, in Glen Ogilvy. There he remained
three days; and Sir Thomas Livingstone, with his
hundred men, marched after him, in the hope of being able
to take him by surprise. But, ‘though very well and
secretly led on,’ he was again too late. He returned to
Dundee, whence he sent information of ‘his mislucked
design’ to Mackay, whom William had appointed to the
supreme command of the troops sent to Scotland, and
where he was told to await the arrival of the General
himself.
In the meantime, Dundee, who, at his interview with
Lochiel’s son-in-law, had been assured that as soon as he
could get a body of troops together, the clans ‘would risk
their lives and fortunes under his command, and in King
James’s service,’ was riding through the Highlands in the
hope of enlisting recruits for the Stuart cause. From
Dudhope, he had proceeded due north, through Glen
Ogilvy, to the ‘bare town’ of Kirriemuir. Then crossing
the Esk at the North Water Bridge, climbing the rugged
heights of the Cairn-o’-Mount, and fording the Dee, he
reached Kincardine O’Neil. By the 21st of April he was
north of the Don, at Keith, where he made a brief halt,
utilised for the purpose of attempting negotiations with
Lord Murray. His next halting-place was Elgin, on the
other side of the Spey, where the hospitality accorded him
brought down the anger of the Convention on Provost
Stewart and two of his bailies. Forres was the term of
the rapid dash to the north, and there the little band again
rested for a brief space.
During his progress through the Highland provinces,
Dundee had not omitted the precaution of keeping up
communication with the south; and he had received from
his wife important information in accordance with which
he at once devised a scheme of action. General Mackay
was now in Scotland. On reaching Edinburgh he had
received orders to march the forces which he had brought
with him, and which consisted of three or four regiments
of foot, and one of horse, besides Sir Thomas Livingstone’s
dragoons, against Lord Dundee. Leaving Sir John Lanier
to carry on the siege of the Castle, he hastened across the
Tay to the town of Dundee, where he halted for a night or
two.
Amongst the officers of the Scotch dragoons there were
some who had not forgotten their old chief, and who were
ready to avail themselves of any favourable opportunity
that occurred to join themselves to him. One of them
was William Livingstone, a relative of the Colonel’s.
Captain Creichton, who had served with Claverhouse in
the west, was another. It was arranged between them to
enter into communication with Lady Dundee; and it was
Creichton who undertook to act as messenger. Making
his way to Dudhope privately and by night, he assured the
Viscountess that the regiment in which he served would be
at her husband’s command, as soon as he pleased to give
the word. This acceptable news was dispatched north.
Creichton, who did not belong to either of the two troops
that were left in Dundee, but had been obliged to follow
Mackay into the Highlands, received a reply to the effect
that Dundee had written to James to send him two thousand
foot and one thousand horse out of Ireland, and that, as
soon as those forces had arrived, he would expect his
friends to join him with the dragoons.
In the hope of securing this important and welcome
reinforcement, he resolved to make his way south, towards
Dundee, where a part of the regiment was stationed. An
intercepted despatch from Mackay to the Master of Forbes
having given him some information as to the plan by which
it was intended to check his movements, he waited at the
Cairn-o’-Mount till the General was within eight miles of
him, near Fettercairn. Understanding that it would be
unsafe to advance further, in view of the dispositions that
had been taken to surround him, he turned back again to
Castle Gordon, where the Earl of Dunfermline joined him
with forty or fifty gentlemen.
It appears to have been from Castle Gordon that
Dundee dispatched a messenger to Lochiel to inform
him of the situation. After consultation amongst the
neighbouring Highland chiefs, it was decided that a
detachment of eight hundred men, under Macdonald of
Keppoch, should be sent to escort him into Lochaber.
But Keppoch, whom the poetical chronicler describes
as a man whom love of plunder would impel to any
crime, had his own ends to serve. He was at feud with
the Macintosh, and the town of Inverness had taken
sides with the Macintosh. Instead of marching to meet
Dundee, he led his forces against the town, from the
magistrates of which he extorted the promise of a ransom
of four thousand merks. The hasty arrival of Dundee, to
whom information of Keppoch’s outrageous conduct had
been conveyed, put an end to this state of siege. But
the weakness of his following obliged him to adopt a
conciliatory policy towards the freebooter. He assured
the magistrates, who appealed to him, that Keppoch had
no warrant from him to be in arms, much less to plunder.
Beyond that, however, he could only give his bond that, at
the King’s return, the money exacted by Keppoch should
be made good. Having so far humoured the plundering
laird, Dundee depended on his help to engage Mackay.
But Keppoch, to whom honour and glory meant little, and
for whom booty was everything, found various reasons for
refusing his co-operation; whilst his followers declared that
they could do nothing without the consent of their master.
Their object was, in reality, to add to their spoil, by
harrying the country, and to retire with it to their mountain
fastnesses.
Dundee was sorely disappointed at this untoward
incident. So fully did he expect to be joined by
Keppoch’s men that he had already written to the
magistrates of Elgin to prepare quarters for nine hundred
or a thousand Highlanders besides his own cavalry. And
now, instead of turning round on his pursuer, he was
obliged to make his way through Stratherrick to Invergarry
and Kilcummin, and thence into the wilds of
Badenoch. Throughout this march, Dundee did not relax
his efforts to enlist recruits, and he succeeded in engaging
the greater part of the men of note to be ready at call
to join in his master’s service. Feeling that he might
now depend on the active co-operation of the Highland
chiefs, about the sixth or seventh of May, from the isolated
farm of Presmukerach, in a secluded district between Cluny
and Dalwhinnie, he issued a royal letter, calling upon the
clans to meet him in Lochaber on the eighteenth of the
month.
In the meantime, however, it was not Dundee’s intention
to remain idle. On the 9th of May, he was at Blair.
Thence he advanced next day to Dunkeld, where, coming
unexpectedly upon an agent of the new Government, who,
with the help of the military, had been gathering the
revenues of the district, he relieved him of the money, and
secured the arms of his escort. This was but an incident.
The real object of the raid was seventeen miles further.
Dundee had received information that William Blair of
Blair, and his lieutenant Pollock were raising a troop in
the county of Perth, for the new Government; and he
had resolved to interfere with their recruiting. Leaving
Dunkeld in the middle of the night, he was at Perth by
two o’clock in the morning, with seventy followers. No
attack was expected, and no resistance was offered. Blair
and Pollock were taken prisoners in their beds; and
several officers of the new levies were also captured.
Secure from surprise, the invading troopers carried out
their work deliberately and thoroughly; and when they
retired, about eleven o’clock next morning, the spoil they
took with them included arms, gunpowder, public-money,
and forty horses. It is said that, on being brought before
Dundee, Blair had protested with some indignation against
the treatment to which he had been subjected, and that
the Viscount had curtly replied, ‘You take prisoners for
the Prince of Orange, and we take prisoners for King
James, and there’s an end of it.’
From Perth, Dundee retired to Scone, where an unwilling
host, the Viscount of Stormont, was obliged to
accord him the hospitality of a dinner. Knowing what
pains and penalties were incurred by holding intercourse
with one who had been outlawed as a traitor and a rebel,
Stormont lost no time in informing the President of the
Convention of the untoward incident. But although he
urged the excuses that the dinner had been forced from
him, and that his ‘intercommuning’ had been wholly
involuntary, the Committee was not satisfied. Stormont,
together with his uncle and his father-in-law, who happened
to be staying with him at the time, was subsequently
put to considerable trouble for the delinquency of having
been compelled to entertain the unbidden and unwelcome
guest.
Dundee had not forgotten the errand on which he had
originally started from the north, but which Mackay’s
advance had obliged him to abandon for a time. By way
of Cargill, Cupar-Augus, and Meigle, he worked his way
round to Glamis, within less than twenty miles of Dundee.
He utilised the circuitous march by detaching some of his
troopers to collect revenues, in the name of the King, from
the neighbouring villages; and not less acceptable than the
money thus brought in, was the accession of half a score of
volunteers amongst whom were Hallyburton, Fullerton,
and a third whose is variously given as Venton, Fenton,
and Renton. But even with these added to it, the little
force with which he re-entered Glen Ogilvy did not amount
to more than eighty.
In the afternoon of the 13th of May, the inhabitants of
Dundee were startled by the alarming intelligence that an
armed force was advancing over the Seidlaws to attack
them. Hardly had they completed a rough and hasty
preparation for defence by barring the gates and barricading
the streets, when the redoubted leader appeared on the
summit of the Law, of which his troopers held the base
and the declivities. What the scared citizens took for a
serious attack was merely a demonstration, devised for the
purpose of affording the friendly dragoons an opportunity
of effecting a junction with Dundee. William Livingstone
appears to have understood the hint; for, according to the
poetical chronicle of James Philip of Almerieclose, he
endeavoured to head a feigned sortie at the head of the
dragoons and of three hundred citizens whom he had
enlisted for the Jacobite cause. But, by some means, of
which there is no record, Captain Balfour, who was a
staunch partisan of the new Government, succeeded in
frustrating the attempt.
At nightfall Dundee retired to Glen Ogilvy, without
the reinforcement which he had hoped to secure. All
that he was able to take back with him as the result of
his raid consisted in three hundred pounds of cess and
excise, which he succeeded in seizing, and the baggage
of a camp which lay outside the town, and which had
been hastily abandoned at his approach. By the other
side, this demonstration was looked upon as a daring
attack. In the excitement which the news of it caused
on reaching Edinburgh, the Convention gave orders that
six firkins of powder should be sent from Bo’ness to
Dundee, and that Hastings’s infantry, and Berkley’s horse
should reinforce the garrison. Urgent despatches were
also forwarded to Mackay, in Inverness, and brought
less welcome than trustworthy information as to the movements
of the man in pursuit of whom he was supposed
to be.
IX THE HIGHLAND CAMPAIGN — INDEX
The date fixed for the meeting of the clans was drawing
near; and, after a brief rest, Dundee was again in the
saddle. By way of Cupar, Dunkeld, Comrie, and Garth,
he shaped his course to Loch Rannoch, and thence over
the Grampians, through wild and rugged paths, to Loch
Treig and Lochaber. There he was received with all
honour and respect by Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, who
assigned to his use a house at a little distance from his
own, and supplied him with such conveniences as the
country afforded. The chief of the Camerons was the
most remarkable Highland figure of the time. He had
always shown himself a staunch adherent of the Stuart
cause, and his veneration for the memory of its great
champion, Montrose, was proverbial amongst his kinsmen
and friends. His own loyalty was above temptation; and
when, at the suggestion of Mackenzie of Tarbat, Mackay
made an attempt to bribe him into submission to the new
Government, the letters containing the proffered terms,
were contemptuously left unanswered. It was mainly
through the influence of Lochiel that the coalition of the
clans had been effected. He himself brought to the
royal cause a contingent of a thousand men, whom he had
never led but to victory.
In accordance with the old Highland custom, Dundee
sent round the fiery cross, immediately on his arrival in
Lochaber. During the week which would have to elapse
before the chieftains could all bring their followers to the
trysting-place, he utilised his enforced leisure by drilling
his small body of cavalry, and accustoming the horses to
stand fire. The time at his disposal was insufficient
to allow of his putting the infantry through a course of
military training, and, on the advice of Lochiel he refrained
from interfering with the rude but effective tactics of the
Highlanders.
At length, about the 25th of May, the gathering of the
clans was complete, and Dundee held a review of his army
in the plain of Macomer. There was the brave Glengarry
with three hundred warriors in the flower of vigorous
manhood; and following him closely was his brother with a
hundred more. Next came Glencoe, huge-limbed, but strong
and active, accompanied by another hundred claymores.
Macdonald of Sleat headed a body of five hundred
clansmen from the Isles of which he was the Lord. The
men of Uist, of Knoydart, and of Moydart, marched under
the leadership of their youthful chief, Allan Macdonald,
Captain of Clan Ranald; and two hundred men, as wild
as himself were gathered about Keppoch, the notorious
raider, the ‘Colonel of the Cows,’ as he was dubbed by
Dundee, because of his particular skill in finding out cattle,
when they were driven to the hills, to be out of his way.
All these, some fifteen hundred in the aggregate, belonged
to the great clan Donald. They were all armed alike,
and carried into battle, as their emblem, a bunch of wild
heather, hung from the point of a spear. Under Dundee,
the Macdonalds formed one battalion of twenty companies.
The thousand men that composed the Cameron contingent
doubtless included the various septs of the great clan, as well
as some of the proscribed and scattered Macgregors, between
whom and the Camerons there existed a close friendship.
From the various branches of the Macleans, another
thousand men gathered around the blue standard of
the tribe. The two hundred retainers of Stewart
of Appin, together with those of Macneill of Barra, of
Macleod of Raasay, of Fraser of Fayers, of Fraser of
Culduthill, of Grant of Urquhart, of Macnaughten, Macallister,
Maclaughlane, and Lamont, helped to swell the
ranks of Dundee’s infantry, and to bring up its numbers
to a total, which, if the enumeration of one who was
present, and bore the leader’s standard, be not grossly
exaggerated, must have amounted to close on four
thousand. Dundee’s own following consisted of some
eighty horse, composed of his veteran troopers, reinforced
by a few noblemen and gentlemen. The most notable
of these were the Earl of Dunfermline, Lord Dunkeld,
Sir Alexander Innes, Edmonstone of Newton, Clelland
of Faskin, the three recruits who had joined Dundee
after the raid on Perth, a Bruce, who may have been
Captain Bruce of Earlshall, Graham of Duntroone, and
David Graham, the leader’s own brother.
On the same day, after a stirring address from Dundee,
who promised them that they should see him in the van
whenever he hurled their united bands against the foe,
the Highlanders marched forth towards Glen Spey. Glengarry,
accompanied by thirty horse, opened the march.
The rear was brought up by Fayers with his marshalled
clan. By the evening of the 28th of May, Dundee had
pitched his camp near the Castle of Raits, a few miles
from Kingussie.
The 29th of May was a date which the adherents of
the Stuarts held in special reverence. It was that of the
birth of Charles II., and it was also that of his entry into
London, at the Restoration. A day marked by two such
events was considered specially auspicious; and its annual
recurrence was hailed by commemorative celebrations.
It offered an opportunity for a general and public expression
of loyalty to the cause, which Dundee did not neglect;
and with impressive ceremony he himself lighted a huge
bonfire in the middle of the camp, and drank to the
memory of the late King, and the success of his brother.
But the day was to be kept in a more practical way.
Within accessible distance lay the Castle of Ruthven.
In it Mackay had placed a garrison under Captain John
Forbes, for the purpose of facilitating communication with
Ramsay, who was expected with reinforcements from the
south. Dundee opened hostilities by sending a force
under Keppoch to demand the surrender of the Castle.
Forbes returned a spirited answer to the summons, and
made a brave show of resistance; but perceiving how
futile it would be, in view of the preparations which were
being made for the assault, he came to terms, and promised
to lay down his arms, if, within three days, Mackay did not
come to his relief. But the General remained at Alvie, to
which he had advanced from Inverness, and the Castle was
evacuated at the expiration of the delay agreed upon.
Forbes was treated with remarkable consideration by
Dundee. He was allowed to pass through the camp
with his garrison; and having noticed that the horses
were all saddled and bridled, he concluded that immediate
action was intended, and reported accordingly
when he reached Mackay. On his way to join his
chief, he met two of his troopers making for Dundee’s
camp. They alleged that they had been sent out to
reconnoitre; and though warned of the danger which
they ran of being captured, they pursued their way
towards Raits. This circumstance having also been
communicated to Mackay, he opened an inquiry from
which it resulted that the troopers were messengers who
had been sent to arrange for the desertion of the Scots
dragoons. By the measures which the General at once
adopted, the plan was again frustrated.
In the meantime, Dundee, whom rumours of an intended
attack had reached, sent Bruce with a dozen troopers to
ascertain their truth. He returned with the information
that Mackay was encamped near Alvie, and did not appear
to have made any preparations for an advance. At this,
Dundee himself determined to move forward. As he was
pressing towards Alvie, he was startled to see that the Castle
of Dunachton which he had passed shortly before, and left
unharmed, was in a blaze. The marauding Keppoch had
again been at work. After setting fire to Ruthven, as he
had been ordered to do, he had further gratified his own
love of plunder and of revenge by pillaging and destroying
the old castle of his enemy the Mackintosh.
If discipline was to be maintained, Dundee could not
tolerate such conduct, even on the part of so powerful a
chieftain as Keppoch, and he sharply called the offender
to task for it. He told him in presence of all the officers
of his small army, that ‘he would much rather choose to
serve as a common soldier amongst disciplined troops,
than command such men as he, who seemed to make it
his business to draw the odium of the country upon him.’
Keppoch, whom no man had probably overawed before,
muttered an excuse, and promised to abide strictly by the
commander’s orders for the future.
On reaching Alvie, Dundee discovered that Mackay had
broken up his camp and was in full retreat. For four days
he followed him so persistently and so closely that, on one
occasion parties of his Highlanders were within shot of the
rear-guard. If night had not come on, nothing, in all probability,
could have saved the retreating troops. But the
ground was dangerous, the march had been long, and the
open country of Strathbogie, now only three miles distant,
would have given Mackay’s cavalry too much advantage
over their pursuers. Dundee ordered a halt.
Next morning, having learnt that Mackay had marched
ten miles further, he lay still all day. This was on the 5th
of June. That same day, he received information that
Barclay and Lesly’s regiments, from Forfar and Cupar-Angus,
had joined Mackay at Suy Hill. His old friends
in the Scotch dragoons, who had dispatched the messenger
with these tidings, communicated the further intelligence,
that the Duke of Berwick was reported to have been
captured, and that a party which had endeavoured to effect
a landing in Scotland was also said to have been beaten
back. They told him, too, that they were now surrounded
by English horse and dragoons themselves, and that, in
spite of their desire to cast in their lot with his, they could
not avoid fighting against him, if there were an engagement.
Under these circumstances, they begged him to go out of
the way for a time, until better news should come.
The advice was judicious. Dundee adopted it, and
turned back towards Badenoch. His action was fully
justified by the event. With the reinforcements which he
had received from the south, Mackay at once turned back
upon his pursuer, whom he hoped to take by surprise.
But his night march was in vain. When he reached
Edinglassie, where the Highland camp had been, it was only
to find that Dundee was already on his way to Cromdale.
He sent a party of horse in pursuit; but the troopers never
came within sight of the rear-guard, though they succeeded
in cutting off some of the plundering stragglers.
During this retreat, there occurred an incident which
helped to cheer Dundee; for it was not with a glad heart
that he had turned away from the enemy, and, to add
to the disappointment which he felt, he was so prostrate
through illness, at this critical moment, that his rate of
progress had to be reduced to a few miles a day—to less
than six miles in all on the 7th and 8th of June. On
the 9th of June, whilst Dundee, who had moved up the
Spey, was in the neighbourhood of Abernethy, Mackay gave
orders to Sir Thomas Livingstone to cross the river with a
detachment of dragoons, for the purpose of supporting the
Laird of Grant’s men, who had been hard pressed by parties
of the Highlanders. Whilst on this mission, an advance
guard of the troopers fell in with a body of three hundred
Macleans, who, under Lochbery, were on their way to join
Dundee. In the engagement that followed, the cavalry
was completely routed, and the clansmen, elated with victory
and laden with spoil stripped from the slain were enthusiastically
welcomed in Dundee’s camp.
It had been Dundee’s intention to take up a strong
position in Rannoch, but, as he wrote in one of his despatches,
finding that the Lochaber men were going away
every night by forties and fifties, with droves of cattle, and
that all the rest, who were laden with plunder of Grant’s
land and others, were equally anxious to return home with
it, he yielded to necessity, came into Lochaber with them,
and dismissed them to their respective houses, with injunctions
to be ready within a few days, if the enemy pursued.
If he did not, they were to lay still till further orders.
Mackay, on his side, seeing that Dundee had reached a
district where there were no good roads, and where it would
be impossible to buy the provisions without which no regular
body of forces could subsist together, also resolved to retire
from the field for a time. In a despatch forwarded to
Ireland through Hay, the position at this time was described
as follows: ‘My Lord Dundee hath continued in Lochaber,
guarded only by two hundred, commanded by Sir Alexander
Maclean. But, being in the heart of Glengarry and
Lochiel’s lands, he thinks himself secure enough; though
he had not, as he has, the Captain of Clanranald, with
six hundred men within ten miles of him, and Maclean,
Sir Donald, and Macleod marching towards him. So
that he can march with near four thousand; or refresh
in safety, till such time as the state of affairs of Ireland
may allow the King to send forces to his relief: which
if it please God shall fall out, there is all appearance of
forming a considerable army, notwithstanding that the
people are a little disheartened by the unexpected surrender
of the Castle of Edinburgh, which, as said, was
only by despair the Duke had of any relief, though he
wanted not from my Lord Dundee, by a third hand, all
the encouragement he could give.’ This brings the
Highland campaign forward to about the middle of June.
In spite of the circumstances which had made it
necessary for him to retire to Lochaber, Dundee entertained
no doubt as to the ultimate success of the cause
which he championed. Though indecisive, the result
of his military operations was such as to inspire him with
confidence in himself, and in the fighting powers, if not in
the discipline, of his Highlanders. With them, he had
more than held his own under difficulties that might well
have discouraged a less energetic and resourceful leader.
He had been obliged to begin the campaign with but fifty
pounds of powder, for all the great towns and sea-ports
were hostile to him, and would sell none. He had no
money, and could raise none on his own credit; and,
worse than all, the help on which he depended, and on
the promise of which he had induced the chieftains to
join him, had not come. Yet, in spite of all this, he
had suffered no reverse; and though the bulk of his
army was disbanded, he knew that a few days would
suffice to bring the clans about him again, in all their
former strength, and with more than their former devotion.
For he had won their respect by his own cheerful endurance
of all the hardships of the campaign, and their affection
by the sympathy and the ready help which he had given
them to bear their share.
Of that which might, indeed, have discouraged him, of
the true state of affairs outside Scotland, he knew nothing.
He had not only been kept in ignorance, he appears to have
been systematically deceived. As late as the 23rd of June,
writing to Macleod of Macleod to communicate to him the
news he had just received, he gave him a glowing account
of what was being achieved in Ireland. Hay, who had
himself been at the siege of Londonderry, had just reported,
that more than three weeks before, the inhabitants were
reduced to such extremities that horse flesh was sold for
sixpence a pound, that, for cannon-balls they were shooting
lumps of brick wrapped in pewter plates, that an attempt
at relief had been defeated with great loss. Fifty-two sail
of French warships were already in Ireland; eighty more
were on their way from Brest; some of the French fleet
had been seen amongst the islands, and had taken the
two Glasgow frigates; Edinburgh had lost heart, and
offered to surrender if King James would grant terms;
in short, everything was so hopeful and so far advanced,
that if Macleod did not hasten to land his men, he would
have but little occasion to do the King much service.
In view of such hopeful accounts, Dundee who could have
no means of testing their truth, and who had no suspicion
of their exaggeration, might well feel confident of success,
if only, as had repeatedly been promised, King James
would send him the reinforcements and the supplies so
anxiously expected, ‘ammunition, and three or four thousand
arms of different sorts, some horse, some foot.’
Even when he learnt, about the middle of July, that the
only succour to be got from Ireland, consisted of three
hundred ill-trained men, with whom Cannon had effected
a landing at Inverlochy, he did not lose confidence, and
an attempt to bring him to terms, of which his brother-in-law,
Lord Strathnaver was the intermediary, was met with
a dignified refusal. Nor did his enemies themselves seem
to think that his power and influence had yet begun to
wane; for they thought it worth their while to set a price
of twenty thousand pounds sterling on his head.
But a crisis was now at hand. About the middle of
July, Lord John Murray, the Marquis of Athole’s eldest
son, in accordance with an agreement come to with
Mackay, had gone into the Highlands, for the purpose
of raising a body of his father’s followers. He knew
their loyalty to the Stuart cause, and had no hope of
being able to induce them to take sides for the new
Government. But he might devise means to keep them
neutral; and no more was required of him. ‘Keep the
Athole men from joining Dundee,’ Mackay had said to
him, ‘and that is all I ask, or can expect, from your
father’s son.’ He succeeded in bringing together twelve
hundred men, with whom he intended to garrison the
important Castle of Blair.
Dundee had been duly informed of Murray’s levies;
but he affected to believe in the young chief’s loyalty,
and wrote to him, from his quarters in Struan, on the
other side of the Garry, suggesting that they should
meet to concert what was fittest to be done for the
good of the country, and the service of their lawful
King. Receiving no answer to his letter, he gave orders
to Stewart of Ballechin, a retainer of Athole’s, and a
staunch Jacobite, to occupy the Castle, in the name of
King James. Two further communications to Murray
having been similarly disregarded, Dundee dispatched two
of his officers to him, with a final appeal. They were
instructed to deliver it into Murray’s own hands, and to
receive his positive answer; but Murray declined to grant
them an interview.
When this became known to the clansmen whom he
had with him, and from whom he had so far succeeded
in concealing his real designs, they called upon him to let
them know what course of action he had resolved upon,
and plainly told him that if he meant to join Dundee
they would follow him, but that if he refused to do so,
they would immediately forsake him. In vain he attempted
to threaten them into submission. They were true to
their word. Filling their bonnets with water, they drank
the King’s health, and turned their backs on the chief
who had thought to make them traitors, against their will,
to the cause of the Stuarts.
In the meantime, Dundee had been active in other
directions. His summons to the clans had again been
sent forth, and orders given for a general meeting at Blair,
where he himself arrived, at latest, on the 26th of July.
That same day Mackay marched from Perth to Dunkeld,
with about four thousand foot, and two troops of horse
and dragoons.
There still remained two days to the date fixed for the
gathering of the claymores, when Dundee moved from the
camp at Blair to meet Mackay’s advance. He could not
wait for the arrival of his full force; but he hoped that the
deficiency in numbers would be compensated by the mettle
and determination of those who had joined. To satisfy
himself that the martial ardour of the clans had not suffered
from the long years of inactivity which had elapsed since
last they met an enemy, at Philiphaugh, he put it to an
effective test. At early dawn, when the men were still
sleeping in their plaids, in the heather, he caused the
alarm to be sounded. In an instant, every man had
sprung to his feet, and seizing his arms had run to take
up his position in front of the camp. When the Viscount
perceived this, says one of the chroniclers who record the
incident, and that not a man of them retired, with full
assurance, he instantly began his march to meet the enemy.
Before deciding to leave Blair, Dundee had called
together a council of war composed of all the leading
men who had joined him. The question to be discussed
was, whether it was wiser to remain encamped until the
arrival of all the Highland contingents, or to march
forward at once to meet Mackay. The old officers, who
were accustomed to the command of regular troops,
favoured the former alternative, and urged that it would
be imprudent to risk an engagement against an army
which exceeded theirs by more than half, and was composed
of trained soldiers, whilst their own forces consisted
of raw, undisciplined men, who had never seen blood,
whose strength was impaired by the sufferings and privations
of a long march, and whose spirit was damped by
disappointments.
Glengarry, on the other hand, represented that, although
the clansmen’s endurance had been taxed by want of
provisions as well as by fatigue, they were but little
affected by hardships to which their own way of living
inured them; and that, in spite of what they had gone
through, they were both able and ready to fight an
equal number of the enemy’s best troops, and had a fair
chance of beating them. Still, even he did not recommend
a general engagement before the arrival of the
remaining claymores had brought their numbers more
nearly to an equality with those of their opponents. His
advice, which met with the approval of most of the
chieftains, was that they should keep the army constantly
in sight of the enemy, and should post their men on
strong ground, where they would be safe from attack
themselves, and whence they could easily sally forth, at
every available opportunity, to harass the foe.
Alone of those present, Lochiel had refrained from
giving any sign of adherence to the views of either party;
and Dundee noticing this, called upon him, in terms most
flattering to the old chief, to declare his opinion. It was
given without hesitation: To fight the enemy. As he
supported this advice by pointing to the eagerness of the
men, and by enumerating the disadvantages of a delay, it
was observed that Dundee’s countenance brightened, and
that he listened with obvious satisfaction to his spirited yet
wise words. When his turn came to speak, he told the
Council that his sentiments had just been expressed by
one who added to them the weight of long experience
and of intimate knowledge, and that his voice, like that
of Lochiel, was for immediate and decisive action, a
course which was consequently resolved upon.
Before the Council broke up, the venerable chieftain
again rose to speak. He had promised, he said, and
would yield implicit obedience to all Dundee’s orders;
but he requested that, before they separated, he might
be allowed to give one command, not in his own name,
but in that of the whole Council. It was the unanimous
wish of all present that Dundee should not engage personally,
for on him depended the fate, not only of their brave
little army, but also of their king and of their country.
‘If your Lordship deny us this reasonable demand,’ he
added, ‘for my own part I declare that neither I, nor any
I am concerned in, shall draw a sword on this important
occasion, whatever construction shall be put on the matter.’
In his reply to this appeal, Dundee admitted that, if he
fell, his death might be a loss to them; but he reminded
his hearers of the temper of their men. If the least reason
were given them to doubt the personal courage of their
leader, they would lose their respect for him, and give him,
at best, but grudging obedience. For this reason, he
begged to be permitted to give one ‘shear-darg’—that
is, one harvest day’s work—to the King, his master, that
he might have an opportunity of convincing the brave
clans that he could hazard his life in that service, as
freely as the meanest of them. If this were granted him
he pledged his word never again to risk his person, so
long as he had the honour of commanding them. Finding
him inflexible in the chivalrous resolution which he
had couched as a request, the Council reluctantly yielded.
On the morning of the 27th of July, Mackay left his
quarters in Dunkeld. By ten o’clock he had reached the
southern extremity of the Pass of Killiecrankie, where he
halted for two hours. At noon he again gave the order
to advance. The Pass into which he led his army consisted
of an almost straight road, fully two miles in length, and
so narrow that barely half a dozen men could march
abreast. To the right it was flanked by lofty mountains.
The precipitous banks of the Garry skirted it on the left;
and, on the other side of the river, a thickly wooded
mountain hemmed in the landscape. Through this wild
and rugged defile Balfour, Ramsay and Kenmore opened
the march with their three battalions. Then came Belhaven’s
troop of horse, followed by Leven’s regiment, and a battalion
of the General’s. Over twelve hundred baggage horses
formed a long line behind them, protected by a rear-guard
which consisted of the Earl of Annandale’s troop of horse
and Hastings’s regiment.
Impressed by the wildness of the surroundings, and
conscious of the danger to which it would be exposed in
the event of an attack, the army moved cautiously but
cumbrously on. As it advanced without discovering any
sign of the presence of the enemy, his neglect to avail
himself of the obvious advantages which the nature of
the ground offered him, inspired a new fear. Some
carefully prepared trap at the further end seemed to afford
the only intelligible explanation of his action in leaving
the pass free. Even Mackay himself did not realise that
the only stratagem which Dundee had devised was an
engagement that should not merely retard, but wholly
scatter his opponent’s forces.
At length, the open ground on the bank of the Garry
was reached. As his men debouched into it, Mackay
drew them up three deep, without changing the relative
position of the regiments. The extreme left was thus
held by Balfour. Ramsay and Kenmore came next, and
were posted between him and two troops of horse that
occupied the centre. Leven, Mackay and Hastings were
on the right. Some short, portable leather cannon, that
could hardly be dignified with the name of artillery were
placed behind the horse. The whole line faced towards
Blair, from which the enemy was expected to move forward.
And, indeed, before long, the General perceived what he
thought was the advance guard, coming down the valley
towards him. It was in reality but a small detachment
that had been sent on for the purpose of attracting his
attention. Dundee, with his main body had wound his
way round to the left, and his Highlanders were soon
seen taking up their position on some elevated ground
that commanded Mackay’s right wing. Without altering
the disposition of his line of battle, the General wheeled
it round to face the clansmen, a movement by which he
put the river and the steep ridge above it immediately in
his rear, and rendered his own position far more precarious
in the event of a defeat, whilst the rise of the ground
towards the hills in his front prevented him from attacking
the enemy except under obviously disadvantageous
conditions.
In the meantime, Dundee was making his own dispositions
for the coming fight. Acting under the advice
of Lochiel, who knew the spirit of emulation by which the
several clans were animated, he drew them up in such a
way that each of them should have a regiment in Mackay’s
line assigned to it The Macleans, under their youthful
chief, were posted on the extreme right. The Irish contingent,
commanded by Colonel Pearson occupied the next
position, and had the Tutor of Clanranald with his battalion
on their immediate left. A fourth battalion, composed of
the men whom the stalwart Glengarry led to battle, made
up the right wing. The left consisted of two others, of
which Lochiel’s was one, and Sir Donald Macdonald’s the
other. The only cavalry at Dundee’s disposal consisted of
a few Lowland gentlemen and some remains of his old
troop, not exceeding forty horse in all, and these ‘very
lean and ill-kept.’ It was posted in the centre, to face
Mackay’s hundred sabres. It should have been under
the orders of the Earl of Dunfermline; but that very
morning, Sir William Wallace, a gentleman who had come
over from Ireland, produced a commission which appointed
him to the command hitherto held by the Earl. Though
deeply mortified Dunfermline had submitted without demur
to the unjust and ill-advised supersession, for which
Melfort, Wallace’s brother-in-law, was probably responsible.
His loyalty to the cause which he served prevented him
from raising a dispute at so critical a time.
For two hours the armies stood facing each other, within
musket-shot, without engaging, though some desultory
skirmishing appears to have been going on towards the left,
between some Macleans and the regiment opposed to them,
whilst the guns in Mackay’s centre kept up an intermittent
and harmless fire. During this long pause before the
battle both leaders addressed their troop. In spite of his
superiority in numbers, Mackay did not hide from his men
that the task before them was no easy one. In encouraging
them to it, he pointed out that, in such a place and with
such foemen, they could not hope for safety in flight, but
must win it for themselves by the defeat of the enemy.
His words were greeted with a cheer, which to Lochiel who
heard it, seemed wanting in enthusiasm, and from which
he drew for his own followers an omen of victory.
In Dundee’s allocution there was a spirited appeal to
the loyalty and patriotism of the clansmen. He urged
them to behave like true Scotsmen, in defence of their
King, their Religion, and their Country. He asked nothing
of them but what they should see him do before them.
For those who fell, there would be the comfort and the
honour of having died in the performance of their duty,
and as became true men of valour and of conscience; and
to those who lived and won the battle, he promised a
reward of a gracious King, and the praise of all good men.
It was not till eight o’clock on that summer evening
that Dundee gave orders for the advance of his two thousand
men. Casting off brogues and plaids the clansmen
moved forward down the slope. They were met with a
heavy fire, which grew more terrible as they approached
the treble line of their opponents. But with wonderful
resolution they obeyed the orders given them, and reserved
their own till they came to within a few yards of the
enemy. Then they poured it in upon them ‘like one
great clap of thunder,’ and, throwing away their muskets,
fell upon the infantry with their claymores before it had
time to fix bayonets to receive them. ‘After that,’ in the
words of Lochiel’s ‘Memoirs,’ ‘the noise seemed hushed;
and the firing ceasing on both sides, nothing was heard
for some few moments but the sullen and hollow clashes
of the broadswords, with the dismal groans and cries of
dying and wounded men.’
Dundee, who had joined his small body of horse, ordered
Wallace to attack the troopers whilst the clans were scattering
the infantry, and himself rode forward to take part in
the charge. But Sir William, the nominal commander,
‘not being too forward,’ Dundee would have met with no
support if the Earl of Dunfermline, taking in the situation
at a glance, had not dashed forward, with some sixteen
volunteers who left the laggard ranks. Mackay’s troopers
did not stop to receive the shock of this handful of men,
but joined the infantry in their flight. Nor did the gunners
make a better stand; and their clumsy ordnance was
captured before Wallace came up. Then Dundee, wheeling
to the enemy’s right, charged Mackay’s own regiment,
which, after delivering a last volley, turned and fled like
the rest, in spite of the General’s efforts to rally it.
Pausing for a moment to look round the field, the
victorious leader perceived that Sir Donald Macdonald’s
battalion, ‘which had not shown so great resolution as the
rest of the Highlanders,’ was hesitating in its attack upon
Hastings’s regiment. He was on his way to urge it forward,
when a shot struck him in the side and inflicted a mortal
wound. He reeled in the saddle, and was falling from his
horse; but one of his officers, named Johnstone, was at
hand to catch him in his arms and to help him to the
ground. As he lay there, the dying leader asked how the
day went. ‘The day goes well for the King,’ replied
Johnstone, ‘but I am sorry for your Lordship.’ But
Dundee felt the comfort which he had so shortly before
promised those who should fall; ‘it is the less matter for
me,’ he said, ‘seeing the day goes well for my master.’
Besides Dundee himself, there lay on the fateful field
some nine hundred men of his little army of hardly more
than two thousand. Whether he died on the scene of his
dearly-bought victory, or whether he was removed from it
and survived long enough to dictate the letter which his
Jacobite admirers have regarded as a last tribute of loyalty
to his King, and his Whig opponents denounced as an
unscrupulous forgery, are questions upon which too little
depends to justify a discussion of them. He was buried
at Blair.
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