The last instance drawn from ‘the history of a single fortnight,’ of that lamentable month of May 1685, is the summary execution of Andrew Hislop, in Eskdale Muir. There are two accounts of it. One of them is to be found in ‘The Cloud of Witnesses.’ The other is given by Wodrow. About Hislop himself, the latter tells us that he was but a youth, and lived with his mother, to whom one of the ‘suffering people’ had come for shelter, and in whose house he had died. For her charity towards the proscribed Covenanter, and for affording his body burial, the poor widow brought down upon herself the vengeance of the Laird of Westerhall, who though ‘once a Covenanter, a great professor and zealot for the presbyterian establishment,’ had become a violent persecutor of his former brethren, ‘as all apostates generally are.’ To signalise his loyalty, Westerhall pulled down the woman’s cottage, carried off everything that was portable, and drove her with her children into the fields. Her eldest son Andrew, however, was reserved for a worse fate, as to the actual circumstances of which there are conflicting narratives. That contained in the book commonly known as ‘The Cloud of Witnesses’ states that Westerhall delivered him up to Claverhouse, ‘and never rested until he got him shot by Claverhouse’s troops.’ Wodrow, though he was acquainted with this account, and actually refers to it, so far departs from it as to make Claverhouse the lad’s captor. ‘Claverhouse,’ he says, ‘falls upon Andrew Hislop in the fields, May 10th, and seizes him, without any design, as appeared, to murder him, bringing him prisoner with him to Eskdale, unto Westerhall that night.’
To the first account, which is that favoured by Macaulay, there is this objection, that Claverhouse had been deprived of his judicial power, and, for that very reason had refused to deal with John Brown’s nephew, and delivered him up to the Lieutenant-General. Westerhall, on the other hand, is stated by Wodrow to have been ‘one empowered by the Council’; and that is probably why the historian inverts the parts played by the two respectively. But, against accepting his account, there is the difficulty of understanding how Westerhall allowed Hislop to escape from his clutches in the first instance. Whichever may be the true statement of the case, the sequel is practically identical according to both versions. ‘Claverhouse,’ says Wodrow, ‘in this instance was very backward, perhaps not wanting his own reflections upon John Brown’s murder, and pressed the delay of the execution. But Westerhall urged till the other yielded, saying, the blood of this poor man be upon you, Westerhall, I am free of it.’ Thereupon, it is stated, Claverhouse ordered a Highland gentleman, who, with his company, was temporarily under his orders, to provide the firing-party. But the Captain, continues the account, peremptorily refused, and drawing off his men to a distance, swore he would fight Claverhouse and his dragoons rather than act the part of executioner. Three troopers were then called out, and Hislop fell before their fire.
There are circumstances that make it difficult to accept this statement of the case. If Claverhouse was averse to the summary execution of Hislop, it may very safely be assumed, on the strength of what is known concerning his character, that nothing but his respect for superior authority and the blind obedience to it, which he repeatedly declared to be his guiding principle as a soldier, would have induced him to take any part in it. In that case, the whole responsibility would be removed from him, and laid upon Westerhall, whose orders he merely carried out. But this substitution is not possible. As Claverhouse cannot but have known, Westerhall was not in a position to act as judge in the case; and there would consequently have been no breach and no infringement of the strictest discipline in disregarding commands which he was not justified in giving.
Wodrow, as has been seen, states that Westerhall was ‘one empowered by the Council.’ The commission to which this refers had been granted on the 3rd of January 1684; and, it may be incidentally mentioned that the power which it gave him to judge desperate rebels, could not be exercised by him individually and alone, but in conjunction with two other colleagues. But what Wodrow either overlooked or ignored, is the fact that, on the 21st of April 1685, General Drummond was invested with the whole authority previously held conjointly by the commissioners; and that the royal warrant by which this supersession was effected, expressly declared that all former commissions granted either by the King or by the Privy Council for trying or punishing criminals, were void and extinct. It consequently follows that if Claverhouse acted as he is alleged to have done, he did not merely consent, sullenly or otherwise, to the carrying out of a cruel and iniquitous, but strictly legal sentence, he actually became an accomplice in a deliberate murder of which he did not approve and which he could have prevented by taking up the same position as the Highland gentleman is said to have assumed. Were this the case, the shooting of Hislop would be one of the most indefensible of the atrocities with which Claverhouse has been charged. And yet we do not find that those who were watching his conduct at the time with all the keenness of enmity, and who would gladly have availed themselves of such an opportunity for doing him an ill turn, took any notice of the occurrence.
Still more convincing is it, that the Covenanting writers who record the incident, whilst bitter enough in their denunciations of Claverhouse’s inhumanity, are absolutely silent as to the lawlessness of his action. This difficulty has been met by the suggestion that there were probably other proceedings, of which the accounts omit to make mention; that Hislop was asked to take the oath, and, by refusing to do so, made himself amenable to the full penalty of the law. Such an assumption clears both Westerhall and Claverhouse of the actual guilt of murder. It does not free the latter from the charge of having acted with a weakness and a subserviency as unjustifiable in themselves as they seem foreign to his nature. Under the circumstances, the least that can be claimed for him is an open verdict. To convict him on such evidence as has been adduced, and to do so for the purpose of vindicating the veracity of writers who are not even in accord with each other would be palpably unjust.
Matthew Meiklewrath is another of the victims of this terrible time; and if the account of his death given by De Foe were as accurate as it is circumstantial, no term but that of murder could be applied to the outrage alleged to have been committed by Claverhouse. ‘At Comonel, in the County of Carrick,’ states the chronicler of his misdeeds, ‘he saw a man run hastily across the street before his troop, and as he might suppose did it to escape from or avoid them, though, as the people of the place related it, the poor man had no apprehensions of them, but as he took all occasions for his bloody designs, he commanded his men to shoot this person, without so much as examining him, or asking who he was.’ The refutation of this charge of wanton barbarity is to be found in the epitaph quoted in ‘The Cloud of Witnesses’ from a stone in the churchyard where Meiklewrath was interred:—
‘In this parish of Colmonel,
By bloody Claverhouse I fell,
Who did command that I should die,
For owning covenanting Presbytery.