Viscount Dundee

by Louis A. Barbé

More than twelve months earlier, on the report that an ‘indulgence’ was to be granted, he had protested to Queensberry against such a course, and had expressed a hope that nobody would be so mad as to advise it. There is every reason to suppose that, as soon as the opportunity occurred, he laid before the King opinions consonant with this, and was directly instrumental in the appointment of a Circuit Court of Justiciary for the enforcement of the Test Act. It was his views which the royal proclamation embodied in the statement that the indemnities, indulgences, and other favours granted to the fanatic and disaffected party had hitherto produced no other effect than to encourage them to further disorders and to embolden them to abuse the royal goodness; it was his conviction to which it gave utterance in the assertion that neither difference in religion, nor tenderness of conscience, but merely principles of disloyalty and disaffection to the Government moved them to disturb the quiet of the King’s reign and the peace of his kingdom; and it was his experience of the evasions and subterfuges used by them which dictated the steps to be taken, not only for the punishment of obstinate recusants, but also for the encouragement of the well-intentioned whom circumstances might hitherto have prevented from formally signifying their submission and promising obedience.

The first sitting of the Circuit Court of Justiciary was to be held at Stirling on the 5th of June. A few days previously, the Privy Council issued an order that Colonel John Graham of Claverhouse should go along with the Justices during their whole progress in the Justice Air, and should command the forces in every place visited by them, with the exception of Glasgow and Stirling, where it was supposed the Lieutenant-General would be present. To this circumstance we owe it that a report of the only case in which sentence of death was pronounced, can be given in his own words. It is contained in a letter to the Lord Chancellor, and is deserving of notice, not merely on account of the facts which it relates, for those may be gathered from other documents, but also because of the sentiments and principles which the writer found opportunity to express in it, and which help us to understand the spirit by which Claverhouse was actuated, and the view which he took of both duty and expediency in carrying out the law.

As a brief recapitulation of Boog’s case, the writer says: ‘He was actually in the rebellion; continued in that state for four years; and now comes in with a false, sham certificate to fool the judges. For, being desired to give his oath that he had taken the bond, he positively refused. Being asked if Bothwell Bridge was a rebellion, refused to declare it so. Or the Bishop’s murder, a murder. And positively refused, in the face of the Court, the benefit of the King’s indemnity by taking the Test. Upon which the Judges, moved by the outcry of all the bystanders, as by their conviction of the wickedness of the man, referred the matter to the knowledge of an inquest, who brought him in guilty. After which, he begged to acknowledge his folly; and offered to take the Test, with the old gloss,—“as far as it consisted with the Protestant religion, and the glory of God.” And after that was refused him, offered in end to take it any way. By all which it clearly appears, that he would do anything to save his life, but nothing to be reconciled to Government.’

After having thus summarised the heads of the case, Claverhouse proceeds to justify the action of the Government in not allowing men to take the Test after they were condemned. All casuists agree, he says, that an oath imposed where the alternative is hanging cannot in any way be binding; and it may consequently be supposed that they who refused it when they had the freedom of choice, and took it after being condemned, did it only because they thought themselves not bound to keep it. In point of prudence, too, he argues, such leniency would be misplaced and pernicious; it would leave it in the power of the disaffected to continue all their tricks up to the very last day fixed for taking benefit of the indemnity, and then, if they should be apprehended and condemned, enable them to escape the punishment of their treason by taking the Test. Against this he protests as turning the whole thing into ridicule; ‘for great clemency has, and ought to be, shown to people that are sincerely resolved to be reclaimed, but the King’s indemnity should not be forced on villains.’ As to the effect which severity in Boog’s case might produce, Claverhouse scouts the idea that it would deter others from ‘coming in’; and in support of his opinion to the contrary, he points to the actual fact that twenty have taken the Test since the man was condemned, and that the ‘terror of his usage’ is generally looked upon as likely to induce many more to submit.

Referring to the rescue of a prisoner, which had recently been effected by a party of armed men, and in the course of which one of the King’s guards had been killed—a crime for which Wharry and Smith were subsequently executed in Glasgow and hung in chains near Inchbellybridge, between Kirkintilloch and Kilsyth, where their ‘monument’ may still be seen—Claverhouse continues, ‘If this man should not be hanged, they would take advantage, that they have disappointed us by rescuing the other, and give us such apprehensions that we durst not venture on this.’ Then he gives expression to a sentiment which should never be lost sight of in forming an estimate of his character and conduct: ‘I am as sorry to see a man die, even a Whig, as any of themselves. But when one dies justly, for his own faults, and may save a hundred to fall in the like, I have no scruple.’

At the beginning of July 1683, Claverhouse returned to Edinburgh. For the next ten months his labours mainly consisted in attendance at the meetings of the Privy Council, and do not bring him specially into prominence. Towards the close of the comparatively quiet period he again appears in the character of a suitor. On this occasion, his matrimonial plans met with more success than those of which Lady Helen Graham had been the object. By what may seem a singular freak of fate, Jean, youngest daughter of the late Lord Cochrane, the lady on whom he had bestowed his affections, belonged to a family of strong Covenanting sympathies. Her father had, in the earlier days of the religious troubles, refused the Bond, and protested against the illegality of the clause which obliged masters to answer for their servants’ attendance at church. Her mother, a Kennedy by birth, professed the stern and uncompromising Presbyterianism of her house. Her grandfather, Lord Dundonald, had been the subject of an inquisition for keeping a chaplain who prayed God to bless the rebels in the West with success. And her uncle, Sir John Cochrane, was an outlawed rebel and a suspected traitor.

The circumstances of Claverhouse’s wooing were not overlooked by his enemies and ill-wishers. Amongst them was the Duke of Hamilton, whose professed loyalty does not appear to have placed him above suspicion, and whose daughter, Lady Susannah, was at this very time sought in marriage by Lord Cochrane, Claverhouse’s prospective brother-in-law. This coincidence afforded the Duke an opportunity of which he ingeniously availed himself to direct attention to the nature of the alliance contemplated by Claverhouse. The way in which he did so is indicated by the following passage from a letter addressed by the latter to Queensberry. Referring to his intended marriage, he says: ‘My Lord Duke Hamilton has refused to treat of giving his daughter to my Lord Cochrane till he should have the King and the Duke’s leave. This, I understand, has been advised him, to goad me. Wherefore I have written to the Duke, and told him that I would have done it sooner, had I not judged it presumption in me to trouble his Highness with my little concerns; and that I looked upon myself as a cleanser, that may cure others by coming amongst them, but cannot be infected by any plague of Presbytery; besides, that I saw nothing singular in my Lord Dundonald’s case, save that he has but one rebel on his land for ten that the rest of the lords and lairds of the South and West have on theirs; and that he is willing to depone that he knew not of there being such. The Duke is juster than to charge my Lord Dundonald with Sir John’s crimes. He is a madman, and let him perish; they deserve to be damned would own him. The Duke knows what it is to have sons and nephews that follow not advice.

‘I have taken pains to know the state of the country’s guilt as to reset; and if I make it not appear that my Lord Dundonald is one of the clearest of all that country, and can hardly be reached in law, I am content to pay his fine. I never pleaded for any, nor shall I hereafter. But I must say I think it hard that no regard is had to a man in so favourable circumstances—I mean considering others—upon my account, and that nobody offered to meddle with him till they heard I was likely to be concerned in him.’ After further comments and protests in this tone of suppressed indignation, he concludes his letter with the following emphatic words: ‘Whatever come of this, let not my enemies misrepresent me. They may abuse the Duke for a time, and hardly. But, or long, I will, in despite of them, let the world see that it is not in the power of love, nor any other folly, to alter my loyalty.’

There is a remarkable proof of the annoyance which Claverhouse felt at the attacks directed against him, and, perhaps, also of his secret consciousness that if the political position of his intended bride’s family did not wholly justify them, it at least supplied that element of partial truth which makes slander doubly dangerous. On the same day he wrote another letter to Queensberry, and dealt once more and at considerable length with his approaching marriage. After again expressing his opinion as to the real motive and meaning of Hamilton’s ostentatious scruples, and repeating the assurance that he was proof against the infection of Presbyterianism, he asserted, if not the absolute at least the comparative, loyalty of the Cochrane family, in which he saw very little but might be easily rubbed off, and added what was even more important, an emphatic declaration of the soundness of Lady Jean’s own sentiments. ‘And for the young lady herself, I shall answer for her. Had she not been right principled, she would never in despite of her mother and relations, have made choice of a persecutor, as they call me. So, whoever thinks to misrepresent me on that head, will find themselves mistaken. For both in the King’s and the Church’s cause, drive as fast as they think fit, they will never see me behind. However, my Lord, malice sometimes carries things far; so I must beg your Lordship will defend me if you find anything of this kind stirring.’

This was written on the 19th of May 1684. On the 9th of the following month, the marriage contract between Colonel John Graham of Claverhouse and Lady Jean Cochrane was signed in Paisley. The bride’s mother had, apparently, proved relentless in her opposition to the ‘persecutor.’ Her signature does not appear on the document.