Viscount Dundee

by Louis A. Barbé

One of the victims of this popular violence was the Chancellor’s wife. The Earl was so incensed at the outrage that he caused some of the boys to be apprehended; and, next day, by order of the Council, one of them was taken to be whipped through the Canongate. But whilst the sentence was being carried out, the apprentices again mustered in large numbers, assaulted the executioner, and rescued their companion. Encouraged by their success, they became so riotous that the soldiers were called out. The crowd was fired upon, and three persons were killed. Next day further punishment was inflicted on the rioters. A woman and two men were flogged through the city; but the authorities had become so apprehensive of violence that the streets were lined with ‘two thick ranks and defiles of musketeers and pikemen.’

Even the military could not be depended upon. A grenadier was remitted to a court-martial for saying he would not fight in the quarrel against the Protestants; and a drummer having been denounced by some Catholics for drawing his sword and declaring that he could find it in his heart to run it through them was summarily shot. Later, a fencing-master was condemned to death and hanged for publicly giving expression to his approval of the tumult. Another man who was brought before the magistrates on a charge of speaking against the Papists, would perhaps have shared the same fate, had it not been proved on his behalf, that he was sometimes mad.

The protest of the street was taken up by the pulpit. A fortnight later, ‘Mr Canaires, lately Popish,’ but now minister at Selkirk, preached a violent sermon in the High Church of Edinburgh. In the course of it he gave utterance to the opinion ‘that no man, without renouncing his sense and reason,’ could embrace such doctrines as those of the Pope’s infallibility or of transubstantiation. At the next meeting of the Council, the Chancellor moved that notice should be taken of this seditious language. Fountainhall records that ‘Claverhouse backed the Chancellor in this. But, there being a deep silence in all the rest of the Councillors, it was passed over at this time.’

With this incident, which the unquestioned sincerity of his own religious belief makes it impossible to regard in any light but that of a protest against the insult offered to his sovereign, Claverhouse disappears for a time from the scene. There is no record of personal action on his part for a space of nearly three years. The only two events that have to be chronicled are his promotion, in 1686, to the rank of Major-General, still in subordination to his rival Douglas, and his appointment, in March 1688, to be Provost of Dundee, a dignity which, in conjunction with his Constable’s jurisdiction, made him absolute there.

Early in the month of September 1688, a royal messenger arrived in Edinburgh, bearing a letter in which James informed the Secret Committee of the Privy Council of the Prince of Orange’s designs on England. The news was wholly unexpected. So incredible did it at first seem, that suspicions of a device for raising money were aroused by it. The precautionary measures which the announcement made it incumbent on the Government to take for the security of the country, were nevertheless adopted without delay. On the 18th, a proclamation was issued, calling out the militia regiments and requiring all fencible men to hold themselves in readiness for active service as soon as they should see the light of the beacons that were to be kindled the moment a hostile fleet was sighted from the coast.

These preparations were nullified by a second despatch from London, which ordered all the regular troops to proceed at once to England, where they were to be under the orders of the Earl of Feversham, the commander-in-chief of the King’s forces. This new plan of action, suggested by James Stewart of Goodtrees, a notorious plotter who had actually been condemned to death for his connection with Argyle’s rebellion, and whose antecedents were not such as to justify the King’s confidence in him, was received with consternation in Edinburgh. The Council and Secret Committee, relying on the loyalty of the army, felt satisfied of their power to keep the nation in due respect; but they were fully alive to the danger which would arise if the country were denuded of troops. They accordingly sent a remonstrance to the King, at the same time that they submitted a feasible and efficient scheme of defence of their own. Its main features consisted in the retention of the regular forces in their several garrisons, for the maintenance of internal order, and in the protection of the Border by means of an army of thirteen thousand men, to be formed by a combination of the militia with the Highland clans.

This judicious advice was summarily rejected; and a further command was sent to the Council to carry out the former instructions. According to Balcarres, the order was positive and short, advised by Mr James Stewart at a supper, written upon the back of a plate, and immediately dispatched by an express. In the memoirs which the same writer addressed and presented to James in his exile, the sequel is thus narrated: ‘With a sorrowful heart to all your servants, your orders were obeyed, and about the beginning of October they began their march, three thousand effective young men, vigorous, well-disciplined and clothed, and to a man hearty in your cause, and willing out of principle as well as duty, to hazard their lives for the support of the Government, as then established, both in Church and State.’

Of the army that marched into England, Claverhouse led the cavalry, which consisted of his own regiment of six troops, of Livingstone’s troop of royal Horse Guards, and of Dunmore’s regiment of dragoons. The infantry was under the orders of Douglas, who, in virtue of his rank as Lieutenant-General, was also entrusted with the supreme command of the whole force. The arrangements for the march appear to have been as inadequate as the order for it had been ill-advised. Writing to Queensberry on the 7th of October, Douglas reported that he had reached Moffat the evening before, with considerable difficulty, owing to the bad state of the roads. He was unprovided with ammunition, and all he knew concerning his present business was, that horses for his baggage were to be furnished him in England, during forty days, and that it was the King’s wish that he should march to Preston and remain there till further orders.

At Aleson Bank, which he reached three days later, further cause for worry and annoyance awaited him. Conflicting instructions from the King and from Dumbarton left him in doubt whether he was to take the east or the west road to London. In any case, Claverhouse was to proceed to York with the cavalry; and Douglas’s comment on this was that he had never seen such a course adopted before, to send away all the horse, and leave two regiments of foot open to the insults of foreigners, who were expected to land horse and dragoons.

Fully a month had elapsed since the departure of Douglas and Claverhouse from Scotland before they reached London. After a few days’ halt they started for Salisbury, where James had assembled an army of twenty-four thousand men, to oppose the Prince of Orange, who had landed at Torbay, on the 5th of November, and was advancing towards the capital. It was whilst on his march to join his sovereign that Claverhouse received a further and final token of royal favour by being created Viscount Dundee. He had left London on the 10th, and the patent of his peerage bore the date of the 12th of November 1688.