spirators, found an unsuspected refuge in the family burial-vault in Polwarth churchyard, until he escaped to the Continent. Into this weird and eerie charnel-house was faithful Grizzel wont to come at midnight hour, stumbling over graves as she went, fetching food, inspiring hope. Her mother was a Ker of Cavers. Only those of Border blood could do such romantically heroic deeds. It boded ill for the success of menacing Popery when such bravery characterised the Covenanting lads and lasses.1 measures. The Council completed their business for the year by publishing More stringent a proclamation, 30th December, denouncing the Declaration and ordering its upholders to be 'executed to the death,' commanding all living south of Tay to assemble and take the oath renouncing the Declaration and its principles, so as to get a certificate or free pass, held indispensable for all travellers over sixteen years of age; forbidding keepers of inns and lodgings to shelter persons without certificates, and empowering them to examine holders of suspicious passes; and offering a reward of five hundred merks for the discovery leading to the conviction of a Society-man. 2 Subsequently, on 9th January, burghal magistrates were ordered to A new comexact the Abjuration Oath. Every parish was to be taken separately, mission, 1685. and all the parishioners were to subscribe the Abjuration Oath 'on a large sheet of paper.' On the same date a commission, to endure till 1st March, was given to five or six influential nobles and landholders in the disaffected counties to punish the 'inhumane monsters' said to be 'debauched with schismatical and seditious principles,' and 'daily committing bloody and execrable murders,' three to be a quorum, and nonconformists in the least jot or tittle to be their prey.3 Eleven Lowland counties were embraced in this commission. Claverhouse was not nominated for this duty; his rival, Colonel James Douglas of the foot-guards, afterwards was. In Dumfriesshire the commissioners were the Earl of Annandale, Sir Robert Dalziel of Glenae, Sir James Johnston of Westerhall, Thomas 1 Wodrow, iv. 505, 224-7; Ladies of Covenant, 546-87. * Wodrow, 163-6. Instructions for 1685warrant for drowning. Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, Sir Robert Grierson of Lag, and Robert 'If any persone oune these principles [i.e. of the Cargill-CameronRenwick party], or doe not disoune them, they must be judged by at least three, and you must immediately give them a lybell and the names of the inqueist and witnesses, and they being found guilty are to be hanged immediately upon the place according to law. But at this time you are not to examine any women but such as hes been active in these courses in a signall manner, and these are to be drowned.”1 This was the warrant which empowered Sheriff Graham, Lag, and other commissioners to drown the Wigtown martyrs. In palliating the deeds of his hero, Professor Terry vauntingly writes: 'Of the refinement of cruelty which condemned the Wigtown martyrs to a lingering death there is in Claverhouse not a trace!' That signature appended to the 'Instructiones'—'J. Grahame '—still exists to destroy this too charitable imagination, and for ever exhibits Claverhouse in his proper character. 3 1 13th January 1685: Reg. Sec. Conc., Acta, 654-6; Wodrow, iv. 165. CHAPTER XXX THE INLET OF POPERY and Queens berry quarrel. At the end of the year 1684, Claverhouse was in disfavour at Court, Claverhouse as a result of the persistent efforts of Queensberry to undermine his recognised influence. From the time Queensberry concluded that Claverhouse preferred to promote at Court the interests of Aberdeen, he conceived an animosity which he expressed through the secretaries of State, thereby creating the impression that Claverhouse was fractious, impudent, fraudulent, avaricious, and overbearing to the great officers of the Crown. It was even hinted that his recent marriage into a Whig family made him no longer to be trusted with State secrets. The dislike was mutual. York took umbrage at Claverhouse, probably more out of policy than of pique. To the inconvenience of the soldier, who had paid his way out of the fines, and kept no accurate reckoning, Queensberry succeeded in getting an order calling up all the fines which Claverhouse had exacted, demand for payment of the forfeited estate of Freuch, granted under conditions to Claverhouse, the reprimand and removal of him for a time from the Privy Council,' and the promotion of other officers over his head. The faithful slave of the Stuarts was cast Claverhouse humiliated. down into the dust. With nothing left save his colonelcy, himself and his men at the call of less important officials, Claverhouse could only hope to retrieve his position by fidelity to his patron, soon to be king. It is in his rôle of sacrificer, with the blood of John Brown upon his soul, that we next see Claverhouse approaching the 1 3rd March till 11th May. 2 Drumlanrig MSS., Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., XV. viii. passim; ii. passim; Terry, 181, 188-93; Chron. Not., 128. proud Douglas as if to appease that god of his fortunes by an exhibition of his relentless hate of the antagonists of the King. The year 1685 was notable for the activity of the various officials and forces of the Crown. To the military the south-west was an open execution ground. The well-authenticated instances of the enormities of the soldiery are too numerous for more than reference. Still many a Lowland family hands on from sire to son its own unrecorded story of suffering, and the public records are now substantiating narratives Defoe's opinion hitherto valued as mere tradition. Daniel Defoe fixes on the bar cution. General Maitland's extraordinary testimony. on the perse- barities of this year to support his opinion that the Scottish persecution was worse than that of the Roman emperors and Popish inquisitors. Defoe investigated the subject when information was available, visited the blood-stained scenes, interviewed eye- and earwitnesses and survivors, and, in the main, collected facts difficult to gainsay. Thus he records: 'The writer of this has heard the late Lieutenant-General Maitland express great abhorrence of the cruelties committed by Major Balfour, Captain Douglas, General Dalziel, and several others, who would take pains to search out such men as they thought did but shun to be seen, and with little or no examination, shoot them upon the spot, which he, being then under command, could no way prevent."1 Corroborating this statement is that of Wodrow, who, having learned from bystanders at the execution of the martyrs at Polmadie that Captain Maitland was heard protesting against it, sent his narrative to Maitland, who acknowledged its accuracy.2 After all, Defoe may not be far from the mark when he reports that he heard that Claverhouse 'killed above a hundred men in this kind of cold-blooded cruelty.' Wherever the history of Scotland is read, the names Dalyell, Graham, Grierson—a trinity of military persecutors-are associated with the contemporary undying epithet, 'bluidy.'4 Sir Robert Grierson, related to Queensberry by blood and marriage, son of William Grierson of Barquhar, born 1657, succeeded his cousin 1 Memoirs, 281. 3 Memoirs, 285. 2 Wodrow, iv. 251. Lag, 16571733. in the estate of Lag in Dunscore, Dumfriesshire. In his youth he Grierson of was, like Turner and Claverhouse, a university man, also an author. In his old age he was a smuggler, debtor, alleged debaser of the coin, a litigant put to the horn. In the South he took a prominent part in all the political and military transactions between 1678 and 1688. He was in his twenty-second year when he was attached to Claverhouse's force at the demolition of the conventicle-house at the Brigend of Dumfries in 1679. This prototype of Sir Walter Scott's Sir Robert Redgauntlet was created baronet on 28th March 1685, and died in Dumfries in December 1733, having lived to see his son William go out in the '15 and be forfeited.2 Patrick Walker, having published his animadversions upon Grierson six years before he died, must have had good authority for stating that Lag was 'a great persecutor, a great swearer, a great whorer, blasphemer, drunkard, liar and cheat, and yet out of hell.' 93 the common For the student of the period, leaving out of account the military Estimate of executions, it is impossible to conceive that the innumerable finings, soldiery. driving to jail, burning of houses and implements, forcible quartering and victualling, encouraged a stainless soldiery. One would fain believe it untrue that the troops 'behaved themselves in so beastial a manner that no marriageable woman could with safety stay at home,' while the children could not be fed till 'the soldiers first lapped the broth.'' The soldiers were not always permitted to ride 'red-wat-shod' over the Galloway peasantry. In January, a fight took place in which Captain Urquhart and two soldiers were killed and Colonel Douglas just saved himself by pistolling his opponent. Being hounded into 5 1 Grierson was tried for clipping and coining in Ruthwell old castle. The trial, begun on 3rd June 1696, was adjourned to 15th June. The charge was deserted by the Crown on 22nd June. Cf. Book of Adjournal. 2 Act. Parl. Scot., viii. 214; W. Dickie, 'The Griersons of Lag' in Dumfries Standard, cxviii. 1 and 2; Fergusson, The Laird of Lag, q.v. 3 'Vindication of Cameron,' Six Saints, i. 330. Lag's neglected grave, covered with rank weeds in a ruinous sepulchre in Dunscore old churchyard, was long an object of awe and contempt to visitors there. A monument now marks the burial-place. A Brief and True Account of the Sufferings of Scotland, 5 (Lond., 1690). Reg. Sec. Conc., Acta, 28th January 1685, p. 663; Observes, 146; Wodrow, iv. 198. Col. James Douglas of the foot was added to the Commission for Galloway on 28th January. |