Some time afterwards, Graham applied for the command of one of the Scotch regiments in the Dutch service, but being refused, the young soldier was so disgusted that he threw up his commission and went to England.
Now, although it did not suit the Prince of Orange to grant Graham’s request, he gave him the warmest recommendation to Charles II., who immediately made him commander of a body of horse just levied in Scotland to oppose the rising of the Covenanters, nominally under the orders of the Duke of Monmouth. Graham found himself vested with full power to act as he thought fit, and history and historical romance alike testify to the severity, and even cruelty, with which he carried out his measures.
He entertained a personal hatred to the Whigs, and his hot temper made him vindictive in public as well as private matters. He had no toleration for the opinions, or mercy for the disaffection, of these enthusiasts, numbers of whom he forced, at the point of the sword, to take an oath hateful to their consciences. In 1679, one of their conventicles having been attacked, the peasants rose and defeated a detachment of his troops with considerable loss. Exasperated beyond words at what he considered a disgrace, the General gave vent to his fury, massacring the unfortunate ‘hillside folk,’ who were unarmed; putting to death without a moment’s respite those who refused the test, and making for himself a road of carnage and desolation wherever his march was directed. Who can wonder that he gained for himself the name of ‘Bloody Claver’se’?
The Crown, however, rewarded his zeal by making him Sheriff of Wigtownshire in 1682, captain of a troop in the Royal Regiment of Horse, Privy Councillor in Scotland, together with a grant of the castle of Dudhope, and the office of Constable of Dundee.
Notwithstanding his cruelty to their countrymen, he was much favoured by the Scotch Episcopalians, until his marriage with the granddaughter of the Earl of Dundonald, ‘a fanatic,’ brought him into temporary disrepute.
On the accession of James II., the King was persuaded (on the plea of this marriage) to remove Claverhouse from his seat in the Council; but he was soon reinstated, and successively promoted to the rank of Brigadier and Major-General, and in 1688 created Viscount Dundee and Baron Graham of Claverhouse in Scotland. At the time of his elevation to the Peerage, Dundee was in attendance on the King in London, vainly endeavouring to prevail on the unhappy monarch to make a stand against the Prince of Orange, offering to collect 10,000 of the disbanded troops, and at their head to stem the torrent of invasion. But James was deaf to these manly and vigorous counsels, though one of the last acts of his Government was to intrust Dundee with the management of all military affairs in Scotland.
Thither Claverhouse (for by that name he is best known) repaired, and on arriving in Edinburgh took his seat at a Convention of the Estates then sitting. Here he endeavoured to carry matters with too high a hand, and finding that some of his arbitrary requests were refused, he left Edinburgh in dudgeon, at the head of a large body of horse. Prompt and energetic in all his measures, the General repaired to Stirling, called a parliament of the friends of the expatriated King, and considerably harassed and hampered the movements of his adversaries.
Receiving intelligence of the approach of a force sent by the Convention to seize his person, he retired to Lochaber, where a gathering of the clans soon placed him at the head of a large number of Highlanders, all enthusiastically devoted to his person and the Royal cause.
Dundee now made a fresh appeal to James, then in Ireland, entreating him to cross over to Scotland, where his presence would ‘fix the wavering and intimidate the fearful, and where hosts of shepherds would start up warriors at the first wave of his banner on the mountains.’
But once more his advice was thrown away. James sent him a small store of arms and ammunition, together with some feeble promises and faint words of praise.