John Graham of Claverhouse. Carnal Carolan cavaliers. Of the same militant and accipitrine order was John Graham of Claverhouse, a greedy rather than a needy soldier, anxious to be famous like his idol and kinsman, James, Marquis of Montrose, and also to found a family. With this itch for land and honours on him, Graham chaffered for the title of Menteith, sighed for its fair heiress, Eleanor Graham, swore a dragoon's oath as to his pure love, lied to Queensberry, to whom he often clamoured for 'movabilles,' and never lost the main chance to promote himself, although his track was stained with blood.1 Queensberry accused him of upholding the fines and made him disgorge; he retaliated by accusing Queensberry's brother of defrauding the soldiery. The dexterity which Claverhouse displayed in keeping himself out of the clutches of jealous opponents led contemporaries to conclude that he was a noble specimen of the swashbucklers of his day; so Burnet sums up his character thus 'a proud and passionate man, though in all other respects a man of virtue and probity.' To say that Claverhouse was better than his comrades is faint praise indeed, when we mark his associates in butchery with which, as soldiers, they had less to do than Dalyell and Claverhouse, who were most active members of the Privy Council. For example, Captain Andrew Bruce of Earlshall, whose only epitaph is found on martyrs' tombs, was a vile specimen of the Carolan cavalier. The Kirk-session of Leuchars charged him with stealing the endowments left by Alexander Henderson to the parish school; and the Presbytery of St. Andrews pressed a worse indictment-stealing the virtue of one of his own household. With some satisfaction the chronicler of Coltness recorded that Irvine of Bonshaw, the captor of Cargill, ' in a drucken quarrel at Lanrick was stabbed to death on a dunghill by one of his own gange: a proper exit for such a blood-hound.' Black Pate' Graham of Inchbrakie, kinsman of Claverhouse, already referred to, 'satisfied' the Church for sins of the flesh. The cruelties 4 1 Book of Menteith, ii. 197; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., XV. viii. 266, 267, 276. 2 Terry, John Graham of Claverhouse, 182, 188. 4 Leuchars Kirk-sess. Rec., vol. i. ; St. And, Pres. Rec., iv. 151. Claverhouse. of Grierson of Lag, and the oppressions of other persecutors, stand on record. Defoe gives an instance of a humane officer protesting against the brutal conduct of his fellows.1 Claverhouse, in his The rôle of peculiar frenzy, desired his countrymen to think well of him as a sacrificial cleanser '-the chief of a new Order of Religious, a just Caiaphas clad in iron jack and 'scull '-at the national altar slaying Whigs to stay the plague of Whiggery from destroying other innocents. With such rude and lewd mercenaries at the head of regiments and troops of soldiers paid sixpence a day-when their officers did. not defraud them of their pay—there was little likelihood of any other state of matters than that described by contemporary chroniclers and clerks of court-namely, abuse of the people, uniformed aristocrats stealing from poor packmen on the roads, justices fleecing the defenceless, and high officials tampering with the coinage. There was ample justification for Stewart declaring that 'worse than bears or tigers were let loose upon innocent families.’2 Sheldon. The Church was in a worse condition than the State. Sheldon Archbishop was Primate in England, Sharp in Scotland. Their accomplishments can be cited in a word. Sheldon gave his Church the Act of Uniformity, Sharp gave his 'the boots.' According to Burnet, Sheldon 'seemed to have no great sense of religion nor of the true concerns of the Church, of which he spoke commonly rather as of a matter of policy than of conscience.'" Sharp. Sharp appears in his true colours, verily the 'base, clattering Archbishop claw-back' of his contemporaries; to the Church, ‘a knave pur sang'; to his friends, a spy; to his foes, a persecutor; to his peers, a caitiff, whom they used but despised: in fine, one of the meanest Scots that ever wore a holy robe.* A policy compromising, soothing, compassionate, did not seem to Character of appeal to the better instincts left in Sharp. We have no mention Sharp. of him remonstrating with the flagitious men of the age, as outspoken Wariston and Guthrie did with Charles II., and as even the 1 Memoirs, 281. 3 Foxcroft, Suppl., 67. 2 Coltness Collections, 76. Ꮴ Bishop Paterson. latter and Richard Baxter did with tippling Lauderdale. We hear no voice lifted up against the recurrent tragedies of his time; no piteous appeal for the victims of the rope and axe, for the broken in boots and the tortured by thumbscrews; no effort to redeem the men, mothers, and babes who, often forgotten altogether, lay starved and rotting in noisome tolbooths; and no mercy for the gifted pastors who were held in unholy and unwholesome ward. Like Laud, he had as little sympathy with the sacrifices of the lawgivers as with the victims of the lawless. The weight of his hand and the strength of his will was in every blow with which the hangman drove the wedges home in the torture vaults of the Parliament House. If Sharp did not keep the pardons back, for which he was blamed,' he pressed forward no petitions for mercy. An infinite charity could not veneer the character of Sharp with a semblance of humanity. Others of the prelates were exceedingly carnal. Archbishop Alexander Burnet was not secretive enough with his illicit loves to please his clerical namesake.2 Paterson, Bishop of Galloway, signalised his episcopate among the wild Whigs by inventing or re-introducing the thumbscrews.3 'This Paterson was one of the most notorious liars in his time, and vicious, base, and loose liver."4 Paterson was 'The Bishop Bandstrings' whose obscenity is lashed by George Ridpath. He was dismissed from the Privy Council in 1684 for obtaining a pension on false pretences and keeping churches vacant, so that, as patron, he might draw the stipends for his own pocket. Bishop Fairfull, a teller of 'merry tales' which disgusted Leighton, was 'scarce free of scandal.' Even the nervous Leighton approved of exterminating rebel Whigs. 1 Row, Blair, 504. 2 Burnet, i. 371: 'He kept his mistresses very avowedly.' 3 Mackail to Adams, 16th November 1678; Cal. State Pap., Charles II., 408. 4 Row, Blair, 542. An Answer to the Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 87. 6 Hist. Observes, 133. 7 Burnet, i. 238; Foxcroft, Suppl., 16. |