I propose now to examine, with more care than there has yet been
occasion for, those charges of wanton and illegal cruelty which have for
close upon two centuries formed the basis of the popular--I had almost
written the historical--conception of the character of Claverhouse. I
have used the words "illegal cruelty" because Claverhouse is not only
commonly believed to have far surpassed all his contemporaries in his
treatment of the Scottish Covenanters, but to have even gone beyond the
sanction of a law little disposed to be illiberal in such matters. Some
reason has, I trust, been already shown for at least reconsidering the
popular verdict. But as we are now approaching that period of his life
when, for a time all too short for his own reputation, Claverhouse at
last found free play for those eminent abilities which none have denied
him, it will be well, before passing into this larger field, to be
finally rid of a most tiresome and distasteful duty. The controversial
element is, I fear, inseparable from this part of the subject, but I
shall endeavour to do with as little of it as possible.
Although the significant title of "the Killing Time" seems to have been
occasionally used in Scotland during the subsequent century to cover the
whole period from Lauderdale's administration to the Revolution, yet the
phrase was originally and more properly applied to the years of James's
reign alone. The most notorious of the acts attributed to Claverhouse
were, as a fact, committed within that time; but it will be more
convenient not to adhere too rigidly to chronological sequence, and to
take the charges rather in order of their notoriety and of the
importance of those who have assumed them to be true. Following this
order, the two first on the list will naturally be the death, by
Claverhouse's own hand, of John Brown, and the deaths, by drowning on
the sands of Solway Firth, of the two women, Margaret Maclachlan and
Margaret Wilson--popularly known as the Wigtown Martyrs.
An attempt has been made to prove that this last affair is a pure
romance of Covenanting tradition. It has never been disputed that the
women were tried for high treason (that is to say, for refusing to
abjure the Covenant and to attend Episcopal worship) and condemned to
death; but it has been denied that the sentence was ever carried into
effect, on the strength of a reprieve granted by the Council at
Edinburgh before the day of execution. That a reprieve, or rather a
remand, was granted is certain, as the pages of the Council register
remain to this day to testify. But it is not so certain that the
decision of the Council at Edinburgh ever reached the magistrates at
Wigtown; and that, if it did reach them, they at least paid no attention
to it, remained for upwards of a century and a half the fixed opinion
of all writers and readers of history. The women were sentenced on April
18th, 1685: the remand is dated April 30th, but the period for which it
was to run has been left blank, pending the result of a recommendation
for full pardon with which it was accompanied: the sentence was executed
on May 11th--in Wodrow's words, "a black and very remarkable day for
blood in several places."
It will be sufficient to indicate where the arguments employed to
discredit this affair may be found.[50] They do not practically amount
to more than this--that as a reprieve was certainly granted in the
Council Chamber at Edinburgh, the execution could not possibly have
taken place on the sands of the Solway. The case is indeed one which
those who will accept nothing that cannot be proved with mathematical
certainty will always find reasons for doubting; but at least they must
have read the history of those times to little purpose if they can
accept such an argument as conclusive. For the rest, it will be enough
to say that the story first found its way into print in 1687, and that
it was more circumstantially repeated in 1711, when the records of the
Kirk Session of the parish of Penninghame were published by direction of
the General Assembly. At that time Thomas Wilson, a brother of the
younger sufferer, was still alive, with many others to whom the
Killing-Time was something very much more than a tradition. In 1714
(possibly to a later date, but certainly in that year) a stone in
Penninghame churchyard still marked the grave of Margaret Wilson, and
told the story of her death.[51] The ruins of the church may still be
seen, but the stone has long ago gone to join the dust that was once the
bones of Margaret; and an obelisk, raised within our own times on the
high ground outside the busy little seaport, now serves in statelier, if
less vital, fashion to recall to the traveller the memory of the Martyrs
of Wigtown. It is difficult to believe that a story so well and widely
recorded, and so firmly implanted in the hearts of so many generations
of men, can have absolutely no foundation in fact.[52] It is indeed
possible that time has embellished the bald brutality of the deed,
though the graphic narrative of Macaulay is practically that which
Wodrow took from the records of Penninghame. But that the two women
were drowned in the waters of the Blednock on May 11th, 1685, is surely
a fact as well authenticated as any in the martyrology of the Scottish
Covenant.
There is, as I have said, an excellent reason for not dragging my
readers through the obscure and barren mazes of this controversy; and
like all good reasons it is a very simple one. Claverhouse was present
neither at the trial nor the execution. He had, indeed, no more to do
with the deaths of these two women than Cameron, who had been five years
in his grave, or Wodrow, who was but five years old. It is true that one
of his family was present, but this was his brother, David Graham,
Deputy Sheriff of Galloway, and but lately made one of the Lords
Justices of Wigtownshire. Macaulay does not directly name Claverhouse as
concerned in this affair; but it is one out of five selected by the
historian as samples of the crimes by which "he, and men like him,
goaded the Western peasantry into madness"--a consummation which, it may
be observed in passing, had been effected twelve years before
Claverhouse had drawn sword in Scotland. It is not certain that Macaulay
believed the Graham who sat in judgment on these women to have been John
Graham of Claverhouse. But it is certain that the effect of his
narrative has been, in the minds of most English-speaking men, to add
this also to the long list of mythical crimes which have blackened the
memory of the hero of Killiecrankie.[53]
But over the other affair there rests no shadow of doubt. That
Claverhouse, and he alone, is responsible for the death of John Brown
stands on the very best authority, for it stands on his own. It is not,
indeed, certain that he shot the man with his own hand. This is Wodrow's
story, and as usual he gives no authority for it. "With some
difficulty," he writes,
"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 my 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."[54]
Patrick Walker, the pedlar, writing a very few years after Wodrow (whom
he notices only to abuse for his inaccuracy and backsliding), and
professing to have got his version from the wife, tells a different
tale. "Claverhouse," he says, "ordered six soldiers to shoot him. The
most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains
upon the ground." Of any refusal, or even disinclination, on the part of
the soldiers to obey their orders there is not a word. Then we have
Claverhouse's own report to Queensberry, written two days later from
Galston, a village between Kilmarnock and Ayr.
"On Friday last, amongst the hills betwixt Douglas and the
Ploughlands, we pursued two fellows a great way through the
mosses, and in 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
carabines 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 of 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 the 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 also gives
account of those who gave any assistance to his uncle; and
we have seized thereupon the goodman of the uppermost
Ploughlands, and another tenant about a mile below that is
fled upon it.... I have acquitted myself when I have told
your Grace the case. He has been but 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."[55]
It is singular that neither Wodrow nor Walker makes any mention of this
nephew, whose presence on that day, taken in connection with his share
in the affair at Newmills,[56] puts the uncle in rather a different
light. There happen also to be one or two affairs known about this John
Brown which are worth noting. For instance, his name is found on a list
of proscribed rebels and resetters of rebels, appended to a royal
proclamation of May 5th, 1684, which will naturally account for his
"having been a long time upon his hiding in the hills," as Wodrow
ingenuously confesses. In other words, this Brown was an outlaw and a
marked man. He was by profession a carrier--"the Christian carrier," his
friends called him, for the fervour and eloquence of his preaching,
which was remarkable even in a neighbourhood where the gift of tongues
was not uncommon. A carrier is an extremely useful channel of
communication; and, in fact, there can be really no doubt that Brown had
been for some time engaged in practices which the most iniquitous
Government in the world could hardly be blamed for thinking
inconvenient. It has been suggested that Claverhouse was at that time
especially on the watch to intercept all communication between Argyle
and Monmouth, and that Brown was employed in carrying intelligence
between the rebel camps. Macaulay refuses this suggestion. He points out
with perfect truth that both Argyle and Monmouth were at that time in
Holland. But when he goes on to say that there was no insurrection in
any part of our island, he goes rather too far. The western shires of
Scotland had been in a state of insurrection ever since the Pentland
rising, if there be any meaning in the word at all. And, though it is
true that on May 1st (the day of Brown's death) Argyle was in Holland,
it is no less true that on the second he had left Holland for Scotland;
that since April 21st the Privy Council had been well informed of his
designs; that measures had been taken for putting the whole kingdom in a
state of defence against him; and that arrests had been already made on
account of treasonable correspondence with him.[57] But the question is
not one of probabilities, and moreover against these probabilities it
may be very fairly urged that Claverhouse's own despatch proves that the
nephew's confession and the discovery of the underground armoury were
not made till after the uncle's death. Nor is there any word in this
despatch to show that Claverhouse had any previous knowledge of Brown or
was acting on particular information. The real question, and the only
question, is, was Claverhouse legally--not morally, that belongs to
another part of the case--was he legally justified in ordering the man
to be shot? To this there can be but one answer, so long as the phrase
"legal justification" bears the meaning it has hitherto borne for those
who use the English tongue: both by the spirit and the letter of his
commission he was justified in what he did. By the law of the Government
whose servant Claverhouse then was, the death of John Brown on that
Ayrshire moor was as lawful an act as the death on the scaffold of any
prisoner to-day found guilty by a jury of his countrymen. In October,
1684, the Covenanters had published a declaration, drawn up by Renwick,
of their intention to do unto all their enemies whom they could lay
hands on, civil no less than military, as their enemies had done and
should do unto them; and the deliberate murder of two troopers of the
Life Guards in the following month had shown (what, to be sure, can have
needed very little proof) that this was no idle threat.[58] An Act,
therefore, was hastily passed to the effect 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." With the severity, the folly, or the
injustice of such a law we are not for the moment concerned. The fact
remains that such was the law; and Claverhouse transgressed no jot of
it in ordering John Brown to death. It was no question of form of
religion: it was no question of previous misconduct. The man would not
take the oath; and he was accordingly shot in the presence of the
requisite number of witnesses by the order of a competent authority.
On the truth of the details given both by Wodrow and Walker it is
impossible to form any conclusion. Wodrow gives no authority for his
version. "I am well informed," he says, "I am credibly informed," and so
on; but the sources of his information he nowhere gives. Walker is more
communicative; he, as we have seen, professed to have learned his story
from Brown's wife; but no statement of Walker's can be accepted for
absolute truth, and his uncertainty about even the names of his
witnesses does not add the stamp of conviction to their testimony.[59]
Beyond the bare fact that the man was shot in the presence of
Claverhouse nothing is certain. On the rest of the story each must make
up his mind as seems best to him.
With the death of Peter Gillies and John Bryce Claverhouse is not
directly charged by Wodrow. Walker, however, quotes an epitaph said to
have been inscribed on the grave of these men, who, with three others,
were hanged, without trial, at Mauchline by
"Bloody Dumbarton, Douglas, and Dundee,
Moved by the devil and the Laird of Lee."
These lines must have been composed some years after the event, inasmuch
as the men were hanged on May 6th, 1685, and the patent of Claverhouse's
peerage bears the date November 12th, 1688. This proves, what indeed few
people can have doubted, that the damning testimony of "The Cloud of
Witnesses" wants at least the weight of contemporary evidence. An
authority, however, for this particular epitaph can be traced back to
1690, when Alexander Shields published his martyrology.[60] "The said
Claverhouse," he wrote, "together with the Earl of Dumbarton and
Lieut.-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."[61] Defoe has evidently followed Shields;[62] but Walker, though
he quotes the aforesaid epitaph, does not himself implicate
Claverhouse.
Wodrow does not appear to have heard any of these stories. He names only
Gillies and Bryce, quoting from the indictment, which does not specify
the other sufferers, to show that the men were tried before General
Drummond and a tribunal of fifteen soldiers on May 5th, and hanged on
the following day. We have already seen that a few days previously
Claverhouse had sent a prisoner for trial to this same General Drummond,
because he had himself at that time no commission to try prisoners.
Unless, therefore, we are ready to suppose that officers were in the
habit of sitting on a jury with their own troopers, or to believe that
within three days a change had taken place in Claverhouse's position of
which there is no record either in his own letters or in any other
existing document, we must accept Wodrow's narrative as the true one,
and exonerate Claverhouse from all responsibility for the deaths of
Gillies and his unfortunate fellow-sufferers.
Two cases yet remain of the five cited by Macaulay. With one of
these--the case of the three men shot near Glasgow for refusing to pray
for the King--no writer has ever pretended to implicate Claverhouse
personally; but with the other he is directly concerned. Andrew Hislop
was the son of a poor widow in whose house a proscribed Covenanter had
lately died. This was discovered by one Johnstone of Westerhall, an
apostate Presbyterian, and, like most of his class, particularly bitter
against his former associates. He turned the woman with her younger
children into the fields, pulled down her house, and dragged the eldest
son before Claverhouse, then marching through that part of the country.
So Macaulay tells the story, following for once the "Cloud of Witnesses"
rather than Wodrow. According to the latter, Claverhouse found Hislop
wandering about the fields, and carried him before Westerhall, "without
any design, as appeared, to murder him." Westerhall voted for instant
death, while Claverhouse pleaded for the lad, and only yielded at last
on the other's insistence, saying: "The blood of this poor man be upon
you, Westerhall. I am free of it." He thereupon ordered the captain of a
Highland company, then brigaded with his own men, to provide a
firing-party; but the Highlanders angrily refused, and the troopers had
to do the work. Both versions, it will be seen, agree in representing
Claverhouse as inclined to mercy but overborne by Westerhall. The
question remains, how was it that the former, a masterful man and not
easy to be silenced when he was in the right, could not save this poor
lad if he had a mind to do so?
The answer is in truth not easy to find. The explanation that Westerhall
was at that particular time superior in authority to Claverhouse will
hardly serve. It is true that the latter had just then no civil
jurisdiction at all, either to condemn or pardon--no commission of
justiciary, as he wrote to Queensberry. He had been since the close of
the previous year in disgrace at headquarters, in consequence of a
quarrel between him and the Treasurer, arising out of some action of
Colonel James Douglas, the latter's brother, of which Claverhouse seems
to have expressed his disapproval rather too warmly. His name had
accordingly been removed from the list of Privy Councillors soon after
James's accession, and himself deprived of all his civil powers. His
punishment did not indeed last long, nor was it allowed to affect his
military rights. An order for his restoration to the Council had been
signed on the very day of Hislop's death (though he did not take his
seat again till July), but his civil powers had not been renewed.
Westerhall was one of those who had in the previous year been empowered
by royal commission to try prisoners, and his commission was still
running when Claverhouse was disgraced. But on April 20th General
Drummond was appointed to the supreme authority in all the southern and
western shires, and his appointment was expressly declared to cancel all
other civil commissions previously granted. Unless, therefore, some
particular reservation had been made in Westerhall's favour, of which
there is no existing record, he had no more jurisdiction than
Claverhouse, and both were equally guilty of breaking the law. It was,
indeed, still open to Claverhouse to act as he had acted with John
Brown--to put the abjuration oath, and, on its being refused, to order
the recusant to instant execution. There is no mention by any of the
Covenanting writers that this oath was offered to Hislop. But unless it
was, it is difficult to see how either Westerhall or Claverhouse could
have been empowered to kill him. Nor is it likely that the latter,
knowing well how many sharp eyes were on the look-out in Edinburgh to
catch him tripping, would have ventured on so flagrant a breach of the
law. It must also be remembered that neither Wodrow nor Walker, nor any
writer on that side, has charged Claverhouse with exceeding the law.
They cry out against the cruelty of the deed, but on its unlawfulness
they are silent. We must suppose, therefore, that Hislop's case was the
case of John Brown: he had refused the oath, and was therefore liable to
death. But we cannot suppose that if Claverhouse had stood firm he could
not have saved the lad's life. It is absurd to believe that at the head
of his own soldiers, with another captain of the same way of thinking by
him, such a man as Claverhouse was not strong enough to carry his own
will against one who had not even the powers of an ordinary justice of
the peace. We must, therefore, conclude that he was unwilling at that
time to run the risk of further disgrace by any charge of unreasonable
leniency to rebels. Like Pilate, he was willing to let the prisoner go;
but, like Pilate again, he preferred his own convenience, and the
prisoner was put to death.
On Defoe's list of victims murdered, as he calls it, by Claverhouse's
own hand is the name of Graham of Galloway. The young man, he says,
being pursued by the dragoons, had taken refuge in his mother's house;
but being driven out thence was overtaken by Claverhouse and shot dead
with a pistol, though he offered to surrender and begged hard for his
life. Shield so words his version of the story as to make it doubtful
whether the shot was fired by Claverhouse himself. In the "Cloud of
Witnesses" it is not even made certain that Claverhouse was present. At
the close of the year in which this alleged murder was committed Sir
John Dalrymple brought his action against Claverhouse. It is not likely
that so shrewd a lawyer would have overlooked such a chance as this, a
case of murder committed in his own country; for murder it would
certainly have been, were Defoe's story true. In 1682 military
executions had not been sanctioned by law; and for a soldier to shoot a
man offering to surrender would have been as clear a case of murder as
was the butchery on Magus Moor. Yet throughout Dalrymple's indictment is
no hint of any such offence. Claverhouse is accused of oppression by
excessive fines and illegal quartering of troops, of malversation, and
so forth; but of taking man's life unlawfully there is no single word.
Another of Defoe's victims is Matthew Mekellwrath. Claverhouse, he says,
riding through Camonel in Carrick, saw a man run across the street in
front of the soldiers, as though to get out of their way, and instantly
ordered him to be shot, without any examination. In the "Cloud of
Witnesses" an epitaph is quoted to show that the man was shot for
refusing the abjuration oath.
Next we find four men dragged out of a house at Auchencloy, on Dee-side,
where they had met for prayer, and shot before the door, without any
examination. Defoe gives the names of the four as John Grier, Robert
Fergusson, Archibald Stuart, and Robert Stuart. Shields substitutes for
Archibald Stuart the name of James Macmichael. In "The Cloud of
Witnesses" only Grier, Robert Stuart, and Fergusson are named. In
Wodrow's pages the four men become eight: of these four, as given by
Shields (Macmichael, however, being spelt Macmichan), were shot at once:
two more, Smith and Hunter, were carried to Kirkcudbright and hanged
after a form of trial: two, unnamed, got safe away. "It may be," adds
Wodrow, "the rescue of some prisoners at Kirkcudbright by some of the
wanderers, a little before this, was the pretext for all this cruelty."
It may indeed have been so, and something more than a rescue of
prisoners may have helped. The affair on Dee-side took place December
18th, 1684. On the 11th of the same month (just after Renwick's
proclamation of war) a party of men, headed by James Macmichael,
murdered Peter Peirson, minister of Carsphairn, at his own door. Wodrow
cannot shirk this fact: he finds it detestable, and generally denounced
and disowned by the more respectable of the Covenanters; but he also
manages to find as many excuses for it as he conveniently can in the
provocation given by the victim. Peirson, he says, was "a surly,
ill-natured man, and horridly severe." He was of great service to Lagg
in ferreting out rebels, used to sit in court with him to advise him of
the prisoners' characters, and generally make himself obnoxious to the
Covenanters. He was also accused of leaning to popery, and is said on
one occasion to have openly defended the doctrine of purgatory; on
another he maintained Papists to be much better subjects than
Presbyterians--as, indeed, from the Government's point of view they
certainly were. How far Peirson deserved this character we cannot surely
tell. The fact of his being hated by the Covenanters is not necessarily
to his discredit; but we may assume that he was not conciliatory in his
speech, that he meddled more in civil matters than became his cloth,
and, in short, was probably made much after the same pattern as some of
the chosen vessels of the Covenanting tabernacle. He lived alone in his
manse, without even a servant, but took care always to have his firearms
handy. The accounts of the murder vary a little in detail. One says that
he was killed in a scuffle arising out of his furious and unprovoked
treatment of a deputation which waited on him at midnight, to request
him to come outside and speak with some friends who meant him no harm--a
request which in the circumstances he can hardly be blamed for having
received with some degree of suspicion. But the most authentic version
represents him as shot dead the instant he opened his door. Macmichael
fired the shot, and the man who called Peirson out was Robert Mitchell,
nephew to James Mitchell, who was hanged five years previously for an
attempt on Sharp's life.[63]
A week later, on December 18th, a party of Covenanters more than one
hundred strong burst into Kirkcudbright ("the most irregular place in
the kingdom," Claverhouse used to call it), killed the sentry who
challenged them, broke open the gaol, set all the prisoners free, and
then marched victoriously off, beating the town drum, with such of their
rescues as would go with them, and all the arms they could lay hands on.
It is clear, then, from a comparison of the dates and names, that the
men killed at Auchencloy were no innocent folk met together for prayer,
but certainly included Peirson's murderer, and probably some of those
concerned in the rescue at Kirkcudbright, as the place where they were
surprised was but a few miles from that town. Moreover, it appears from
another account that, so far from these men having been shot
unresistingly, they were part of a larger force which had only been
dispersed after a sharp skirmish.[64]
One more instance, and this part of my business will be done. Defoe
names Robert Auchinleck as shot by Claverhouse without examination for
not answering his challenge, the man, as was subsequently discovered,
being too deaf to hear what was said to him. There is no mention
elsewhere of Robert Auchinleck; but Shields includes in his list a man
called Auchinleck, of Christian name unknown, who was killed in similar
circumstances; and Wodrow gives a different version of the death of one
William Auchinleck, both assigning the act to one Captain Douglas, who
was marching from Kirkcudbright with a company of foot.[65]
These instances have been chosen as the most notorious and the most
circumstantially recorded of the indictments made against Claverhouse.
Of the traditions that gathered in the following century about his name
I have taken no notice, nor of the vague charges brought by writers of
still later date on no better authority than those traditions.[66] It
was inevitable that as time wore on these floating legends would be
gathered to one common head, and that the most important figure would be
selected to bear the sins of all. It is of course possible that many and
more damning instances might be added to the foregoing list, of which
the record has now perished. But the most that can be done is to take
what the counsel for the prosecution have brought forward, and to
examine it as strictly as can now be possible.
It must always be difficult to reconsider with absolute impartiality any
verdict that has been generally accepted for close upon two hundred
years. On the one hand, there is a not unnatural disinclination for the
trouble necessary to re-open a case already heard and judged: on the
other, is a most natural inclination to take every fresh fact
discovered, or every old blunder detected, as of paramount importance.
The explorer in strange lands is too apt to take every mole-hill for a
mountain. And when the verdict is one that has been endorsed by
Macaulay, he must be a bold man indeed who thinks to upset it.
Nevertheless, something has, I hope, been done to bear out my belief
that Claverhouse has been too harshly judged. No attempt has been made
to gloss over or conceal any crime that can be brought fairly home to
him. The case of Andrew Hislop (a far blacker case than the more
notorious one of John Brown) has been left as it stands, so far as the
imperfect evidence enables us now to judge it. If that one case be held
enough to substantiate the general verdict, if nothing can be set
against it, there is no more to be said--save that, if this be justice,
many a better man than Claverhouse must go to the wall.
One thing, at least, should be clear. He was no capricious and
unlicensed oppressor of a God-fearing and inoffensive peasantry, but a
soldier waging war against a turbulent population carrying arms and
willing to use them. I have nowhere tried to soften the bitter tale of
folly, misrule, and cruelty which drove those unhappy men into
rebellion, nor to heighten by a single touch their responsibility for
their own misfortunes. I have not tried to find excuses for the men
whose orders Claverhouse obeyed, nor arguments to show that in the
circumstances such orders were inevitable. But I have tried to show that
in no single instance, of which the record is complete, did he go
beyond the letter of his commission, and that in more than one instance
he construed its spirit with a mildness for which he has never yet been
given credit.
But nothing will avail to save him in the eyes of those who maintain
that the law of human morality is fixed and immutable, and that men of
every age and every country can only be judged, and must be judged, by
the eternal laws of right and wrong. They, of course, will not allow the
excuse that he was a soldier obeying the orders of his superior
officers, even should they be disposed to admit that he did no more than
that. The orders, they will say, were cruel and unjust: he should have
refused to obey them. But is this unswerving standard possible as a
gauge of human actions? Who then shall be safe? There are offences
which, in Coleridge's happy phrase, are offences against the good
manners of human nature itself. The man who committed such offences in
the reign of Chedorlaomer was no doubt as guilty as the man who should
commit them in the reign of Victoria. But are the offences which can be
fairly laid to Claverhouse's account of such a kind? His most able and
his bitterest accuser pronounces him to have been "rapacious and
profane, of violent temper and obdurate heart." Yet every attempt of his
enemies to convict him of extortion or malversation broke signally down.
The decorum of his life and conversation was allowed even by the
Covenanters; and it is recorded as a notable thing that, however
disturbed or thwarted, he was never known to use profane language. The
imperturbable calm of his temper is said by one of their own party to
have at once exasperated and terrified those who were brought before
him far more than the brutal fury of men like Dalziel and Lag.[67] His
heart was indeed hard to those whom he regarded as plotters and
murderers, traitors to their King and enemies of the true religion. He
was indeed in his own way as much a fanatic as the men whom he was
empowered to crush. His devotion to the Crown and to the Protestant
faith was a passion as deep and sincere as that which moved the simple
peasants of the West to find the gospel of Christ in the horrible
compound of blasphemy and treason which too often made up the eloquence
of the Conventicles. But his hardness, if not tempered with mercy, was
at least guided by more justice than was common among his colleagues. He
both advocated and practised the policy of distinguishing between the
multitude and their ringleaders. The just punishment of one of the
latter might save, he said, many of the former;[68] and his entreaty for
the prisoners whom he found under sentence of death at Dundee proves
that his actions were dictated by no vulgar thirst for blood. When
judged by the general manners of the age, the circumstances of the time
and his position, I do not believe him to have been cruel by nature or
careless of human life. The standard of military morals in vogue two
hundred years ago cannot be weighed by that in vogue to-day. The
humanity of one generation is not the humanity of the next. Wellington
was certainly not a cruel man, and he certainly was a most strict
disciplinarian. Yet it is well known that many things were done during
the Peninsular campaign which no general now would dare to pass
unpunished, which no soldier now would even dare to do; and it is quite
possible that eighty years hence our descendants will read with horror
of the deeds done by their grandsires among the rocky passes of
Afghanistan or on the burning sands of Egypt. I do not claim for
Claverhouse that he was gentle, merciful, or humane beyond his time,
though I believe him to have had as large a share of those qualities as
any of his contemporaries would have displayed in similar circumstances.
But I do claim for him that his faults were the faults not of the man
but of his age; and I maintain that his age cannot in such matters be
tried by the standard of this.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] I have been much indebted in this chapter to an anonymous pamphlet
entitled "A Note to the Pictorial History of Scotland, on Claverhouse,"
apparently printed at Maidstone; but when, or on whose authority, I have
been unable to discover. It was sent to me by an equally nameless
benefactor.
[50] Napier, iii. Appendix 3, and his "Case for the Crown": Blackwood's
Magazine, December 1863. On the other side see Barton, vii. 255:
Macmillan's Magazine, December 1862; and a pamphlet by the Rev.
Archibald Stewart, "History Vindicated in the case of the Wigtown
Martyrs," 2nd ed. 1869.
[51] According to "The Cloud of Witnesses," first published in 1714, the
epitaph ran as follows:
"Murdered for owning Christ supreme
Head of his Church, and no more crime
But her not owning Prelacy,
And not abjuring Presbytery.
Within the sea, tied to a stake,
She suffered for Christ Jesus' sake."
The stone on which these lines were inscribed covered, according to the
same authority, "the body of Margaret Wilson, who was drowned in the
water of the Blednock upon the 11th of May, 1684 [5], by the Laird of
Lagg."
[52] In Colonel Fergusson's most entertaining chapter of family history,
"The Laird of Lagg," he mentions an old lady, still alive in 1834, who
remembered her grandfather's account of the execution, which he declared
he had himself witnessed: "There were cluds o' folk on the sands that
day in clusters here and there, praying for the women as they were put
down."
[53] Charles Kingsley, for example, wrote in "Alton Locke" of "the
Scottish Saint Margaret whom Claverhouse and his men bound to a stake."
[54] Wodrow, iv. 244.
[55] Claverhouse to Queensberry, May 3rd, 1685. Napier, i. 141; and iii.
457.
[56] "John Inglis, captain of a troop of dragoons, lying in garrison at
Newmills, in the West, a house belonging to the Earl of Loudon, having
taken some of these fanatics prisoners, and though he had power to
execute them, yet keeping them alive, some of their desperate comrades
breaks in upon the garrison and rescues them, to their great shame; for
which Inglis was degraded, and his place was given to Mr. George
Winrahame, a bigot Papist." Fountainhall, quoted by Napier, iii. 457.
This Winrahame may be the Winram who had to do with the Wigtown Martyrs.
According to "The Cloud of Witnesses,"
"The actors of this cruel crime
Was Lagg, Strachan, Winram, and Grahame."
A letter more or less in a name was of no account in the cacography of
those times.
[57] "The new reign was not to remain long undisturbed; before the end
of April there was the apprehension of a great civil war, and in May the
news came that it had begun both in England and Scotland." These are
Burton's words (vii. 258), and no one can accuse Burton of undue
partiality to James or his government. See also Aytoun's Appendix to his
"Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," which, however, was written before the
publication of Napier's book had proved Claverhouse's responsibility for
the death of John Brown.
[58] Wodrow, iv. 148-9. He prints the declaration in full from a copy in
Renwick's own handwriting. The following extracts will give some idea of
it: "We have disowned the authority of Charles Stuart (not authority as
God's institution, either among Christians or heathens) and all
authority depending upon him, for reasons given elsewhere (disclaiming
all such things as infer a magistratical relation betwixt him and us);
and also we have declared war against him, and his accomplices such as
lay out themselves to promote his wicked and hellish designs.... We do
hereby declare unto all that whosoever stretcheth forth their hands
against us ... by shedding our blood actually, either by authoritative
commanding, such as bloody counsellors ... especially that so-called
justiciary, generals of forces, adjutants, captains, lieutenants, and
all in civil and military power, who make it their work to embrue their
hands in our blood, or by obeying such commands, such as bloody militia
men, malicious troopers, soldiers, and dragoons; likewise such gentlemen
and commons who, through wickedness and ill-will, ride and run with the
foresaid persons ... we say all and every one of such shall be reputed
by us enemies to God and the covenanted work of reformation, and
punished as such, according to our power and the degree of their
offence.... Let not any think that (our God assisting us) we will be so
slack-handed in time coming to put matters in execution as heretofore we
have been, seeing we are bound faithfully and valiantly to maintain our
covenants and the cause of Christ."
[59] For example, in the earliest edition of the pamphlet containing his
version of this affair ("The Life of Peden") an "old singular Christian
woman named Elizabeth Menzies" is mentioned as the first neighbour who
came to condole with Mrs. Brown. In later editions Elizabeth Menzies
becomes Jean Brown. The wife also is sometimes Isabel and sometimes
Marion. Walker's "Biographia Presbyteriana" is a collection of tracts
published by him at different times, of which this "Life of Peden" is
the earliest and the best.
[60] "A Short Memorial of the Sufferings of the Presbyterians."
[61] This Buiening is called Bruning in "The Cloud of Witnesses," and
may be the Brownen of Claverhouse's letter, that is to say, the nephew
of John Brown.
[62] "It seems somebody had maliciously told this Graham they were of
the Whigs who used the field meetings, upon which, without any trial or
other sentence than his own command, his 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 suffer one to lend them a
Bible, who it seems offered it, nor allow them a moment to pray to God."
Defoe's "Memoirs of the Church of Scotland" were first published in
1717, a few years before Wodrow's History. Elsewhere in the same work he
states that Claverhouse had "among the rest of his cruelties barbarously
murdered several of the persecuted people with his own hands," also that
"this man is said to have killed above a hundred men in this kind of
cold blood cruelty." But Defoe's qualifications for a historian of those
times are, to say the least, uncertain. He mentions Cameron and Cargill
as alive and busy in 1684, four years after one had died fighting at
Aird's Moss, and the other on the scaffold at Edinburgh.
[63] Wodrow, iv. 197; Napier, i. 89. I have called this the most
authentic version because it professes to have come from the murderers
themselves. It is to be found in a letter to Wodrow (printed by Napier)
now in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. The date is 1715, and the
writer, who only signs his initials, J.C., calls Wodrow "cousin." "I
give you the account," he writes, "from the best information it's
possible to be got, viz., from Robert Dun, in Woodheade of Carsphairn,
and John Clark, then in that parish, now in Glenmont, in the parish of
Strathone, anent the curate's death of Carsphairn, which they had from
the actors' own mouths." Wodrow adds a little touch of his own--"Mr.
Peirson with fury came out upon them with arms"--and is silent on the
fact of Mitchell's presence.
[64] Fountainhall's "Historical Notices," and a letter to Queensberry
from Sir Robert Dalzell and others, quoted by Napier, ii. 427-8.
[65] Wodrow, iv. 184.
[66] For example, the story told of Claverhouse sparing a man's life for
the sport his capture had afforded, but ordering his ears to be shorn
off. This may be found in a book called "Gleanings among the Mountains,
or Traditions of the Covenanters," published at Edinburgh, in 1846, by
the Rev. Robert Simpson, of Sanquhar. The same gentleman is responsible
for an earlier volume, "The Times of Claverhouse," in which the
Covenanters are described as a class of "quiet and orderly men,"
maintaining the standard of their gospel in "the most peaceful and
inoffensive way." In neither volume is any authority offered for these
stories: even the evidence of time and place is rarely vouchsafed.
[67] Walker's "Biographia Presbyteriana:" Lochiel's Memoirs.
[68] See _ante_, p. 92: also Napier, ii. 360, for a letter to the Lord
Chancellor, June 9th, 1683. "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."