Claverhouse Part 5

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 circ.u.mstantially repeated in 1711, when the records of the Kirk Session of the parish of Penninghame were published by direction of the General a.s.sembly. 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, fas.h.i.+on 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 Wigtowns.h.i.+re. 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 pa.s.sing, 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+res 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. .h.i.therto 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 Ayrs.h.i.+re 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 pa.s.sed 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

"b.l.o.o.d.y 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 d.a.m.ning 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 s.h.i.+elds 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 s.h.i.+elds;[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 doc.u.ment, 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 cla.s.s, particularly bitter against his former a.s.sociates. 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 s.h.i.+res, 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. s.h.i.+eld 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. s.h.i.+elds subst.i.tutes 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 s.h.i.+elds (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 s.h.i.+rk 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 a.s.sume 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Mitch.e.l.l, nephew to James Mitch.e.l.l, 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 s.h.i.+elds includes in his list a man called Auchinleck, of Christian name unknown, who was killed in similar circ.u.mstances; and Wodrow gives a different version of the death of one William Auchinleck, both a.s.signing 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 circ.u.mstantially 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 d.a.m.ning 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 G.o.d-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 circ.u.mstances 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 p.r.o.nounces 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 pa.s.sion 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng between the mult.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 ent.i.tled "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 cl.u.s.ters 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 G.o.d's inst.i.tution, 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 h.e.l.lish 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d a.s.sisting 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.