Manifesto by the extremists.

Testimony at Rutherglen, 29th May 1679.

sticklers, who held frequent deliberative meetings in 1678, before the times were ripe, to consider the propriety of rising in arms, and thereby did no good to the cause by making the people restless and the executive more rigorous.1 Officers in the country warned the Government to expect a rising. Claverhouse, one of whose predatory soldiers had lately mortally stabbed the Provost of Stranraer, informed Linlithgow, the Commander-in-chief, that the peasantry possessed the arms of the militia, and that Mr. Welsh is accustoming both ends of the country to face the King's forces, and certainly intends to break out in an open rebellion.'"

Hackston and his associates came into touch with Hamilton, Douglas the preacher, and their party, who held a conventicle in Avondale on the 25th May. Now determined to make a public testimony, a deputation of these extremists-Hamilton, Hackston, Burly-went to Glasgow to meet Donald Cargill and John Spreul, for the purpose of settling the terms of a manifesto, first to be approved, as it was, at a meeting at Strathaven, before being formally published at Rutherglen.

For this act they selected the 29th May, the unpopular statutory holiday in honour of the King's birth and restoration. To Rutherglen they rode, sixty or eighty in number, put out the bonfires on the streets, and compelled the magistrates to accompany them to the Market Cross. After Douglas prayed and addressed the crowd, the sympathisers sang a psalm. Hamilton then read out the manifesto in its seven sections, whereby they, 'as true members of the Church of Scotland,' added their testimony to that of the martyrs against all the statutes for overturning the work of Reformation, establishing Episcopacy, renouncing the Covenants, outing the ministry, imposing Restoration Day, setting up the royal supremacy, authorising the Indulgence, and against the illegal acts of the Privy Council.3

Hamilton affixed the Testimony to the Cross and threw the obnoxious statutes into a fire. The zealots would have invaded Napier, Memorials, ii. 202; 21st April 1679.

1 Memoirs, 214.

3 Kirkton, 439; Wodrow, iii. 66.

Glasgow had it not been strongly held by Lord Ross. Instead,
they retired to the wilds of Lanark and Ayr, to brood and pray over
the wrongs which goaded them into becoming revolutionaries. There
were many secret sympathisers with their cause who had not the
courage to oppose the 'Sons of Belial,' and who consoled themselves,
meantime, with the prayer of 'Burley's Litany'

'From the Archbishop's Hector, ready att a call,
From the Carrabine charged with a double ball,
From John Whyt, the hangman, who is last of all,
Libera nos Domine.'

1 The Register of the Privy Council, vol. v., contains the Acta, Decreta, etc., from 4th July 1676 to 27th April 1678. Volume vi. is in the press (1912), and will soon be issued. It contains the minutes of the Council, etc., between 11th September 1678 and 23rd December 1680. The manuscript volume was transferred from the British Museum to the Register House. I have been privileged to see the volume in print, and to extract the following interesting item relative to Archbishop Sharp, p. 179; 'Edin., 1st May 1679, Sederunt, Chancellor, St. Andrews. Linlithgow... Dalyell . . . The Lords warrant the Earle of Linlithgow with horse and foot to prosecute and follow that party into whatsoever place Welsch, Cameron, Kid, or Douglas keep their field conventicles, or any uthers whom that standing party follows, with power to seize and apprehend, and in case of resistance to pursue them to the death.' Very interesting short biographies of the leading Covenanters are found in The Scots Worthies, by John Howie of Lochgoin. The excellent revised edition by the Rev. W. H. Carslaw, M.A. (Edin., 1870), was consulted for this work. The Rev. John H. Thomson's edition (Edin., 1871) of A Cloud of Witnesses (1714) presents the 'Last Speeches and Testimonies' of the sufferers. The complement of both is the Rev. J. H. Thomson's The Martyr Graves of Scotland, edited by the Rev. Matthew Hutchison, and containing a masterly introduction by Dr. D. Hay Fleming, entitled 'The Story of the Scottish Covenants in Outline' (1903). Exquisite characterisations are presented by the Rev. Alexander Smellie, M.A., in his Men of the Covenant (Lond., 1903). Mrs. Hugh Pryce has written a popular Life of the Great Marquis of Montrose (Lond., 1912). Mr. Michael Barrington has retold the story of Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee (Lond., 1911). The Marchioness of Tullibardine has given a spirited account of the Battle of Killiecrankie and the death of Dundee in A Military History of Perthshire, 1660-1902 (Perth, 1908).

Lineage of
Graham of
Claverhouse.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE RISE OF CLAVERHOUSE

To the chase after these defiant Whigs

"There, worthy of his masters, came
The Despot's Champion, bloody Graham,
To stain for aye a warrior's sword,
And lead a fierce, though fawning horde,-
The human bloodhounds of the earth,
To hunt the peasant from the hearth.'

At this time Claverhouse had the repute of being a terror in the south, at the mention of whose name intending conventiclers disappeared. This John Graham, eldest son of Sir William, laird of Claverhouse and Claypots, near Dundee, and of Lady Magdalene Carnegie, fifth daughter of John, Earl of Ethie, afterwards first Earl of Northesk, was of aristocratic lineage. Born probably in 1648, he was left fatherless when five years of age.1 The latter circumstance contributed to the comparative affluence of Claverhouse at his majority. Like Turner, Bruce of Earlshall, Lag, and other harriers of the Covenanters, he had a university education. No one could conjecture this from his compositions, wherein he expressed his thoughts in a rude, vulgar, and curiously spelled dialect, not employed by other students in St. Andrews. With six hundred pounds annually from his property, he had no need, like Turner, to become a mercenary, fighting for daily bread.

Yet he had gone to, and

1 Terry, New Scots Peerage, iii. 325, says 'probably in July 1648'; Morris, Claverhouse, chap. i.; Napier, Memorials, i. 178; The Despot's Champion, chap. i. I have searched twenty-five likely parish registers for the record of his birth, but in vain as yet.

1

Claverhouse.

returned from, France and Holland with the reputation of being a dashing officer, whose white plume had marked the track of his gallantry at Seneffe. At the instance of the King and his brother, Claverhouse was gazetted captain of a new troop of horse on 23rd September 1678. His duty in patrolling troublous Dumfriesshire that winter animated him with zeal and delight. He had peculiar, if not unique, views of soldiering at home, considering himself to be an Views of armed high-priest, commissioned to sacrifice the enemies of the Crown as much for their own sake as for that of his employer; an Episcopal crusader inspired to do battle with dissent and cleanse away the gangrene likely to infect and destroy divine Episcopacy. Thus he confessed to Queensberry: For my owen pairt I look on myself as a cleanger. I may cur people guilty of that plaigue of presbitry be conversing with them, but can not be infected.' He was the natural successor to Turner, who acted on the principle, 'that so as we serve our master honnestlie it is no matter what we serve,' since Claverhouse declared: 'In any service I have been in, I never enquired farther in the laws, than the orders of my superior officers.' Even jovial Turner did not go so far as a hireling, who, given a warrant, would shoot incontinently, and sheathe his sword anywhere. With such a despicable want of principle, it is not surprising to find this fanatic, Graham, when revelling in his exterminating work, complimenting the Earl of Menteith on a similar assiduity: 'I rejoice to hear you have now taken my trade in hand, that you are become the terror of the godly.' Although Sir Ewen Cameron asserted that Claverhouse died a 'good Christian,' there is no record of any pious thoughts or humane deeds in connection with his career, apart from the fact that he drove other sinners into church to inspect them, had family prayers, and attended the baptism of the son of the parson of Dundee. Probably for the same undiscoverable reasons that Mr. Andrew Lang averred that Turner 'was infinitely more of a Christian than the saints of the Covenant,' Claverhouse has a title to be con

3

1 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., XV. viii. 287. Red Book of Menteith, ii. 200.

2 Napier, Memorials, ii. 189.

↑ Terry, 218 note; Cameron, Memoirs, 278, 279.

Sir Walter

Scott's opinion

sidered the Episcopal saint and martyr, which Sharp failed to be.' No unprejudiced historian could place an aureole round the head of Claverhouse. Even Sir Walter Scott, when writing to Southey of Claverhouse. Vilifying the Covenanters at least the Poundtexts, Kettledrummles, Mucklewraths, and other oddities of his imagination-actually confessed of his hero: 'I admit he was tant soit peu savage, but he was a noble savage; and the beastly Covenanters, against whom he acted, hardly had any claim to be called men, unless what was founded on their walking upon their hind feet.'

Personal appearance of

2

None of the biographies of The Despot's Champion' gives a Claverhouse. description of the personal appearance of John Graham, leaving readers to form their own opinions from the prepossessing portraits which enhance these works. The reason of this is, that writers on the subject believed that there was no delineation extant other than the prejudiced reference of John Dick, the student-martyr of 5th March 1684, who, in his Testimony, sneers at 'the pitiful thing,' escaping from Drumclog on account of the fleetness of his horse, where 'there fell prettier men on either side than himself.' Obviously this was a gibe at the diminutive and plain person of the runaway from Drumclog. That Dundee was a very small man, not more than five feet six inches in height, with narrow sloping shoulders, is proved from his Breastplate of breastplate, preserved in Blair Castle, and whose genuineness has never been doubted. It measures but fifteen inches and a half in length from gorge to skirt, and only eighteen inches and a quarter across its broadest part. The fine portrait of this 'bonny fighter' when young, preserved in Melville House (Leven portrait), and the other in Glamis Castle, attributed to Sir Peter Lely, are presentations of a Minerva rather than a Mars-of a soldier with a girl's face and a tiger's heart. They do not depict a Privy Councillor who could attend sanguinary cases, incite and pass bloodthirsty measures for shooting and maiming, drowning and abusing pious men and women. It is to

Claverhouse.

1 Blackwood's Magazine, clxxiv. 41, July 1903.

2 Life of Scott, ii. 134.

3 Terry, John Graham, 86 note; Dick, The Testimony to the Doctrine, etc. (1684), n.d. ♦ Lord Tullibardine kindly sent these measurements to the author, 19th February 1907.