a wild and stormy time, with a gray shadow of Claverhouse flitting
faintly through it. In his wholesome dislike for the easy confidence
with which historians assume to know everything, its author has touched
the opposite extreme, and manifests such conscientious indecision as
to the correctness of every document he quotes, that our heads fairly
swim with accumulated uncertainties. This method of narration has one
distinct advantage,--it cannot lead us far into error; but neither can
it carry us forward impetuously with the mighty rush of great events,
and make us feel in our hearts the real and vital qualities of history.
Mr. Morris proves very clearly and succinctly that Claverhouse has
been, to use his temperate expression, “harshly judged,” and that much
of the cruelty assigned to him may be easily and cheaply refuted. He
does full justice to the scrupulous decorum of his hero’s private life,
and to the wonderful skill with which, after James’s flight, he roused
and held together the turbulent Highland clans, impressing even these
rugged spirits with the charm and force of his vigorous personality.
In the field Claverhouse lived like the meanest of his men; sharing
their poor food and hard lodgings, marching by their side through the
bitter winter weather, and astonishing these hardy mountaineers by
a power of physical endurance fully equal to their own. The memory
of his brilliant courage, of his gracious tact, even of his rare
personal beauty, dwelt with them for generations, and found passionate
expression in that cry wrung from the sore heart of the old chieftain
at Culloden, “Oh, for one hour of Dundee!”
But in the earlier portions of Mr. Morris’s narrative, in the scenes
at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, at Ayrshire and Clydesdale, we
confess that we look in vain for the Claverhouse of our fancy. Can it
be that this energetic, modest, and rather estimable young soldier,
distinguished, apparently, for nothing save prompt and accurate
obedience to his orders, is the man who, in a few short years, made
himself so feared and hated that it became necessary to credit him with
the direct patronage of Satan? One is tempted to quote Mr. Swinburne’s
pregnant lines concerning another enigmatic character of Scottish
history:--
“Some faults the gods will give to fetter
Man’s highest intent,
But surely you were something better
Than innocent.”
Of the real Dundee we catch only flying glimpses here and there,--on
his wedding night, for instance, when he is off and away after
the now daring rebels, leaving his bride of an hour to weep his
absence, and listen with what patience she might to her mother’s
assiduous reproaches. “I shall be revenged some time or other of the
unseasonable trouble these dogs give me,” grumbles the young husband
with pardonable irritation. “They might have let Tuesday pass.” It is
the real Dundee, likewise, who, in the gray of early morning, rides
briskly out of Edinburgh in scant time to save his neck, scrambles
up the castle rock for a last farewell to Gordon, and is off to the
north to raise the standard of King James, “wherever the spirit of
Montrose shall direct me.” In vain Hamilton and the convention send
word imperatively, “Dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed.” The wily
bird declines the invitation, and has been censured with some asperity
for his unpatriotic reluctance to comply. For one short week of rest
he lingers at Dudhope, where his wife is awaiting her confinement, and
then flies further northward to Glen Ogilvy, whither a regiment is
quickly sent to apprehend him. There is a reward of twenty thousand
pounds sterling on his head, but he who thinks to win it must move,
like Hödr, with his feet shod in silence. By the time Livingstone
and his dragoons reach Glamis, Dundee is far in the Highlands, and
henceforth all the fast-darkening hopes of the loyalists are centred
in him alone. For him remain thirteen months of incredible hardships
and anxiety, a single stolen visit to his wife and infant son,
heart-sick appeals to James for some recognition of the desperate
efforts made in his behalf, a brilliant irregular campaign, a last
decisive victory, and a soldier’s death. “It is the less matter for
me, seeing the day goes well for my master,” he answers simply, when
told of his mortal hurt; and in this unfaltering loyalty we read the
life-long lesson of the Cavalier. If, as a recent poet tells us, the
memory of Nero be not wholly vile, because one human being was found to
weep for him, surely the memory of James Stuart may be forgiven much
because of this faithful service. It is hard to understand it now.
“In God’s name, then, what plague befell us,
To fight for such a thing?”
is our modern way of looking at the problem; but the mental processes
of the Cavalier were less inquisitorial and analytic. “I am no
politician, and I do not care about nice distinctions,” says Major
Bellenden bluntly, when requested to consider the insurgents’ side of
the case. “My sword is the king’s, and when he commands, I draw it in
his service.”
As for that other and better known Claverhouse, the determined foe of
the Covenant, the unrelenting and merciless punisher of a disobedient
peasantry, he, too, is best taken as he stands; shorn, indeed, of
Wodrow’s extravagant embellishments, but equally free from the delicate
gloss of a too liberal absolution. He was a soldier acting under the
stringent orders of an angry government, and he carried out the harsh
measures entrusted to him with a stern and impartial severity. Those
were turbulent times, and the wild western Whigs had given decisive
proof on more than one occasion that they were ill disposed to figure
as mere passive martyrs to their cause.
“For treason, d’ ye see,
Was to them a dish of tea,
And murder, bread and butter.”
They were stout fighters, too, taking as kindly to their carnal
as to their spiritual weapons, and a warfare against them was as
ingloriously dangerous as the melancholy skirmishes of our own army
with the Indians, who, it would seem, were driven to the war-path by
a somewhat similar mode of treatment. There is not the slightest
evidence, however, that Claverhouse was averse either to the danger or
the cruelty of the work he was given to do. Religious toleration was
then an unknown quantity. The Church of England and her Presbyterian
neighbor persecuted each other with friendly assiduity, while Rome was
more than willing, should an opportunity offer, to lay a chastening
hand on both. If there were any new-fangled notions in the air about
private judgment and the rights of conscience, Claverhouse was the
last man in England to have been a pioneer in such a movement. He was
passionately attached to his church, unreservedly loyal to his king,
and as indifferent as Hamlet to his own life and the lives of other
people. It is strange to hear Mr. Morris excuse him for his share in
the death of the lad Hyslop, by urging in his behalf a Pilate-like
disinclination to quarrel with a powerful ally, and risk a censure from
court. Never was there a man who brooked opposition as impatiently,
when he felt that his interests or his principles were at stake; but
it is to be feared that the shooting of a Covenanter more or less was
hardly, in his eyes, a matter of vital importance. This attitude of
unconcern is amply illustrated in the letter written by Claverhouse to
Queensberry after the execution of John Brown, “the Christian carrier,”
for the sole crime of absenting himself from the public worship of
the Episcopalians, says Macaulay; for outlawry and resetting of
rebels, hint less impassioned historians. Be this as it may, however,
John Brown was shot in the Ploughlands; and his nephew, seeing the
soldiers’ muskets leveled next at him, consented, on the promise of
being recommended for mercy, to make “an ingenuous confession,” and
give evidence against his uncle’s associates. Accordingly, we find
Claverhouse detailing these facts to Queensberry, and adding in the
most purely neutral spirit,--
“I have acquitted myself when I have told your Grace the case. He [the
nephew] 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.”
Here, at least, is a sufficiently candid exposition of Claverhouse’s
habitual temper. He was, in no sense of the word, bloodthirsty. The
test oath was not of his contriving; the penalty for its refusal was
not of his appointing. He was willing enough to give his prisoner the
promised chance for life; but as for any real solicitude in the matter,
you might as well expect Hamlet to be solicitous because, by an awkward
misapprehension, a foolish and innocent old man has been stabbed like a
rat behind the arras.
When Plutarch was asked why he did not oftener select virtuous
characters to write about, he intimated that he found the sinners more
interesting; and while his judgment is to be deprecated, it can hardly
be belied. We revere Marcus Aurelius, but we delight in Cæsar; we
admire Sir Robert Peel, but we enjoy Richelieu; we praise Wellington,
but we never weary of Napoleon. “Our being,” says Montaigne, “is
cemented with sickly qualities; and whoever should divest man of the
seeds of those qualities would destroy the fundamental conditions of
human life.” It is idle to look to Claverhouse for precisely the
virtues which we most esteem in John Howard; but we need not, on that
account, turn our eyes reproachfully from one of the most striking
and characteristic figures in English history. He was not merely a
picturesque feature of his cause, like Rupert of the Rhine, nor a
martyr to its fallen hopes, like the Marquis of Montrose; he was its
single chance, and, with his death, it died. In versatility and daring,
in diplomatic shrewdness and military acumen, he far outranked any
soldier of his day. “The charm of an engaging personality,” says a
recent critic, “belongs to Montrose, and the pity of his death deepens
the romance of his life; but the strong man was Dundee.”
FOOTNOTES:
[14] _Literary Studies_, vol. ii.
Transcriber’s Notes
Page 12: “Marquis de Montmirail” changed to “Marquise de Montmirail”
“to the acount” changed to “to the account”
Page 44: “La virtu n’iroit” changed to “La vertu n’iroit”
Page 60: “Jacque Roulet” changed to “Jacques Roulet”