FOOTNOTES:

The character of Lauderdale is one of the most curious problems of the time. In his youth he had been as zealous for the Covenant as he now appeared to be zealous for Episcopacy. Hence some have supposed that his real design was by favouring the intolerance of the bishops to bring them to discomfiture, and to re-establish on their ruin the old Presbyterian Church, for which, despite the profligacy of his life and conversation, he was still believed to entertain as much veneration as he was capable of feeling for any form of religion. But whatever may have been his regard for the old Covenant of his youth, he was set as a rock against the men who were now as much opposed to any moderate observance of Presbyterian worship as the most inveterate Malignant at Whitehall.

The first Indulgence was passed in 1669, in favour of the ministers whom the Act of 1662 had driven from their parishes. Such as had since that time kept from open violation of the law were now to be reinstated in their livings where vacant. The manse and the glebe were to be theirs as formerly, but the stipend was not to be renewed. These terms were accepted by some forty or fifty clergymen. By the advice of the gentle Leighton, who almost alone among his brethren seems at this time to have dared, or to have been even willing, to counsel tolerance, a deputation, nicknamed "the Bishop's Evangelists," was sent into the West to preach the doctrine of this Indulgence. The pious crusade was in vain. The failure of the Pentland rising and its terrible sequel had turned those stubborn hearts to madness. Their weaker brethren were now classed with the apostate Sharp and the butcher Dalziel; and the Indulgence was declared a snare for the soul far more deadly than any torture the Government could devise for the body. Nor, if time could have strengthened Leighton's hands, was time allowed him. Following close upon the Indulgence came a fresh Act, now making not only all field-preaching a capital offence, but even laying heavy penalties on any exercise of the Presbyterian worship except under an Indulged minister. This again was soon followed by a fresh law against Intercommuning—that is to say, against all who should offer even the simplest act of common charity to a Covenanter—and promising large rewards to all who should give information against them or their protectors. By this law it is said that thousands of both sexes, including many persons of rank, suffered severely; andfrom it sprang a curious incident in the miserable history of this time.

An order was issued to the landed gentry of Renfrew and Ayr, the shires where the disaffection was strongest, requiring them to give bail that their servants and tenants should not only abstain from personal attendance at conventicles, but also from all intercourse with intercommuned persons. The gentry answered that such assurance was impossible. It was not, they said, within the compass of their power to do this thing. The reply from Edinburgh was short and conclusive: if the landlords could not keep order in their districts, order must be kept for them. A body of English troops had already been moved up to the border and an Irish force collected at Belfast; but a more ingenious mode of punishment was now devised. Since the barbarous excesses of the Highland clans under Montrose, it had become an acknowledged breach of the rules of civilised warfare to employ men who, like the Red Indians used in our own American wars, were amenable to no discipline and recognised no principles of humanity. Eight thousand of these savages were now let loose on the disobedient Lowlanders. The result was, indeed, not all that had been anticipated at Edinburgh. The Council had naturally enough expected that the descent of these plaided barbarians would be the signal for a general insurrection, which would relieve them of their troubles as certainly and much more conveniently than Dalziel's dragoons and Perth's thumbkins. While Highlander and Lowlander were cutting each other's throats, Lauderdale and his colleagues would have ample leisure to decide on theapportionment of the booty.[13]In this, however, they were disappointed. No armed resistance was offered. During the two months these marauders lived at free quarters, without any distinction between friend and foe, on a land which, compared with their own barren moors and mountains, was a paradise flowing with milk and honey, only one life was lost, and that the life of a Highlander. At length the scandal became too great even for Lauderdale. Hamilton, who, like his brother before him, had always stood by the Crown, went up to London with several gentlemen of rank to protest against a tyranny which they vowed was that of Turks rather than Christians. According to one account, the King would not see them: according to another, he admitted Hamilton to an interview, and, after hearing his protest, owned that many bad things had been done in Scotland, but none, so far as he could see, contrary to his interests. It was clear, however, that in this matter Lauderdale had gone too far. The Highlanders were ordered to return to their homes. They returned accordingly, laden with spoil such as they had never dreamed of, and of the use of a large part of which they were as ignorant as a Red Indian or a negro.[14]

The departure of the Highland host leaves the stage free for Claverhouse. It was at this crisis he returned to Scotland, and here this summary of one of the most miserable chapters in British history may fitly end.

FOOTNOTES:[7]This is, perhaps, the best place to disclaim all intention of scoffing at this great writer and historian. It is a common impertinence of the day in which I have no wish to join. It is not, I hope, an impertinence to say that only those who have, for their own purposes, been forced to follow closely in his tracks can have any just idea of the unwearying patience and acuteness with which he has examined the confused and so often conflicting records of that time, or of the incomparable skill with which he has brought them into a clear continuous narrative. To glean after Macaulay is indeed a barren task. So far, then, from affecting to cavil at his work, I must acknowledge that without his help this little book would have been still less. Yet I do think he has been hard upon Claverhouse. Perhaps the scheme of his history did not require, or even allow him, to examine the man's character and circumstances so closely as a biographer must examine them. It is still more important to remember that the letters discovered by Napier in the Queensberry Archives were not known to him. Had he seen them, I am persuaded that he would have found reason to think less harshly of their writer.[8]"The south-west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that come from the north; and from a word 'whiggam,' used in driving their horses, all that drove were called the 'whiggamores,' and shorter, the 'whiggs.' Now in that year, after the news came down of Duke Hamilton's defeat, the ministers animated the people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up, marching on the head of their parishes, with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and headed them, they being about 6,000. This was called the Whiggamores' Inroad: and even after that all that opposed the Court came in contempt to be called Whiggs: and from Scotland the word was brought into England, where it is now one of our unhappy terms of distinction."—Burnet, i. 58. See also Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," ch. xii. Mr. Green, however, thought the wordwhigmight be the same as ourwhey, implying a taunt against the "sour-milk faces" of the fanatical Ayrshiremen.—"History of the English People," iii. 258.[9]Sharpe's notes to Kirkton's "History of the Church of Scotland," pp. 48-9. See also Wishart's "Memoirs of Montrose."[10]"The Lauderdale Papers." The most important passages in Sharp's letters will be found in Burton's history, vii. pp. 129-146.[11]"Memoirs of Captain John Creichton," pp. 57-9.[12]The torture of the thumbkin is said to have been introduced into Scotland by Lord Perth, who had seen it practised in Russia. But, according to Fountainhall, something very like it had been previously known under the homely name of "Pilliwincks," or "Pilniewinks."[13]"Duke Lauderdale's party depended so much on this that they began to divide, in their hopes, the confiscated estates among them, so that on Valentine's Day, instead of drawing mistresses they drew estates."—Burnet, ii. 26.[14]"When the Highlanders went back one would have thought they had been at the sacking of some besieged town, by their baggage and luggage. They were loaded with spoil. They carried away a great many horses and no small quantity of goods out of merchants' shops, whole webs of linen and woollen cloth, some silver plate bearing the names and arms of gentlemen. You would have seen them with loads of bedclothes, carpets, men and women's wearing clothes, pots, pans, gridirons, shoes and other furniture whereof they had pillaged the country."—Wodrow, ii. 413.

[7]This is, perhaps, the best place to disclaim all intention of scoffing at this great writer and historian. It is a common impertinence of the day in which I have no wish to join. It is not, I hope, an impertinence to say that only those who have, for their own purposes, been forced to follow closely in his tracks can have any just idea of the unwearying patience and acuteness with which he has examined the confused and so often conflicting records of that time, or of the incomparable skill with which he has brought them into a clear continuous narrative. To glean after Macaulay is indeed a barren task. So far, then, from affecting to cavil at his work, I must acknowledge that without his help this little book would have been still less. Yet I do think he has been hard upon Claverhouse. Perhaps the scheme of his history did not require, or even allow him, to examine the man's character and circumstances so closely as a biographer must examine them. It is still more important to remember that the letters discovered by Napier in the Queensberry Archives were not known to him. Had he seen them, I am persuaded that he would have found reason to think less harshly of their writer.

[8]"The south-west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that come from the north; and from a word 'whiggam,' used in driving their horses, all that drove were called the 'whiggamores,' and shorter, the 'whiggs.' Now in that year, after the news came down of Duke Hamilton's defeat, the ministers animated the people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up, marching on the head of their parishes, with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and headed them, they being about 6,000. This was called the Whiggamores' Inroad: and even after that all that opposed the Court came in contempt to be called Whiggs: and from Scotland the word was brought into England, where it is now one of our unhappy terms of distinction."—Burnet, i. 58. See also Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," ch. xii. Mr. Green, however, thought the wordwhigmight be the same as ourwhey, implying a taunt against the "sour-milk faces" of the fanatical Ayrshiremen.—"History of the English People," iii. 258.

[9]Sharpe's notes to Kirkton's "History of the Church of Scotland," pp. 48-9. See also Wishart's "Memoirs of Montrose."

[10]"The Lauderdale Papers." The most important passages in Sharp's letters will be found in Burton's history, vii. pp. 129-146.

[11]"Memoirs of Captain John Creichton," pp. 57-9.

[12]The torture of the thumbkin is said to have been introduced into Scotland by Lord Perth, who had seen it practised in Russia. But, according to Fountainhall, something very like it had been previously known under the homely name of "Pilliwincks," or "Pilniewinks."

[13]"Duke Lauderdale's party depended so much on this that they began to divide, in their hopes, the confiscated estates among them, so that on Valentine's Day, instead of drawing mistresses they drew estates."—Burnet, ii. 26.

[14]"When the Highlanders went back one would have thought they had been at the sacking of some besieged town, by their baggage and luggage. They were loaded with spoil. They carried away a great many horses and no small quantity of goods out of merchants' shops, whole webs of linen and woollen cloth, some silver plate bearing the names and arms of gentlemen. You would have seen them with loads of bedclothes, carpets, men and women's wearing clothes, pots, pans, gridirons, shoes and other furniture whereof they had pillaged the country."—Wodrow, ii. 413.

Claverhouse was not left long in idleness. In 1664, the year of the first Indulgence, it had been determined to withdraw the regular troops altogether from Scotland, leaving their place to be supplied by the local militia, which was now practically raised to the condition of a standing army and, contrary to immemorial law, placed under the immediate authority of the Crown. But the bishops and their clergy had demurred. They had little fancy for being left with no other protection than a half-disciplined rabble, who, ready as they might be to act against their troublesome countrymen, had no more respect for a lawn sleeve than for a homespun jerkin. A few troops of regular cavalry were therefore retained, and one regiment of Foot Guards. The former were commanded by Athole, the latter by Linlithgow. Towards the end of 1677 a fresh troop of cavalry was raised, and the command given to the young Marquis of Montrose, grandson to him who had died on the scaffold and kinsman to Claverhouse.

Claverhouse applied to him for employment, and it appears from Montrose's answer that the application had been warmly backed by the Duke of York. "You cannot imagine," runs the letter, "how overjoyed Ishould 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." The writer goes on to say that he himself was expecting instant promotion, and to promise his kinsman a share in whatever fortune might befall him: none but gentlemen, he adds, are to ride in his troop. The offer was accepted, and the promotion was not long delayed.

The Indulgence had failed, as by some at least of those who had countenanced it it had been expected to fail. The Opposition, led at Edinburgh by Hamilton and Argyle, and backed in London by Monmouth and Shaftesbury, which had for some time past been working openly against Lauderdale, had also for the moment failed. The Commissioner's hands were strong. With the King and the Duke of York at his back, and, in Edinburgh, Sharp, Burnet, and the majority of the Episcopalian clergy, together with all the needy nobles who loved best to fish in troubled waters, Lauderdale could afford, as he thought then, to laugh at all opposition. To assume that his design had been from the first to goad the West into open rebellion affords, indeed, a simple explanation of a policy that in its persistent unwisdom and brutality seems strangely irrational and monstrous, even for such times and men. But it is rash to take any policy as certain in those dark and crooked councils, unless it be—as probably inLauderdale's case it was, and as it assuredly was in the case of most of his creatures—the policy of personal aggrandisement. At any rate, after the failure of the Indulgence had been made clear even to those hopeful spirits who still, with Leighton, had believed it possible to efface years of wrong by a few grudging concessions, the cruel game was renewed with fresh vigour. The Highlanders, indeed, had gone, but their place was now to be filled by a more dangerous because a more disciplined foe. Orders were given to raise three new troops of cavalry for special service in Scotland. The Earls of Home and Airlie were chosen by Lauderdale to command two of these troops: the third was, at the King's express desire, given to Claverhouse. At the same time, Athole, who was now in opposition with Hamilton and Argyle, was superseded by Montrose, and Linlithgow named commander-in-chief of all the royal forces in Scotland.

Claverhouse now for the first time steps in his own person on the stage of Scottish history. Eleven years later, in 1689, he passes off it for ever. It is with the tale of that brief time, so crowded with action, so variously recorded, that we shall be from this point concerned.

He was now in his thirty-fifth year. Confused and conflicting as the witnesses of his life and character may be, of the man himself as he looked to the eyes of his contemporaries there is the clearest testimony. Over the mantelpiece of Scott's study in Castle Street hung the only picture in the room—a portrait of Claverhouse. An original portrait Lockhart calls it, but which of the five portraits engraved in Napier's volumes it may have been, if any of them, I cannot tell. All theseengravings, with a unanimity not common in the portraiture of the time, show the same face: a face of delicate, almost feminine beauty, framed in the long full love-locks of the period.[15]The eyes are large and dark, the figure small but well made, and the general expression of the countenance one of almost boyish smoothness and simplicity. His manners were gentle and courteous, though reserved: his habit of life was, as has been already said, singularly decorous: he was scrupulous in the observance of all religious ordinances. After his death an old Presbyterian lady, who had lodged below him in Edinburgh, told Lochiel's biographer how astonished she had been to find one of his profession so regular in his devotions. In truth, one of the most curious, and at the same time one of the most indisputable, points in the life of this singular man is the contrast between those public actions which have had so large a share in moulding the popular impression, and his private character and conduct. And not less curious is the contrast between the reality of his personal appearance and the counterfeit presentment likely to be fostered by a too liberal adherence to that impression. It would be difficult to imagine a more complete surprise than awaits those who turn for the first time from the stern, brutal, and profane soldier of the historian's page to the high-bred and graceful gentleman of the painter's canvas.

Claverhouse seems to have received his commission in the autumn of 1678. The earliest of his lettersextant is dated from Moffat, a small town in the north of Dumfriesshire, on December 28th. It is addressed to Lord Linlithgow, and contains this significant passage: "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 order to apprehend anybody for past misdemeanours."[16]And this scrupulous observance of his orders, at a time when a little excess of zeal was unlikely to be regarded as a very serious blunder, is yet more strikingly illustrated in his next letter, written a week later from Dumfries. In that town, at the southern end of the bridge over the Nith, the charity of some devout Covenanting ladies had lately set up a large meeting-house. The clergy, as wild against the Covenanters as Lauderdale himself, were very importunate with Claverhouse to demolish this hotbed of disaffection; but he, though he confessed privately to his chief his annoyance at seeing a conventicle held with impunity "at our nose," answered all importunities with a calm reference to his orders. The southern end of the bridge was in Galloway, and in Galloway his commission did not run. The authority of the Deputy-Sheriff of the shire was therefore calledinto play, and with his countenance the offending building was quickly razed to the ground. In his report of this business Claverhouse writes:—"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, I never inquired further in the laws than the orders of my superior officers." This will not be the only occasion on which Claverhouse will be found keeping strictly within the lines of his commission, instead of, as he has been so frequently charged with doing, wantonly and savagely exceeding it.

This Deputy-Sheriff (or Steward, as the phrase then ran) needs a word to himself, both on his own account, as representing a certain phase of character unfortunately too common to the time, and as the real author of many of the cruel deeds of which Claverhouse so long has borne the blame. Sir Robert Grierson of Lag was regarded in his own district with an energy of hatred to which even the terror inspired by Claverhouse gave place, and which has survived to a time within the memory of men still living. In the early years of this century the most monstrous traditions of his cruelty were still current, and are not yet wholly extinct. In a vaulted chamber of the house in which he lived, on the English road some three miles south of Dumfries, is still shown an iron hook from which he issaid to have hung his Covenanting prisoners; and a hill in the neighbourhood is still pointed out as that down which he used, for his amusement, to send the poor wretches rolling in a barrel filled with knife-blades and iron spikes,—an ingenious form of torture, commonly supposed to have been invented by the Carthaginians two thousand years ago for the particular benefit of a Roman Consul. The dark and mysterious legend of Sir Robert Redgauntlet, with which Wandering Willie beguiled the way to Brokenburn-foot, was a popular tradition of Sir Robert Grierson, or Lag (as, in the familiar style of the day he was more commonly called) in Scott's own lifetime: the fatal horseshoe, the birth-mark of all the Redgauntlet line, was believed to be conspicuous on the foreheads of every true Grierson in moments of anger; and it was a grandson of old Lag himself who sat to Scott for the portrait of the elder Redgauntlet, the rugged and dangerous Herries of Birrenswark. Within the last fifty years it was a custom of Halloween in many of the houses in Dumfriesshire and Galloway to celebrate by a rude theatrical performance the evil memory of the Laird of Lag.[17]

Born of a family which had held lands in Dumfriesshire since the fifteenth century, and had figured at various times on the troubled stage of Scottish history, Lag was undoubtedly a man of some parts and capacity for public affairs, but coarse, cruel and brutal beyond even the license of those times. The Covenanting historians charge him with vices such as even they shrank from attributing to Claverhouse; and, careful as it is always necessary to be in taking the evidence of suchwitnesses, it is abundantly clear that even these ingenious romancists would have been hard put to it to stain the memory of Lag. Later historians have been sometimes less careful in distinguishing between the two men. At least in one striking instance, the misdeeds of this ruffian have been circumstantially charged to the account of his more famous and important colleague.

It will be remembered that in the picture Macaulay has drawn of Claverhouse the soldiers under his command, and by implication Claverhouse himself, figure as relieving their sterner duties by a curious form of relaxation. They would call each other, he says, by the names of devils and damned souls, mocking in their revels the torments of hell. The authority for this surprising statement is Robert Wodrow, who was not born when Claverhouse returned to Scotland, and whose history of the Scottish Church was not published till more than thirty years after the battle of Killiecrankie.[18]Wodrow's work is very far from being the contemptible thing some apologists for Claverhouse would have us believe; but he is not a witness whose unsupported testimony it is always safe to take for gospel-truth. He wrote at a time when the naturally romantic imagination of the Scottish peasantry, stimulated by the memories of old men who had known the evil times, had largely embellished the facts he set himself to chronicle; and following the fashion of his day (indeed, as one may say, the fashion of many historians who cannot plead Wodrow's excuse), he was not alwayscareful to separate the romance from the reality, even where the latter might have better served his turn. But considering all the circumstances—the circumstances of the time, of his subject, and of his own prepossessions, he is a writer whom it is impossible to disregard; and, indeed, compared with the other Covenanting chroniclers he stands apart as the most sober and impartial of historians. Where he got the story that has been so ingeniously fashioned into an indictment against Claverhouse is not clear. The passage runs as follows:—"Dreadful were the acts of wickedness done by the soldiers at this time, and Lag was as deep as any. They used to take to themselves, in their cabals, the names of devils and persons they supposed to be in hell, and with whips to lash one another, as a jest upon hell. But I shall draw a veil over many of their dreadful impieties I meet with in papers written at this time." This is not exactly the sort of evidence any judge but a hanging judge would allow, though it would serve well enough the turn of a prosecutor. It is at any rate evidence which no one, with any experience of the sort of gossip the annalists of the Covenant were content to call history, would care to take seriously. But whatever its value may really be, so far as it goes it is evidence not against Claverhouse but against Lag. It is clear from Wodrow that the story refers not to the royal soldiers but to the local militia; and a writer a little later than Wodrow makes it still more clear that the men supposed thus to have disported themselves in their cups were those commanded by Lag. John Howie, an Ayrshire peasant and a Cameronian of the strictest sect, who was notborn till fourteen years after Wodrow had published his history, has given Lag a particular place in the Index Expurgatorius of his "Heroes for the Faith." There we may read how this "prime hero for the promoting of Satan's kingdom" would, "with the rest of his boon companions and persecutors, feign themselves devils, and those whom they supposed in hell, and then whip one another, as a jest upon that place of torment." Claverhouse, as has been already shown, was himself singularly averse to all rioting and drunkenness, as well as to profane amusements of every kind; and, as he was indisputably one of the sternest disciplinarians who ever took or gave orders, it is unlikely that he would have countenanced any such unseemly revels in the men under his command, with whom, moreover, he was in these years thrown into unusually close personal contact. But, in truth, the story, so far as he is concerned, is too foolish to need any solemn refutation. It has been only examined at this length as furnishing a signal instance of the recklessness with which the misdeeds of others have been fathered on him.[19]

The work Claverhouse now found to do must have been singularly distasteful to one who had seen war on a great scale under such captains as William and Condé. It was at once undignified and dangerous; and though danger was all to his taste, it was one thing to risk one's life in open battle with enemies worthy of a soldier's steel, and another and very different thing to run the chance of a stray bullet from behind a haystack or through a cottage window. The line ofcountry he had to patrol (for his work was really little more than that) was all too large for the forces at his disposal. The enemies with whom he had mostly to deal were either old men or women, for the Covenanters were well supplied with intelligence, and generally had ample warning of his movements, quick and indefatigable as they were. "If your lordship give me any new orders, I will beg they may be kept as secret as possible, and sent for me so suddenly as the information some of the favourers of the fanatics are to send may be prevented."[20]And again:

"I obeyed the orders about seizing persons in Galloway that very night I received it, as far as it was possible; that is to say, all that was within forty miles, which is the most can be ridden in one night; and of six made search for, I found only two, which are John Livingston, bailie of Kirkcudbright, and John Black, treasurer there. 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. And the truth is, they had time enough to be advertised, for the order was dated the 15th, and came not to my hands till the 20th. I laid the fellow in the guard that brought it, so soon as I considered the date, where he has lain ever since, and had it not been for respect to Mr. Maitland [Lauderdale's nephew] who recommended him to me I would have put him out of the troop with infamy."[21]

The letters written during the first months of his commission are full of warnings of this sort. And he had other complaints to make, which must have been still more against the grain. He was so inadequately supplied with money by the Council that he found it a hard matter to pay his men, and harder still to pay the country people for the necessary provisions and forage; for, so far from quartering his men at large upon the peasantry, he seems, at any rate in those first months, to have been scrupulous to pay at the current rates for all he required to a degree that matches rather with the niceties of modern warfare than the customs of those rough times.

In March Claverhouse was appointed Deputy-Sheriff of Dumfriesshire by a particular warrant from Whitehall, and Andrew Bruce of Earlshall, one of his lieutenants, was nominated with him. This step gave great offence to Queensberry, who, as Sheriff of the shires of Dumfries and Annandale, by law held all such patronage in his own hand, and marks the beginning of the petty jealousy which from this time forward he seems to have shown to Claverhouse whenever he dared, and which rose afterwards, as we shall see, to a serious height. But Queensberry was no match for Lauderdale; and Claverhouse was duly settled in his new office, which, while strengthening his hands and enabling him to dispense with many tedious formalities, at the same time considerably increased his labours.

And so winter passed into spring, and still Claverhouse found no work more worthy of him than patrolling the country, arranging for his men's quarters, examining suspected persons, and endeavouring to persuadethe Government to leave him not entirely penniless. More than once he sent word to Edinburgh that he believed something serious was afoot. "I find," he writes to Linlithgow on April 21st, "Mr. Welsh is accustoming both ends of the country to face the king's forces, and certainly intends to break out into open rebellion." This Welsh is a famous figure in Covenanting history. Grandson to a man whose name was long held in affectionate memory by his party as that of the "incomparable John Welsh of Ayr," and great-grandson to no less a hero than John Knox himself, he was on his own account a memorable man. He had inaugurated the first conventicle, and had ever since been zealous in promoting them and officiating at them among the wild hills and moorlands of the western shires, till his name had become a byword among the soldiers for his courage in braving and his skill in evading them. But though one of the most resolute and indefatigable of the ministers of the Covenant, he was also one of the most moderate and sensible. Had no one among them been more eager than he to carry the war into the enemy's country there had been no Bothwell Bridge. And, indeed, we shall find him seriously taken to task by the more extreme of the party as a backslider from the good cause for his endeavour to avert that disastrous affair.

Yet Claverhouse was right. Something very serious was soon to be afoot. During the last few weeks the Covenanters had been notoriously growing bolder. They did not always now, as hitherto, content themselves with evading the soldiers: they became in their turn the aggressors. More than once an outlyingpost of Claverhouse's men had been fired upon; and on one occasion a couple of the dragoons had been savagely murdered in cold blood. Even Wodrow found himself forced to own that about this time "matters were running to sad heights among the armed followers of some of the field meetings." But the trouble did not arise through John Welsh. It came through a servant of the Crown who had been a sorer plague to his countrymen than a myriad of disaffected ministers.

On May 5th, Lord Ross[22]from Lanark, and on the 6th Claverhouse from Dumfries, sent in their despatches to the commander-in-chief at Edinburgh as usual. It is clear that neither of them had at that time heard any rumour of an event which had happened a few days previously at no very great distance from their quarters. On May 2nd the Primate of Scotland had been dragged from his carriage as he was driving across an open heath three miles out of Saint Andrews, and murdered in open day before the eyes of his daughter.

James Sharp, Archbishop of Saint Andrews, was at that time probably the best-hated man in Scotland. Like all renegades he was in no favour even with his own party, though Lauderdale found after trial that he could not dispense with his support. Even the moderate Presbyterians, who regarded the uncompromising Covenanters as the real cause of their country's troubles, looked askance upon Sharp, as the man whom they had chosen out of their number to savethem and who had preferred to save himself. By the Covenanters themselves he was assailed with every form of obloquy as the Judas who had sold his God and his country for thirty pieces of silver, and who had hounded on the servants of the King to spill the blood of the saints. Yet his murder was but an accident. Eleven years before an attempt had, indeed, been made upon his life by one Mitchell, a fanatical and apparently half-witted preacher, who was after a long delay put to the torture and finally executed on a confession which he had been induced to make after a promise from the Privy Council that his life should be spared. It is said that Lauderdale would have spared him, but Sharp was so vehement for his death that the Duke dared not refuse.

The chief promoters of the Archbishop's murder were Hackston of Rathillet, Russell of Kettle, and John Balfour of Burley, or, more correctly, of Kinloch. These three men were typical of the class who at this time began to come to the front among the Covenanters, and by their incapacity, folly, and brutality discredited and did their best to ruin a cause whose original justice had been already too much obscured by such parasites. It is impossible to believe that they, or such as they, were inspired by any strong religious feelings. Hackston and Balfour were men of some fortune, who had been free-livers in their youth, and were now professing to expiate those errors by a gloomy and ferocious asceticism. Both had a grudge against Sharp. Balfour had been accused of malversation in the management of some property for which he was the Archbishop's factor, and Hackston, hisbrother-in-law, had been arrested as his bail and forced to make the money good. Russell, who has left a curiously minute and cold-blooded narrative of this murder,[23]was a man of headstrong and fiery temper. They had all those dangerous gifts of eloquence which, coarse and uncouth as it sounds to our ears, was, when liberally garnished with texts of Scripture, precisely such as to inflame the heated tempers of an illiterate peasantry to madness. It is important to distinguish men of this stamp from the genuine sufferers for conscience' sake. The latter men were, indeed, often wrought up by their crafty leaders to a pitch of blind and brutal fury which has done much to lessen the sympathy that is justly theirs. But they were at the bottom simple, sincere, and pious; and they can at least plead the excuse of a long and relentless persecution for acts which the others inspired and directed for motives which it would be difficult, perhaps, to correctly analyse, but assuredly were not founded on an unmixed love either for their country or their faith. Stripped of the veil of religious enthusiasm which they knew so well how to assume, men of the stamp of Sharp's murderers were in truth no other than those brawling and selfish demagogues whom times of stir and revolution always have brought and always will bring to the front. There need, in these days, be no difficulty in understanding the characters of men who dress Murder in the cloak of Religion and call her Liberty.

Every child knows the story of the tragedy on MagusMoor. It will be enough here to remind my readers, once more, that it was no preconcerted plan, but a pure accident—or, as the murderers themselves called it, a gift from God. The men I have named, with a few others, were really after one Carmichael, who had made himself particularly odious by his activity in collecting the fines levied on the disaffected. But Carmichael, who was out hunting on the hills, had got wind of their design and made his way home by another route. As the party were about to separate in sullen disappointment, a messenger came to tell them that the Archbishop's coach was in sight on the road to Saint Andrews. The opportunity was too good to be lost. Hackston was asked to take the command, but declined, alleging his cause of quarrel with Sharp, which would, he declared, "mar the glory of the action, for it would be imputed to his particular revenge." But, he added, he would not leave them, nor "hinder them from what God had called them to." Upon this, Balfour said, "Gentlemen, follow me;" and the whole party, some nine or ten in number, rode off after the carriage, which could be seen in the distance labouring heavily over the rugged track that traversed the lonely expanse of heath. How the butcher's work was done: how Sharp crawled on his knees to Hackston, saying, "You are a gentleman—you will protect me," and how Hackston answered, "Sir, I shall never lay a hand on you": how Balfour and the rest then drew their swords and finished what their pistols had begun; and how the daughter was herself wounded in her efforts to cover the body of her father—these things are familiar to all.

From May 6th to 29th no letters from Claverhouse have survived; but on the latter date he sent a short despatch from Falkirk, announcing his intention of joining his forces with Lord Ross to scatter a conventicle of eighteen parishes which, he had just received news, were about (on the following Sunday) to meet at Kilbryde Moor, four miles from Glasgow. The following Sunday was June 1st, on which day Claverhouse was indeed engaged with a conventicle; but in a fashion very different from any he had anticipated.

FOOTNOTES:[15]It is said that he used to tend these curls with very particular care, attaching small leaden weights to them at night to keep them in place,—a custom which, I am informed, has in these days been revived by some dandies of the other sex.[16]This very much bears out Burnet's complaint against the Episcopal clergy in Scotland, which has been so strenuously denied by Creichton. "The clergy used to speak of that time as the poets do of the golden age. They never interceded for any compassion to their people; nor did they take care to live more regularly, or to labour more carefully. They looked on the soldiery as their patrons; they were ever in their company, complying with them in their excesses; and, if they were not much wronged, they rather led them into them than checked them for them."—"History of My Own Time," i. 334.[17]"The Laird of Lag," by Lieut.-Col. Fergusson, pp. 7-11.[18]His "History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland" was first published in 1721.[19]This confusion was first pointed out by Aytoun in an appendix to the second edition of his "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers."[20]Claverhouse to Linlithgow, December 28th, 1678. These letters are all quoted from Napier's book. I have thought it better to give the date of the letter than the reference to the page.[21]Claverhouse to Linlithgow, February 24th, 1679.[22]George, eleventh Lord Ross, was joined with Claverhouse in the command of the western shires. He had married Lady Grizel Cochrane, daughter of the first Earl of Dundonald, and aunt of the future Lady Dundee.[23]Printed in Sharpe's edition of Kirkton's "History of the Church of Scotland." It differs in some, but not very important, points from the account printed in the same volume from Wodrow's manuscripts.

[15]It is said that he used to tend these curls with very particular care, attaching small leaden weights to them at night to keep them in place,—a custom which, I am informed, has in these days been revived by some dandies of the other sex.

[16]This very much bears out Burnet's complaint against the Episcopal clergy in Scotland, which has been so strenuously denied by Creichton. "The clergy used to speak of that time as the poets do of the golden age. They never interceded for any compassion to their people; nor did they take care to live more regularly, or to labour more carefully. They looked on the soldiery as their patrons; they were ever in their company, complying with them in their excesses; and, if they were not much wronged, they rather led them into them than checked them for them."—"History of My Own Time," i. 334.

[17]"The Laird of Lag," by Lieut.-Col. Fergusson, pp. 7-11.

[18]His "History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland" was first published in 1721.

[19]This confusion was first pointed out by Aytoun in an appendix to the second edition of his "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers."

[20]Claverhouse to Linlithgow, December 28th, 1678. These letters are all quoted from Napier's book. I have thought it better to give the date of the letter than the reference to the page.

[21]Claverhouse to Linlithgow, February 24th, 1679.

[22]George, eleventh Lord Ross, was joined with Claverhouse in the command of the western shires. He had married Lady Grizel Cochrane, daughter of the first Earl of Dundonald, and aunt of the future Lady Dundee.

[23]Printed in Sharpe's edition of Kirkton's "History of the Church of Scotland." It differs in some, but not very important, points from the account printed in the same volume from Wodrow's manuscripts.

The die was now fairly cast. In a general rising lay the only hope of safety for Sharp's murderers. Desperate themselves, they determined to carry others with them along the same path, and by some signal show of defiance commit the party to immediate and irretrievable action. The occasion for this was easily found. May 29th, the King's birthday, had been, as already mentioned, appointed as a general day of rejoicing for his restoration. This had from the first given offence as well to those members of the Presbyterian Church who saw in his Majesty's return no particular cause for joy, as to those more ascetic spirits who objected on principle to all holidays. May 29th was therefore hailed as the day divinely marked, as it were, for the purpose on hand, a crowning challenge to the King's authority.

The business was put in charge of Robert Hamilton, a man of good birth and education, but violent and rash, without any capacity for command and, if some of his own side may be trusted, of no very certain courage. With him went Thomas Douglas, one of the fire-breathing ministers, Balfour and Russell and some seventy or eighty armed men. Glasgow had been originally chosen for the scene of operations; but a day ortwo previously a detachment of Claverhouse's troopers had marched into that city from Falkirk, and the little town of Rutherglen, about two miles to the west of Glasgow, was chosen instead.

On the afternoon of the 29th Hamilton and his party made their appearance in Rutherglen. They first extinguished the bonfire that was blazing in the King's honour; and, having then lit one on their own account, proceeded solemnly to burn all the Acts of Parliament and Royal Proclamations that had been issued in Scotland since Charles's return. A paper was next read, containing a vigorous protest against all interferences of the English Government with the Presbyterian religion, and especially those subsequent to the Restoration. This paper, which was styled the Declaration and Testimony of some of the true Presbyterian party in Scotland, was then nailed to the market-cross of the little town, and the party withdrew. All this, be it remembered, was done within only two miles of the royal forces, some of whom, it is said, were actually spectators of the whole affair at scarce musket-shot's distance. It was fortunate for the party that Claverhouse was not in Glasgow at the time.

He was then in Falkirk, from which place he had, as we have seen, written to Linlithgow on the very day of the Rutherglen business of a rumour he had heard of some particular gathering appointed for the following Sunday, June 1st. Though he did not believe it, he thought it well to join forces with Ross in case there might be need for action. This was done at Glasgow on Saturday; and at once Claverhouse set off for Rutherglen to inquire into the affair of the 29th.As soon as he had got the names of the ringleaders he sent patrols out to scour the neighbourhood for them. A few prisoners were picked up, and among them one King, a noted orator of the conventicles, formerly chaplain to Lord Cardross, whose service he had left, it is said, on account of a little misadventure with one of the maid-servants. The troops halted for the night at Strathavon, and early next morning set off with their prisoners for Glasgow. On the way Claverhouse determined on "a little tour, to see if we could fall upon a conventicle," which, he ingenuously adds, "we did, little to our advantage."

During his search for the Rutherglen men he had heard more of the plans for Sunday. It was clear something was in the air, and report named Loudon Hill as the place of business, a steep and rocky eminence marking the spot where the shires of Ayr, Lanark, and Renfrew meet. To Loudon Hill accordingly Claverhouse turned his march, and soon found that rumour had for once not exaggerated.

Two miles to the east of the hill lies the little hamlet and farm of Drumclog, even now but sparsely covered with coarse meadow-grass, and then no more than a barren stretch of swampy moorland. South and north the ground sloped gently down towards a marshy bottom through which ran a stream, or dyke, fringed with stunted alder-bushes. On the foot of the southern slope, across the dyke, the Covenanters were drawn up; and the practised eye of Claverhouse saw at a glance that they had gathered there not to pray but to fight. "When we came in sight of them," he wrote to Linlithgow, "we found them drawn up in battle upon a mostadvantageous 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."[24]They were ranged in three lines: those who had firearms being placed nearest to the dyke, behind them a body of pikemen, and in the rear the rest, armed with scythes set on poles, pitchforks, goads and other such rustic weapons. On either flank was a small body of mounted men. Hamilton was in command: Burley had charge of the horse; and among others present that day was William Cleland, then but sixteen years old, and destined ten years later to win a nobler title to fame by a glorious death at the head of his Cameronians in the memorable defence of Dunkeld.

As usual, it is impossible to estimate with any exactness the strength of either side. According to one of their own party, who was present, the Covenanters did not exceed two hundred and fifty fighting men, of whom fifty were mounted and the same proportion armed with guns. These numbers have been accepted, of course, by Wodrow, and also by Dr. Burton. But within a week this handful had, on Hamilton's own testimony, grown to six thousand horse and foot; and though, no doubt, the success at Drumclog would have materially swelled the Covenanting ranks, if they were only two hundred and fifty on that day, the most liberal calculation can hardly accept the numbers said to have been gathered on Glasgow Moor six days later. Probably, if we increase the former total and diminish the latter, weshall get nearer the mark; but it is impossible to do more than conjecture. Sharpe, in the fragment printed by Napier, rates Hamilton's force at six hundred. Claverhouse's own estimate was "four battalions of foot, and all well armed with fusils and pitchforks, and three squadrons of horse." His experience was more likely to serve him in such matters than the untrained calculations of men who were, moreover, naturally concerned to magnify the defeat of the King's troops as much as possible; while it is clear from the tone of his own despatch, which is singularly literal and straightforward, that he had no wish, and did not even conceive it necessary, to excuse his disaster. But here again the estimate helps us little, owing to the vague use of the terms battalion and squadron. For the same reason we can but guess at the strength of the royal force. In the writings of the time Claverhouse's command is indiscriminately styled a regiment and a troop. It is certain that he was the responsible officer, so that, whatever its numerical strength, he stood to the body of men he commanded in the relation that a colonel stands to his regiment. But it is probable that his regiment, with those commanded by Home and Airlie, were practically considered as the three troops of the Royal Scottish Life Guards of whom the young Marquis of Montrose was colonel. From a royal warrant of 1672, it appears that a troop of dragoons was rated at eighty men, exclusive of officers, and that a regiment was to consist of twelve troops. But it is hardly possible that this strength was ever reached. From a passage in the third chapter of Macaulay's history it does not seem as if the fullcomplement of a regiment of cavalry can have much exceeded four hundred men; but, I repeat, the indiscriminate use of the terms troop and regiment, battalion and squadron, makes all calculations theoretical and vague.[25]Scott puts the King's forces at Drumclog at two hundred and fifty men; and, as a detachment had been left behind in garrison with Ross's men at Glasgow, this is probably not over the mark, if Macaulay's estimate of a regiment be correct. He also, in the report Lord Evandale makes to his chief, rates the Covenanters at near a thousand fighting men, which would probably tally with Claverhouse's estimate. But, whatever the strength of either side may have been, it is tolerably certain that the advantage that way was on the side of the Covenanters.

The description of the fight in "Old Mortality" is an admirable specimen of the style in which Scott's genius could work the scantiest materials to his will. All contemporary accounts of the fray are singularly meagre and confused; and, indeed, the art of describing a battle was then very much in its infancy. It is difficult, from Claverhouse's own despatch, to get more than a general idea of the affair, which was probably after the first few minutes but an indiscriminatemêlée. No doubt it was his consciousness of some lack of clearness that inspired his apologetic postscript: "My Lord, I am so wearied and so sleepy that I have written this very confusedly." The flag of truce, which in the novel Claverhouse sends down under charge of his nephew Cornet Graham to parley with the Covenanters, was ofScott's own making, though it seems that a couple of troopers were despatched in advance to survey the ground. Nor does Claverhouse mention any kinsman of his, or any one of his name, as having fallen that day: the only two officers he specifies are Captain Blyth and Cornet Crafford, or Crawford, both of whom were killed by Hamilton's first fire. But though Claverhouse mentions no one of his own name, others do. By more than one contemporary writer one Robert Graham is included among the slain. It is said that while at breakfast that morning in Strathavon he had refused his dog meat, promising it a full meal off the Whigs' bodies before night; "but instead of that," runs the tale, "his dog was seen eating his own thrapple (for he was killed) by several." Another version is, that the Covenanters, finding the name of Graham wrought in the neck of the shirt, savagely mangled the dead body, supposing it to be that of Claverhouse himself.[26]

But to come from tradition to fact. The affair began with a sharp skirmish of musketry on both sides. To every regiment of cavalry there were then joined a certain proportion of dragoons who seem to have held much the position of our mounted infantry, men skilled in the use of firearms and accustomed to fight as well on foot as in the saddle. A party of these advanced in open order down the hill to the brink of the dyke and opened a smart fire on the Covenanters, who answered with spirit, but both in their weapons and skill were naturally far inferior to the royal soldiers. Meanwhile, some troopers had been sent out to skirmish on either flank, and to try for a crossing. This they could not find; but, unable to manœuvre in the swampy ground, found instead that their saddles were emptying fast. Then Hamilton, seeing that his men were no match at long bowls for the dragoons, and marking the confusion among the cavalry, gave the word to advance. By crossings known only to themselves Burley led the horse over the dyke on one flank, while young Cleland followed with the bulk of the foot on the other. Claverhouse thereupon called in his skirmishers, and, advancing his main body down the hill, the engagement became general. But in that heavy ground the footmen had all the best of it. The scythes and pitchforks made sad work among the poor floundering horses. His own charger was so badly wounded that, in the rider's forcible language, "its guts hung out half an ell;" yet the brave beast carried him safely out of thepress.[27]The troopers began to fall back, and Burley, coming up on sound ground with his horse, flung himself on them so hotly that the retreat became something very like a rout. Claverhouse, to whose courage and energy that day his enemies bear grudging witness, did all that a brave captain could, but his men had now got completely out of hand. "I saved the standards" (one of which had been for a moment taken) "and made the best retreat the confusion of our people would suffer." So he wrote to Linlithgow, but he made no attempt to disguise his defeat. He owns to having lost eight or ten men among the cavalry, besides wounded; and the dragoons lost many more. Only five or six of the Covenanters seem to have fallen, among whom was one of Sharp's murderers. This does not speak very well for their opponents' fire; but then we have only the testimony of their own historians to go by. Claverhouse himself could say no more than that "they are not come easily off on the other side, for I saw several of them fall before we came to the shock."

Pell-mell went the rout over the hill and across the moorland to Strathavon, through which the Life Guardshad marched but a few hours before in all their bravery. As their captain passed by the place where his prisoner of the morning, John King, was now lustily chanting a psalm of triumph, the reverend gentleman called out to him, with audacity worthy of Gabriel Kettledrummle, "to stay the afternoon sermon." At Strathavon the townspeople drew out to bar their passage, but the fear of their pursuers lent the flying troopers fresh heart: "we took courage," writes Claverhouse, "and fell to them, made them run, leaving a dozen on the place." Through Strathavon they clattered, and never drew rein till they found themselves safe in Glasgow among their own comrades.

Fortunately the pursuit had slackened, or it might have gone ill with the garrison in Glasgow. Claverhouse's men had no doubt fine tales to tell of the fury of the Whig devils behind them; and had Hamilton been strong enough in cavalry to enter the town at the heels of the flying troopers it is not likely that he would have met with much opposition. The pursuit, however, did not follow far. Thanksgivings had to be made for the victory, and the prisoners to be looked to. All these, according to Wodrow, were let go after being disarmed; but Hamilton himself tells a very different tale. His orders had been strict that there should be no quarter that day; but on his return from the pursuit he found that his orders had been disobeyed. Five prisoners had been dismissed, and were already out of his reach: two others were waiting while their captors debated on their fate. Then Hamilton, furious that any of "Babel's brats" should be let go, slew one of these with his own hand, to stay any suchunreasonable spirit of mercy, "lest the Lord would not honour us to do much more for him."[28]

That night the Covenanting captains stayed at Lord Loudon's house, where, though the master had deemed it prudent to keep out of the way, they were hospitably entertained by her ladyship. The next morning they continued their march to Glasgow.

Claverhouse was ready for them. The town was too open a place to be properly barricaded, but he had caused some sort of breastwork to be raised near the market-cross as cover for his men, and patrols had been out since daybreak to watch Hamilton's movements. That worthy was reported to be dividing his men into two bodies, one of which presently marched on the town by the Gallowgate bridge, while the other took a much longer route by the High Church and College. It was thus possible to deal with the first before the latter could come to its assistance. This was very effectually done. About ten in the morning the attack was made by way of the bridge, led by Hamilton in person.[29]But the welcome which met them from the barricades was too warm for the Covenanters. They broke and fled at the first fire, Claverhouse and Ross at the head of their men chasingthem out of the town. Meanwhile, their comrades, descending the hill on the other side, saw what was going on, and, having no mind for a similar welcome, turned about and made off by the way they had come. The two parties joined and halted for a while at the place they had occupied on the previous night; but when they heard Claverhouse's trumpets sounding again to horse they fell back to Hamilton Park, where it was not thought prudent to follow them.

Back to Index Next