The second party was also forced to fall back. They appear to have done so in better order than Hamilton’s men, for they were able to rally in a field behind the High Church, where they remained till five o’clock in the afternoon, unmolested by the soldiers, from whose sight they were concealed, and who, not knowing when they might again be attacked, and fully aware that the majority of the citizens were hostile to them, contented themselves with remaining on the defensive. Prudence prevailed with the Covenanters too, and without making any further attempt to carry the barricade, they retired to Toll Cross Moor. Finding that Claverhouse, who had been informed of the movement, had come out after them, they continued their retreat as far as Hamilton, protecting their rear so effectively with their cavalry, that Graham deemed it advisable to fall back upon Glasgow.
At Drumclog, and subsequently at Glasgow, unforeseen circumstances had imposed a leading and conspicuous part on Claverhouse. The measures which the Government was now called on to adopt for the purpose of quelling an insurrection of formidable proportions, were necessarily of such magnitude, that he naturally fell back to his own subordinate position, that of a captain of dragoons. To represent him as having incurred the displeasure of his chiefs, and as having been superseded in consequence, is contrary to fact, and wholly unfair to him. Proof is at hand that no blame was laid upon him for the defeat of Drumclog. In a letter written by the Council to Lauderdale on the 3rd of June, it was admitted that he had been overpowered by numbers; and six days later, through Lauderdale, the Chancellor conveyed the King’s thanks to Lord Ross and to Claverhouse for their great diligence and care, and his assurance that he would be very mindful of their conduct on all occasions.
Creichton, who did not supply Swift with the materials for his memoirs till many years later, and who, therefore, cannot always be implicitly depended upon as regards details of minor importance, states that the morning after the attack ‘the Government sent orders to Claverhouse to leave Glasgow and march to Stirling.’ But Wodrow, who founds his narrative on letters which he met with in the Council Registers, and which he duly quotes, makes no special reference to Claverhouse. He simply records the fact that ‘my Lord Ross and the rest of the officers of the King’s forces, finding the gathering of the country people growing, and expecting every day considerable numbers to be added to them, and not reckoning themselves able to stand out a second attack, found it advisable to retire eastward.’ He indicates, day by day, the marching and counter-marching of the royalist troops, and narrates all the steps that were taken to bring together a body sufficiently strong to disperse the Covenanting insurgents.
From all this it is evident that there was no room for independent action on the part of Claverhouse from the time of his leaving the West to that of his return to it with the Duke of Monmouth, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief, and who, on the 22nd of June, encountered the Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge. In the course of the engagement which followed, no opportunity was given him of playing a prominent part. Sir Walter Scott asserts on two different occasions, that the horse were commanded by Claverhouse; and, in his well-known description of the battle, he adds the detail that ‘the voice of Claverhouse was heard, even above the din of conflict, exclaiming to the soldiers—“Kill, kill—no quarter—think of Richard Grahame.”’ The historical truth is, that Claverhouse was simply a captain of horse, as were also the Earl of Home, and the Earl of Airlie, and that he was himself under the command of his kinsman Montrose, Colonel of the Horse Guards. Beyond stating this no accounts of the encounter make any reference to him. In so far as he is personally concerned there is no reason for recalling the incident of the fight which effectively put an end to the Covenanting insurrection. His presence at it is the single, bare fact that requires mention.
There are no official documents extant to enable us to follow Claverhouse’s movements during the period immediately subsequent to Bothwell Bridge. All that has been stated with regard to his doings at this time rests on the authority of Wodrow, who himself admits, though not, it is true, for the purpose of questioning their accuracy, that the traditions embodied in his narrative were vague and uncertain. ‘Everybody must see,’ he says, ‘that it is now almost impossible to give any tolerable view to the reader, of the spulies, depredations and violences committed by the soldiers, under such officers as at that time they had. Multitudes of instances, once flagrant are now at this distance lost; not a few of them were never distinctly known, being committed in such circumstances as upon the matter buried them.’
The order of the Privy Council, in accordance with which Claverhouse again proceeded to the Western Counties, to begin his ‘circuit,’ as Wodrow styles it, a few days after the engagement which had proved so disastrous to the Covenanters has disappeared. It may, however, be assumed that the powers conferred upon him were wide; and there is no reason to suppose that he was instructed to deal leniently with those who had been in arms against the royal troops. Although no proof can be adduced in support of Wodrow’s statement, that Claverhouse ‘could never forgive the baffle he met with at Drumclog, and resolved to be avenged for it’; and although it would be rash to accept, except on the very strongest evidence, the further assertion that he was one of those who solicited Monmouth ‘to ruin the West Country, and burn Glasgow, Hamilton and Strathaven, to kill the prisoners, at least, considerable numbers of them, and to permit the army to plunder the western shires, who, they alleged, had countenanced the rebels,’ the principles which he unhesitatingly set forth in subsequent despatches, and in accordance with which in the following July, he consented to go to London, as an envoy from the Privy Council, to represent to the King the unwisdom of adopting Monmouth’s more conciliatory policy, and of granting the Covenanters favours, ‘to soften the clamour that was made upon the Duke of Lauderdale’s conduct,’ quite justify the assumption that he fully approved of severe measures against the actual rebels, and felt neither scruple nor compunction in carrying them out.
But, when this has been admitted, it is only fair to bear in mind that there were others besides Claverhouse, and ‘more bloody and barbarous than he,’ engaged in the odious work of hunting down and punishing the Bothwell outlaws, and preventing their friends and sympathisers from harbouring and concealing them. If, instead of indiscriminately attributing to him every alleged act of cruelty and rapacity, as partisan writers have not unfrequently done, care had been taken to ascertain whether he was even indirectly concerned in it, and whether he was so circumstanced that he could prevent the perpetration of it, there can be but little doubt that the list of atrocities imputed to him at this date would assume less terrible proportions.
Nor should it be forgotten that many of the instances of severity recorded against Claverhouse, harsh as they may have been, did not go beyond the letter, or, indeed, the spirit of the law. It was his duty to yield implicit obedience to the commands of his superiors. To condemn in him that loyalty which has always been looked upon as the essential quality of a soldier, and to hold him personally responsible for carrying out with all the zeal and energy of his nature the policy of the Government to which he owed allegiance, is inconsistent and unjust.
To object that, even as a soldier, he was not bound to support a cause which he knew to be bad, is to ignore what his very enemies recognised—that he was no reckless and ungodly persecutor of religion, but, on the contrary, a man of deep convictions and of strict, almost puritanical, practice. No estimate of his character can be adequate and impartial, which does not take into account the essential fact that he was as sincere—as fanatical, if the word be insisted upon—as those whom he treated as rebels.