Viscount Dundee

by Louis A. Barbé

‘On Friday last, amongst the hills betwixt Douglas and the Ploughlands, we pursued two fellows a great way through the mosses, and in the end seized them. They had no arms about them, and denied they had any. But, being asked if they would take the abjuration, the eldest of the two, called John Brown, refused it. Nor would he swear not to rise in arms against the King, but said he knew no king. Upon which, and there being found bullets and match in his house, and treasonable papers, I caused shoot him dead; which he suffered very unconcernedly.

‘The other, a young fellow and his nephew, called John Brownen offered to take the oath; but would not swear that he had not been at Newmills in arms, at rescuing of the prisoners. So I did not know what to do with him. I was convinced that he was guilty, but saw not how to proceed against him. Wherefore, after he had said his prayers, and carbines presented to shoot him, I offered to him that if he would make an ingenuous confession, and make a discovery that might be of any importance for the King’s service, I should delay putting him to death, and plead for him. Upon which he confessed that he was at that attack at Newmills, and that he had come straight to this house of his uncle’s, on Sunday morning.

‘In the time he was making this confession, the soldiers found out a house in a hill, under ground, that could hold a dozen of men, and there were swords and pistols in it; and this fellow declared that they belonged to his uncle, and that he had lurked in that place ever since Bothwell, where he was in arms. He confessed that he had a halbert, and told who gave it him about a month ago, and we have the fellow prisoner. He gave an account of the names of the most part who were there. They were not above sixty, and they were all Galston and Newmills men, save a few out of Straven parish. He gave also an account of a conventicle kept by Renwick at the back of Cairntable, where there were thirteen score of men in arms, mustered and exercised, of which number he was with his halbert. He tells us of another conventicle, about three months ago, kept near Loudon hill; and gives account of the persons who were at both, and what children were baptized; particularly that at Cairntable, which was about the time that Lieutenants Murray and Creichton let them escape. He also gives account of those who gave any assistance to his uncle; and we have seized thereupon the goodman of the upmost Ploughlands; and another tenant, about a mile below that, is fled upon it.

‘I doubt not, if we had time to stay, good use might be made of his confession. I have acquitted myself, when I have told your Grace the case. He has been a month or two with his halbert; and if your Grace thinks he deserves no mercy, justice will pass on him. For I, having no commission of Justiciary myself, have delivered him up to the Lieutenant-General, to be disposed of as he pleases.’

Such a report is not that of a man anxious to urge excuses for an action which he felt in his conscience to be unjustifiable. Nor can there be any doubt that, from his point of view, Claverhouse had done nothing but what a soldier’s duty required of him. Immediately after the proclamation of Renwick’s manifesto, and the subsequent murder of the two guardsmen at Swyne Abbey, it had been enacted that ‘Any person who owns or will not disown the late treasonable declaration on oath, whether they have arms or not, be immediately put to death, this being always done in the presence of two witnesses, and the person or persons having commission to that effect.’

Such was the law; and the blind obedience to orders which Claverhouse looked upon as a part of his duty as a soldier, on which he prided himself, and which, as has been seen, he declared in so many words to be his one guiding principle, left him no option as to enforcing it in the case of John Brown. With respect to the nephew, on the other hand, the same spirit of strict discipline forbade him to inflict summary punishment, not because he thought him less guilty than the uncle, but because he had complied with the letter of the law. If further action were to be taken in the case, it would have to be by those who possessed that power of justiciary of which he had been deprived.

This John Brown who was executed in due form of martial law is the ‘Christian Carrier’ whom Wodrow accuses Claverhouse of having killed with his own hand. After representing Brown as a man of ‘shining piety,’ who ‘was no way obnoxious to the Government, except for not hearing the Episcopal minister,’ and after stating that he was apprehended whilst ‘at his work, near his own house in Priestfield, casting peats,’ the historian continues: ‘Claverhouse was coming from Lesmahagow, with three troops of dragoons: whether he had got any information of John’s piety and nonconformity, I cannot tell, but he caused bring him up to his own door, from the place where he was. I do not find they were at much trouble with interrogatories and questions; we see them now almost wearied of that leisurely way of doing business, neither do any of my informations bear that the abjuration oath was offered him. With some difficulty he was allowed to pray, which he did with the greatest liberty and melting, and withal, in such suitable and scriptural expressions, and in a peculiar judicious style, he having great measures of the gift, as well as the grace of prayer, that the soldiers were affected and astonished; yea, which is yet more singular, such convictions were left in their bosoms, that, as my informations bear, not one of them would shoot him, or obey Claverhouse’s commands, so that he was forced to turn executioner himself, and in a fret shot him with his own hand, before his own door, his wife with a young infant standing by, and she very near the time of her delivery of another child. When tears and entreaties could not prevail, and Claverhouse had shot him dead, I am credibly informed the widow said to him, “Well, sir, you must give an account of what you have done.” Claverhouse answered, “To men I can be answerable, and as for God, I’ll take Him into mine own hand.” I am well informed that Claverhouse himself frequently acknowledged afterwards that John Brown’s prayer left such impressions upon his spirit that he could never get altogether worn off, when he gave himself liberty to think of it.’

A comparison of the two accounts might suffice to establish their respective credibility. But another test is available. There is a third version of the death of John Brown. It is given by Patrick Walker, a pedlar and Covenanting martyrologist, who implies that he himself got it from Brown’s widow, ‘sitting upon her husband’s gravestone.’ Apart from minor discrepancies between his narrative and that of Wodrow, there are at least three important points with regard to which it directly confirms Claverhouse’s report. It not only asserts that the carrier, when brought to his house, was examined by his captor, but it also adds that though a man of a stammering speech, he yet answered distinctly and solidly. In contradiction of the statement that ‘with some difficulty he was allowed to pray,’ it represents Claverhouse as saying to him, ‘Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die.’ Most important of all, however, it affirms distinctly and circumstantially that ‘Claverhouse ordered six soldiers to shoot him,’ and that ‘the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground.’

Within a week after the shooting of John Brown, there occurred another execution, the responsibility for which has been laid on Claverhouse by several of the writers who chronicle the sufferings of the Covenanters at this time The first of them is Alexander Shields. ‘The said Claverhouse,’ he says, ‘together with the Earl of Dumbarton and Lieutenant-General Douglas, caused Peter Gillies, John Bryce, Thomas Young (who was taken by the Laird of Lee), William Fiddisone, and John Buiening to be put to death upon a gibbet, without legal trial or sentence, suffering them neither to have a Bible nor to pray before they died.’ De Foe, whilst deepening the atrocity of the deed, allows no one to share the guilt of it with Claverhouse. According to him, somebody had maliciously told Graham that five men who lay in ‘several prisons,’ to which they had been committed by ‘other persecutors,’ were ‘of the Whigs that used the field meetings; upon which, without any oath made of the fact, or any examination of the men, without any trial or other sentence than his own command, his bloody soldiers fetched them all to Mauchline, a village where his headquarters were, and hanged them immediately, not suffering them to enter into any house at their coming, nor at the entreaty of the poor men would permit one to lend them a Bible, who it seems offered it, nor allow them a moment to pray to God.’

The case of two of these men, that of Peter Gillies and John Bryce has been cited by Macaulay as one of the instances of the crimes by which Claverhouse and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the Western Lowlands into madness. His account, based on that given by Wodrow, refutes the statement made by De Foe as to the absence of all legal formality. He admits that the two artisans were tried by a military tribunal consisting of fifteen men; and thus sets aside what both Shields and De Foe put forward as the crowning atrocity of the deed. But, on the other hand, by mentioning the execution amongst other alleged instances of Claverhouse’s cruelty, he leaves the reader under the impression that it was he and his dragoons who acted as judge and jury. Now Wodrow distinctly states that, on being taken to Mauchline, Gillies and Bryce, ‘with some others, were examined by Lieutenant-General Drummond,’ and that ‘an assize was called of fifteen of the soldiers,’ with Drummond himself as ‘Commissioner of Justiciary.’ Claverhouse’s name does not once occur in Wodrow’s detailed account of the incident, and evidence to connect him directly and personally with the trial or execution is consequently wanting.