J. Grahame.’
‘My Lord, I am so wearied, and so sleepy, that I have written this very confusedly.’
As to the respective numbers of the combatants engaged in the battle of Drumclog, as it is commonly called from the place near which it was fought, and which Claverhouse forgot to name in his despatch, it is difficult to arrive at a definite conclusion. Russell, who was in the ranks of the Covenanters, sets down the ‘honest party’ as consisting of ‘about fifty horse and about as many guns, and about a hundred and fifty with forks and halberts’; but that is not consistent with the details which he himself gives of the fighting. Sir Walter Scott, who has been followed by most modern writers, computes the forces opposed to Claverhouse at about one thousand, horse and foot, and the regulars at no more than two hundred and fifty. But even this estimate of the latter is probably excessive. In a letter written from Mugdock on the 30th of May, the Marquis of Montrose informed the Earl of Menteith that he had that day met with Claverhouse, who had been sent ‘with his troop and a troop of dragoons, to guard some arms and ammunition transported to this country.’ That may be taken to mean an escort of about two hundred men. But Captain Creichton, who was then serving as a lieutenant under Claverhouse, states that he, with Captain Stewart’s troop of dragoons remained in Glasgow, when his commanding officer set out to enquire into the Rutherglen demonstration; and he adds that those who fought at Drumclog were about one hundred and eighty strong. Apart from the fact that there is no reason for doubting his veracity, the number which he gives exactly agrees with that which may be deduced from the casual reference in Montrose’s letter; and there is, consequently, good reason for accepting it as correct. With regard to the insurgents, it is less easy to make even an approximative calculation. It is generally admitted, however, that they greatly outnumbered their adversaries; and this seems implied by the despatch which Lord Ross forwarded to the commander-in-chief immediately after Claverhouse’s return to Glasgow on the memorable Sunday. ‘Be assured,’ he wrote to the Earl, ‘if they were ten to one, if you command it, we shall be through them if we can.’ Moreover, it is difficult to believe that the Covenanting forces could have increased to some six thousand within a week after Drumclog, as Hamilton, one of their leaders, boasts they did, if, on the 1st of June, they numbered no more than the mere handful of Russell’s estimate.
The passage in which Claverhouse mentions the officers killed in the engagement has always been read as referring to only two; and it has caused some surprise that he should have omitted to report the loss of a third, about whose death there cannot be a doubt, and who, moreover, was a kinsman of his—Cornet Graham. Captain Creichton who, it must be remembered, is speaking of a comrade, and whose words alone might be looked upon as absolutely authoritative, states, in his Memoirs, that ‘the rebels finding the cornet’s body, and supposing it to be that of Clavers, because the name of Graham was wrought in the shirt-neck, treated it with the utmost inhumanity; cutting off the nose, picking out the eyes, and stabbing it through in a hundred places.’ Andrew Guild, in his Latin poem, ‘Bellum Bothwellianum,’ records the same barbarity. ‘They laid savage hands on him,’ he says, ‘and mutilated his manly face; having cut off his tongue, his ears, and his hands, they scattered his brains over the rough stones.’ In an old ballad on the Battle of Loudon Hill—another name for the fight of Drumclog—Claverhouse’s cornet and kinsman is twice made to foretell his own death:—
‘I ken I’ll ne’er come back again,
An’ mony mae as weel as me.’
In another Covenanting poem, ‘The Battle of Bothwell Brig,’ Claverhouse is represented as avenging young Graham’s death on the fugitives:—
‘Haud up your hand,’ then Monmouth said;
‘Gie quarters to these men for me;’
But bloody Claver’se swore an oath,