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A NEW OUTBREAK
THREATENED-INCREASING SEVERITY OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL -GRAHAM OF CLAVERHOUSE:
SKETCH OF HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE ANT) CHARACTER; HE IS SENT INTO
DUMFRIESSHIRE) HIS ACTIVITY IN SEIZING COVENANTERS, AND IN SUPPRESSING
CONVENTICLES - GRIERSON OF LAG --DOINGS OF CLAVERHOUSE IN DUMFRIES AND
NEIGHBOURHOOD, AS REPORTED BY HIMSELF-FIELD-PREACHINGS IN THE DISTRICT: A
REMARKABLE ONE ON SKETCH HILL DESCRIBED -CLAVERHOUSE COMPLAINS TO HIS
SUPERIOR OFFICER THAT THE PRISON OF DUMFRIES HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A
CONVENTICLE -BOON COMPANIONSHIP OF THE BURGH RULERS WITH THE PERSECUTORS
-CAROUSING OF THE BAILIES WITH NISBETT, WINDRAM, STRAUCHAN, LAUDER, AND
LIVINGSTONE-KING'S BIRTH-DAY REJOICINGS IN THE TOWN-ROUT OF CLAVERHOUSE AT
DRUMCLOGDEFEAT OF THE COVENANTERS AT BOTHWELL BRIDGE-CAREER AND DEATH OF
RICHARD CAMERON - CLAVERHOUSE PAYS A SECOND VISIT TO THE DISTRICT.
THE Indulgence was meant by
its projectors to be a bone of contention and a snare to the
Presbyterians. It proved to be so, inasmuch as it separated the clergy
into two antagonistic parties-the indulged and the non-indulged. The
people for the most part adhered, and that with more steadfastness than
ever, to those ministers who declined to purchase ease and comparative
comfort, by sacrificing an iota of what they deemed to be the
imprescriptible rights of the Church. Conventicles, in house and field, as
a consequence, increased; and to crush them, and punish their frequenters,
the whole machinery of a merciless Government was set in operation. Among
the many other means adopted for these ends, landlords were required to
enter into bonds pledging themselves that neither their families, domestic
tenants, nor the servants of their tenants, nor any one residing on their
land, should attend the ministry of the proscribed preachers, or in any
way give them countenance. "We cannot possibly come tinder such
stipulations," pleaded a body of the proprietors before the Privy Council.
"By the Lord Jehovah! you must and shall!" retorted Lauderdale, as the
savage significantly bared his arms above the elbows; and, to assist him
in making his threat good, eight thousand armed Highlanders were let loose
upon the fertile districts of the south and west. This locust-like host
ravaged the country for three months; and on being recalled, the other
soldiers raised by the Government took their place, emulating them in
rapacity, surpassing them in the art of hunting down the wandering
occupants of the hills and glens.
An additional pretext for
violence was unhappily supplied by the assassination of Sharpe on the 3rd
of May, 1679-the deed of a few zealots, for which the Covenanters
generally ought not to have been held responsible. The blame of it was,
however, thrown upon the whole party; and a testing question was based
upon it, which increased the inquisitorial resources of the military. If,
when a suspected individual was asked, "Do you consider the killing of
Archbishop Sharpe murder?" a negative answer was given, or no answer at
all, he was dragged to prison, or summarily despatched. At length the
patience of the persecuted sufferers gave way, and they resolved once more
to give armed resistance to their rulers. On the 29th of May in the same
year, the anniversary of the Restoration, a band of eighty armed
Covenanters entered Rutherglen, extinguished the bonfires lighted in
honour of royalty, burned the Acts of Council by which Episcopacy was
established, and finished their demonstration by affixing to the Market
Cross of the town a written document repudiating and condemning all the
tyrannical doings of the Government in Scotland during the existing King's
reign.
These daring acts were
correctly looked upon by the Privy Council as a declaration of war; and
they, nothing loath, commissioned John Graham of Claverhouse to take up
the gauntlet on their behalf, feeling assured that he would make short
work with the rebels. Claverhouse had already proved his fitness for such
a task. After serving some time with distinction in the Dutch army, he
returned to his native country, at the age of thirty-five, to become
policeman-general over the disaffected districts, and gain transitory
rewards and deathless infamy, by punishing the bodies of his poor
fellow-countrymen when he failed by threat and fine to enslave their
souls. The Council soon saw that he was admirably adapted for their
purposes; he was so cool, self-reliant, unscrupulous, and cruel. An
impression to the same effect is conveyed by the two authentic portraits
that have been preserved of the notorious cavalier: one representing him
when quite a youth, and comparatively unknown; the other when in the prime
of manhood, and raised to the peerage as Viscount Dundee. An unmistakable
dourness is visible in the first of these likenesses: the curl of the
upper lip-the mouth compressed-the nostrils distendedthe troubled,
anxious, almost sorrowful, expression thrown over the face-impress the
beholder unfavourably, in spite of the regularity and graceful outline of
the features. This portrait gives us the idea that lie must have been
cold, reserved, proud, and pitiless before the age of puberty was reached.
The youth is "Bonnie Dundee" in embryo-handsome, yet sinister and
unattractive; and the impression conveyed by the other picture, though in
some degree different, is of the same general kind. The countenance is
rather softer, if anything, and is equally sad and haughty; the lower part
of the face, however, having become heavy without any trace of that
effeminacy of which Sir Walter Scott speaks, except in the mouth, which is
small as compared with the colossal nose, indicative of the possessor's
energy and power. Scott's mental sketch of the man may be fittingly
subjoined:- "Profound in politics, and imbued, of course, with that
disregard for individual rights which its intrigues usually generate, this
leader was cool and collected in danger, fierce and ardent in pursuing
success, careless of facing death himself, and ruthless in inflicting it
upon others." [Old Mortality, chap. xii.] This is, on the whole, a fair
outline of Graham's character, as indicated by his portraits, and as
exemplified during his ten years of military misrule over the west and
south of Scotland.
In a letter dated Moffat,
December 28th, 1678, Claverhouse thus announced his arrival in
Dumfriesshire to his commanderin-chief, the Earl of Linlithgow:-" My
Lord,-I came here last night with the troop, and am just going to march
for Dumfries, where I resolve to quarter the whole troop. I have not heard
anything of the dragoons, though it is now about nine o'clock, and they
should have been here last night, according to your lordship's orders. I
suppose they must have taken some other route. I am informed since I came
that this County has been very loose. On Tuesday was eight days, and
Sunday, there were great field-conventicles just by here, with great
contempt of the regular clergy; who complain extremely that I have no
orders to apprehend anybody for past demeanours. And besides that, all the
particular orders I have being contained in that order of quartering,
every place where we quarter must see them, which makes them fear the
less. I am informed that the most convenient posts for quartering the
dragoons will be Moffat, Lochmaben, and Annan; whereby the whole County
will be kept in awe. Besides that, my lord, they tell me that the end of
the bridge of Dumfries is in Galloway, and that they may hold conventicles
at our nose, [and] we dare not dissipate them, seeing our orders confine
us to Dumfries and Annandale. Such an insult as that would not please me;
and, on the other hand, I am unwilling to exceed orders: so that I expect
from your Lordship orders how to carry in such cases." [We are indebted
for this and other letters of Claverhouse to Mark Napier's Memoirs of
Viscount Dundee. ]
The impatient trooper, as
we learn from another of his letters, was soon at work. Before his
arrival, some of the Dumfries Covenanters and others occasionally met for
worship during winter in a large building on the Galloway side of the Nith
; and he having received ample license to act in the Stewartry as well as
in Dumfriesshire, arranged with the Steward for the demolition of the
meeting-house ; with what success, is reported by him in the following
terms:- "I must acknowledge," he says, by way of prelude, " that till now,
in any service that I have been in, I never inquired farther in the laws
than the orders of my superior officers." "After," he proceeds to say, "I
had sent the Council's orders to the Stewart-Depute, he appointed Friday
last, the third of January, for the demolishing the meeting-house, and
that I should bring with me only one squad of my troop. He brought with
him four score of countrymen, all fanatics, for they would not lay to
their hands till we forced them. Everybody gave out that house for a byre;
but when they saw that there was no quarter for it, and that we Lady
Laurieston, but found them not. There is almost nobody lays in their bed
that knows themselves any ways guilty within forty miles of us ; and
within a few days I shall be upon them, three score of miles at one bout,
for seizing on the others contained in the order."
Before Claverhouse "came
down like a wolf on the fold," conventicles could be held with less risk
in the vicinity of Dumfries. Great gatherings for worship frequently took
place in the elevated and secluded districts of Terregles, Dunscore, and
Irongray. No fewer than seventeen out of the nineteen ministers forming
the Presbytery of Dumfries, refused to take the oath of supremacy in 1662;
and, after being driven from their parishes, several of them continued to
preach, in temples of Nature's own construction, to hearers who followed
them thither, even as the flocks of Eastern lands follow wherever the'
faithful shepherd leads. Among these outed clergy the most distinguished,
if not the most devoted, was John Welsh of Irongray, who, it will be
remembered, took part in the Pentland rising. Preach he would, and did
almost daily, in fearless defiance of the persecutors, who would fain have
gagged him in the Bass, or silenced him in the grave. Skeoch-hill, which
rears its rugged crest in the moorlands of Irongray, about eight miles
from Dumfries, is especially associated with the ministrations of Welsh;
as, in a spacious recess half way up the eminence, on a Sabbath day in the
summer of 1678, he preached and dispensed the Lord's supper to more than
three thousand persons. This place was selected for the services because
of its peculiar adaptation for them, as well as its seclusion. With
materials already on the spot, a table for the elements, and sitting
accommodation were furnished; and the country people still point out, with
reverential interest, the rows, four in number, of large, flat, oblong
whinstones on which the emblematic bread and wine were laid, and the
boulders round about that served as seats for the communicants. Towards
the close of the services an alarm was raised, by sentinels posted on
neighbouring heights, that the military were in sight. Mr. Blackadder,
formerly of Troqueer, who preached the closing discourse, paused for a few
minutes, and no doubt a feeling of anxiety crept over the women and
children present, but none of the worshippers offered to leave the scene
of danger; and prompt preparations were made by Alexander Gordon of
Earlston, [Descended from Alexander Gordon of Airds, the pioneer of the
Reformation in Dumfriesshire and Galloway.] and other military gentlemen,
to repel force by force. A resort to arms was fortunately not required;
the troopers, who, according to Blackadder, consisted simply of
"servitors" belonging to the Earl of Nithsdale [This was John, seventh
Lord Herries, who, upon the death of Robert, second Earl of Nithsdale,
without issue, succeeded to the earldom in 1678.] and Sir Robert Dalzell
of Glenae, discreetly riding away in peace, and allowing the exercises to
be closed without further disturbance. Consecrated by no ordinary rites
are these Communion Stones of Irongray; hallowed memorials are they of a
heroic witnessing time-meet monuments of John Welsh and its other
worthies, tried and true.
Had Claverhouse been in
Dumfries when this gigantic conventicle was held, he would scarcely have
shrunk from attacking it; and he would at all events have done his best to
seize some of the "fellows," "rogues," and "villains" - as he was
accustomed to call the Covenanters - who had ventured to be present. Yet,
in spite of his sleepless vigilance and his merciless system of
repression, the hill-side congregations were never entirely put down; and,
wonderful to relate, after he had been about four months in Dumfries, the
very prison of the town was turned into a treasonable Presbyterian
meeting-house, "under his very nose." This "great abuse" was attributed by
Captain Graham to the laxity of the magistrates, to whom he pays an
ironical compliment, which they could not have merited had they not been
of a different stamp than their predecessors in the time of Sir James
Turner. Claverhouse thus complained to his superior officer on the
subject:- "There is here in prison a minister, was taken above a year ago
by my Lord Nithsdale, and by the well-affected magistrates of this [town],
has had the liberty of an open prison; and more conventicles have been
kept by him there, than has been in any one house in the kingdom. This is
a great abuse; and if the magistrates be not punished, at least the man
ought not to be suffered any longer here, for that prison is more
frequented than the kirk. If your lordship think fit, he may be sent in
with the rest."
It will be recollected that
John Irving was chosen chief magistrate in 1660. For thirteen years
afterwards, he and another member of the Irving family bad a monopoly of
the provostship; but, in 1674, William Craik of Duchrae, a moderate
Presbyterian, was called to that office, and continued in it till 1678,
when David Bishop, a gentleman of similar views, succeeded him for a short
period, Mr. Craik again becoming provost in 1679, when Claverhouse visited
the town. From such a man as Duchrae the Covenanters would receive
something more than toleration: hence the remonstrance of Claverhouse
against the indulgence shown to them by "the well-affected magistrates" of
Dumfries.
Though the Burgh
authorities in 1679 were suspected of disloyalty by Claverhouse, some of
their predecessors kept on good terms with his persecuting colleagues and
subordinates. The Provost, Bailies, and Convener had frequent convivial
meetings with the officers, who with whetted swords and on fleet-limbed
steeds scoured the neighbouring district; and it is most melancholy to
reflect, that sometimes the very men who were one day boozing merrily over
the blood-red wine in Dumfries with its burghal rulers, were the next
busily employed in slaughtering their innocent countrymen, on the hills
and moors around. In the treasurer's accounts, under date 9th January,
1669, when John Irving was still Provost, the following entry occurs:-
"Dew by the magistrates in company with Sir Robert Dalzell, Patrick
Nisbett, Robert Moorhead, and Birkhill, with severall uther gentlemen, the
haill magistrats being present with severall of the counseil at the
admitting of the said Patrick Nisbett, burges, twelf pynts of seek,
quhereoff ther was 4 unce of sugyar to ilk pynt of eleven of the said
pyntes, and the uther but [without] sugyar, with twa shortbreid, and 3 sh.
for tobacco and pypes, £28 15." [Burgh Treasurer's Accounts] This Nisbet,
thus feasted and honoured, became soon after a notorious persecutor, as
the gravestones erected at Fenwick and elsewhere, over his martyred
victims, still attest. [Cloud of Witnesses, p. 427]
We quote one other
illustrative entry from the same record. Mistress Rome, who kept the
town's tavern in 1687, charged the subjoined account against the Council
that year:- "Spent with Lieutenant-Colonell Windram, Captaine Strauchane,
Captain Bruce, Leivetenant Lauder, Leivetenant Livingstone, six pynts of
wyne, with tobacco and pypes, £6 9s. 4d." Here is a pretty batch of
blood-stained bacchanalians-convened, perhaps, to arrange over their cups
for some fresh raid against the children of the Covenant. Of many cruel
deeds Livingstone and Lauder were guilty; and the above tavern-score
contrasts curiously with the rude elegy in St. Michael's churchyard over
the remains of James Kirko, who was shot dead on the Dumfries Sands in
Julie, 1685, at the bidding of one of the convivialists:
"By bloody Bruce and
wretched Wright
I lost my life, in great despite;
Shot dead without due time to try
And fit me for eternity:
A witness of prelatic rage
As ever was in any age."
The remaining two of the
same party, Windram and Strachan, met just two years before, under very
different circumstances: the scene not a cozy Dumfries change-house, but
the wild beach of Blednoch Bay; their object not to quaff the flowing
bowl, but to drown two feeble women, a hoary matron and a girl of tender
years, beneath the ravenous ocean tide, Lag and David Graham assisting
them in their murderous work. [The reader will at once see that the
reference here is to the martyrdom of Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret
Wilson, in the water of Blednoch, near Wigtown, on the 11th of May, 1685.]
Had magistrates of the Craik or Corsane stamp ruled the Burgh at this
period, they would have scorned to sit at the same board with such
infamous men as these.
During all these "
troublous times," too, the anniversary of the tyrant King's birth and
restoration (both of which fell on the 29th of May) was celebrated in
jovial style by the very loyal magnates of the Burgh. Fancy can catch the
echo of their fulsome toasts, and the flash of their festal fires, in such
prosaic business entries as the following:- "29th May, 1672. - At the
bonfyre at the Croce, nyne quarts of wyne, £18; item, at the bonfyre
before the provest's gate, 3 quarts, £6 ; It., at the treasurer's
direction to the peit leaders, and spent in his company, 9s.; the night
after the bonfyres, with Carnselloch, Alexander Dowglas of Penzerie, Mr.
Jon Crichton, and the clerk, three chopins of wyne; and that night, with
Mr. Cairncross [the curate], Mr. Mair and his wife, thrie chopins of wyne;
and 1s. 8d. for tobacco and pypes, is, together, £3 1s. 8d. [Tavern and
other charges, as given in the Town Treasurer's Books.] 29th May, 1678. -
Payed for 2 duzon and a half of glassis broken at the crosse, at 6 pence a
peic, £9; paid to the offichers that day 4s.; for ringing the bell, 12s."
Claverhouse, as has been
stated, was summoned by the Privy Council to take action against the
Covenanters of Lanarkshire, when, on the 29th of May, 1679, they published
their defiant Declaration at Rutherglen. In that very month, a measure
that had been carried by Sharpe in the Council, a few days before his
death, received the royal assent, which gave power not only to judges, but
to the officers of all the forces "to proceed against all such who go with
any arms to those field meetings, as traitors"-in other words, to put them
to death without further warrant. Possessed of such ample powers, and
placed at the head of a strong military force, Graham entered the revolted
districts of the West, and had just begun his destructive work, when he
learned that preparations had been made for holding a conventicle on a
great scale, in the neighbourhood of Loudon hill. Hurrying forward from
Glasgow with a troop of horse, and two companies of dragoons, he found the
male worshippers of the assembly, to the number of a hundred and fifty
foot, armed with halberds, forks, and such like rude weapons, fifty
musketeers, and fifty horse, drawn up in battle array, ready to repel
force by force. Claverhouse, eager for the fray, and confident that he
would scatter the insurgents like chaff, attacked them with characteristic
impetuosity. How he must have been chafed, when the "fanatics" he had
despised, after steadily returning the fire of his troops, crossed an
intervening swamp, and fell with such resistless force upon them, that
they reeled, broke, and fled!
This Covenanting victory
was won on Sabbath, the 1st of June; but, a short fortnight afterwards,
the Royalists, at Bothwell Bridge, under the Duke of Monmouth, [He was the
King's natural son, and had previously married the heiress of Buccleuch.]
far more than made up for their defeat at Drumclog. In the one instance,
proof was given of what a few brave men, firmly united, can do ; in the
other, numbers, courage, and enthusiasm availed nothing in ranks already
divided by jealousy and dissension. The chief bone of contention with the
Covenanters in the latter case was the Indulgence-that artfully concocted
measure, which proved of more service to the Royalist commander than a
reinforcement of three thousand men. Welsh was the chief of the moderate
party; and among others at the battle, belonging to the district, were
M'Clellan of Barscobe, Gabriel Semple, and Alexander Gordon, younger of
Earlston, [The house of Earlston stands on the banks of the Ken, at a
short distance above the village of Dalry, with the wood of Airds in its
immediate vicinity.] The elder Mr. Gordon, ignorant of the defeat of the
insurgents, was hastening to join them, when he was seized by a party of
Royalist dragoons, and by them put to death. In all, four hundred
Covenanters fell on the field ; twelve hundred were made prisoners, of
whom only a few, thanks to Monmouth's clemency, were sent to the scaffold,
and the rest were banished to Barbadoes. Terrible and crushing though the
fight was, its remote results were perhaps even more disastrous-it being
made ever afterwards, till the Revolution, an ensnaring test and a new
pretext for spoliation and violence.
Hitherto the suffering
Presbyterians had made no open war against King Charles; but in the summer
of 1680 the famous " Queensferry Paper," prepared by Donald Cargill, was
extensively signed; the subscribers thereby declaring their rejection of
the King, and those associated with him, because they had "altered and
destroyed the Lord's established religion, overturned the fundamental laws
of the kingdom, and changed the civil government of this land, which was
by a king and free parliament, into tyranny." They further, in conclusion,
entered into a bond for the mutual defence of their natural, civil, and
religious rights-a bond never to be broken "till," they declared
heroically and hopefully, "we shall overcome, or send them down under
debate to posterity, that they may begin where we end." Cargill, enfeebled
by age, was unfitted to embody this bold manifesto in deeds; that was done
by the young Joshua of the movement, Richard Cameron, when, on the
following 22nd of June (anniversary of the defeat at Bothwell), the
remarkable Declaration penned by him was published by his brother and a
few adherents in the burgh of Sanquhar-meet place for such a testimony
against the tyrant King, since it was, says Dr. Simpson, the "centre of a
spacious martyr field, every parish around it except one having been the
scene of a Christian martyrdom."
On the morning of that day
a band of twenty armed horsemen descended from their haunt among the
neighbouring hills, rode leisurely down the principal street of the town;
and having reached the Market Cross, they there, in the hearing of the
inhabitants, solemnly pronounced the doom of dethronement on Charles
Stuart. With all due formality and the utmost deliberation, they performed
an act which made them amenable to torture and death. It was the deed of a
daring-we shall not say a desperate body of men, impelled by conscience to
proclaim openly-on the house-tops, as it were-what they thought of the
despotic monarch and his deeds. They saw wickedness rampant in the high
places of the land-the representative of Scotland's royal house proving a
recreant to the trust reposed in him, trampling on the spiritual rights of
the people, and in matters civil setting the very leges regnandi at nought.
On account of these things, they said, the land mourned; and they deemed
it part of God's controversy with them that they had not disowned the
perjured King long ago. But, though meriting such treatment, his power was
still unbroken: he was surrounded by a strong army which protected him, by
a clique of crafty statesmen who confirmed him in his course, and by a mob
of servile courtiers who regaled the royal nostrils with the incense of
adulation.
" Come what may, and hold
silent who list, we must and will publish the truth of this cruel King,
protest against his misdeeds, and proclaim in the face of heaven that lie
has forfeited his claim to the throne and to our allegiance." So saying,
and under the influence of such sentiments, the little Cameronian band
issued their manifesto, declaring that Charles Stuart, who had " been
reigning, or rather tyrannizing, on the throne of Britain these years
bygone," had forfeited " all right, title to, or interest in the crown of
Scotland," and proclaiming war against the "tyrant and usurper, and all
the men of his practises, and against all such as have strengthened him,
sided with, or anywise acknowledged any other in like usurpation and
tyranny." There was high moral sublimity in the uttering of this document.
Brimful of treason it might be deemed by the upholders of the Government;
but a few years afterwards the sentiments it embodied became the gospel of
a new political dispensation, and were transformed into fact when, in
1688, William, Prince of Orange, acted out the bold, true words of his
forerunner, Richard Cameron.
The men who had thus
bravely spoken at the Market Cross of Sanquhar, knew well also how bravely
to do and die. Returning to the hills once more, they rejoined their
comrades; and the party, learning that soon after Bruce of Earlshall, with
a troop of horse, was searching for them, resolved to make what resistance
they could. The Cameronian force, numbering some sixty-three men, was
attacked by Bruce at Ayrsmoss, near Cumnock, overpowered by superior
numbers, and killed or scattered; the heroic founder of the sect, and
author of the Declaration, falling among the slain.
During the occurrence of
these aggravated troubles, the resources of the country were exhaustively
drawn upon to uphold the military instruments of the dragonnade.
Dumfriesshire, as one of the chief seats of the disaffected, had to bear a
heavy share of the burden. Extracts have already been given from the
minutes of the County Commissioners, showing that the task imposed upon
them, at an earlier stage of the Persecution, was both difficult and
exorbitant; we subjoin a few additional notices to the same effect dated
after Bothwell Bridge. On the 26th of October, 1679, the Commissioners
gave force to an Act of the Privy Council ordaining the Sheriffdom of
Wigtown and Stewartry of Kirkcudbright to pay locality to the forces under
the command of the Earl of Linlithgow, conform to their valuation with
Dumfriesshire; and they found, from a list given in by the Laird of
Earlshall, Lieutenant to Claverhouse, and Mr. Dalmahoy, quartermaster to
the King's guard of horse, that they had to provide locality for
sevenscore and ten horse, whereof the one half was the King's guard
aforesaid. On the 25th of June in the following year, the Commissioners
ordained "forty-eight horses to be provided out of the Parish of Dumfries
and Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, with graith for the carriage of the
baggage, &c., of his Majesty's force through this country." On the 3rd
January, 1681, a letter from the Privy Council was considered, ordering a
garrison of thirty horse to be furnished with all due requisites at the
Castle of Dumfries. The magistrates of the Burgh were accordingly
recommended "to sight the stables and assist in provyding what may be
useful, and to furnish the hie rooms of the Castle with beds and dales,
and caus the windows to be fitted up with divots." A few weeks afterwards
the collector and clerk were appointed to proportion upon the several
parishes in the Sheriffdom of Nithsdale, Stewartry of Annandale, and Five
Kirks of Eskdale, "ane month's locality for sixty horses, more or fewer,
as shall happen to be in the garrison."
On the 27th of January,
Claverhouse was again sent by the Privy Council with a troop of guards "
to punish all disorders, disturbance of the peace, and church
irregularities in Kirkcudbright, Annandale, Wigton, and Dumfries." That he
might carry on his murderous work under some colour of law, he was made
Sheriff of Wigtownshire in room of Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, a devoted
Covenanter, who had been deprived of his office because he refused to
subscribe the subservient oath called the Test, which had been framed by
the Parliament of the preceding year. The letters written by " Sheriff"'
Graham to the Marquis of Queensberry, the King's Commissioner in Scotland,
breathe relentless hostility towards the scattered Presbyterians, and show
his determination to put them down as a party at all risks, and without a
scruple of remorse; though, of course, it would be absurd to expect to
find in them minute particulars regarding his modes of action, or a list
of those who perished through his means by weariness, hunger, exposure to
the elements, or by the bullets of his dragoons. Of that black catalogue
there is no transcript in the letters of the persecutor or full copy in
the books of the Privy Council; though doubtless "the recording angel" has
taken a note of their sufferings, and history, aided by tradition, has to
some extent embalmed their names and given them to imperishable honour.
Claverhouse wrote as
follows from New Galloway a few weeks after the beginning of his raid:-"
The country hereabouts is in great dread. Upon our march yesterday most
men were fled, not knowing against whom we designed. . . . My humble
opinion is, that it should be unlawful for the donators to compound with
anybody for behoof of the rebel till once he have made his peace. For I
would have all footing in this country taken from them that will stand
out. And for securing the rents to the donators and the Crown, it is
absolutely necessary there be a fixed garrison in Kenmure, instead of
Dumfries ; for without it, I am now fully convinced, we can never secure
the peace of this country, nor hunt these rogues from their haunts. . . .
I sent yesterday two parties in search of those men your lordship gave me
a list of-one of them to a burial in the Glencairn, the other to the fair
at Thornhill. Neither of them are yet returned : but Stenhouse tells me
that the party at the burial miscarried; that he pointed out to them one
of the men, and they took another for him, though I had chosen a man to
command the party that was born thereabout. They shall not stay in this
country, but I shall have them."
At first Claverhouse
occupied the mansion belonging to Sir John Dalrymple of Stair, and a
humbler dwelling in Kirkcudbright possessed by Sir Robert Maxwell; he
afterwards, as is indicated by the above letter, made Kenmure Castle his
headquarters. "My Lady [Kenmure] told me," he said, in reporting to
Queensberry on the subject, "if the King would bestow two or three hundred
pounds to repair the house, she would be very well pleased his soldiers
came to live in it." Accordingly, on the 1st of November, after
Claverhouse had warned the noble owner of the Castle to " make it raid and
void," he took up his residence there, and it became thenceforth the chief
citadel of the infamous sheriffship exercised by him in Galloway and
Nithsdale.
His principal colleagues
were Colonel James Douglas, brother of the Duke of Queensberry, Sir Robert
Grierson of Lag, Sir Robert Dalziel, Sir Robert Laurie of Maxwelton, Sir
James Johnstone of Westerhall, Captain Inglis, and Captain Bruce ; all of
whom, by their activity and zeal against the Covenanters, proved that they
were worthy of the persecuting commissions entrusted to them. It is right
to add, however, that Colonel Douglas afterwards forsook his party, and
served with distinction under William Ill.; and that he is said to have
bitterly lamented the cruelties of which he had been the agent. |
