Claverhouse

by Mowbray Morris

Another of Defoe's victims is Matthew Mekellwrath. Claverhouse, he says, riding through Camonel in Carrick, saw a man run across the street in front of the soldiers, as though to get out of their way, and instantly ordered him to be shot, without any examination. In the "Cloud of Witnesses" an epitaph is quoted to show that the man was shot for refusing the abjuration oath.

Next we find four men dragged out of a house at Auchencloy, on Dee-side, where they had met for prayer, and shot before the door, without any examination. Defoe gives the names of the four as John Grier, Robert Fergusson, Archibald Stuart, and Robert Stuart. Shields substitutes for Archibald Stuart the name of James Macmichael. In "The Cloud of Witnesses" only Grier, Robert Stuart, and Fergusson are named. In Wodrow's pages the four men become eight: of these four, as given by Shields (Macmichael, however, being spelt Macmichan), were shot at once: two more, Smith and Hunter, were carried to Kirkcudbright and hanged after a form of trial: two, unnamed, got safe away. "It may be," adds Wodrow, "the rescue of some prisoners at Kirkcudbright by some of the wanderers, a little before this, was the pretext for all this cruelty."

It may indeed have been so, and something more than a rescue of prisoners may have helped. The affair on Dee-side took place December 18th, 1684. On the 11th of the same month (just after Renwick's proclamation of war) a party of men, headed by James Macmichael, murdered Peter Peirson, minister of Carsphairn, at his own door. Wodrow cannot shirk this fact: he finds it detestable, and generally denounced and disowned by the more respectable of the Covenanters; but he also manages to find as many excuses for it as he conveniently can in the provocation given by the victim. Peirson, he says, was "a surly, ill-natured man, and horridly severe." He was of great service to Lagg in ferreting out rebels, used to sit in court with him to advise him of the prisoners' characters, and generally make himself obnoxious to the Covenanters. He was also accused of leaning to popery, and is said on one occasion to have openly defended the doctrine of purgatory; on another he maintained Papists to be much better subjects than Presbyterians—as, indeed, from the Government's point of view they certainly were. How far Peirson deserved this character we cannot surely tell. The fact of his being hated by the Covenanters is not necessarily to his discredit; but we may assume that he was not conciliatory in his speech, that he meddled more in civil matters than became his cloth, and, in short, was probably made much after the same pattern as some of the chosen vessels of the Covenanting tabernacle. He lived alone in his manse, without even a servant, but took care always to have his firearms handy. The accounts of the murder vary a little in detail. One says that he was killed in a scuffle arising out of his furious and unprovoked treatment of a deputation which waited on him at midnight, to request him to come outside and speak with some friends who meant him no harm—a request which in the circumstances he can hardly be blamed for having received with some degree of suspicion. But the most authentic version represents him as shot dead the instant he opened his door. Macmichael fired the shot, and the man who called Peirson out was Robert Mitchell, nephew to James Mitchell, who was hanged five years previously for an attempt on Sharp's life.[63]

A week later, on December 18th, a party of Covenanters more than one hundred strong burst into Kirkcudbright ("the most irregular place in the kingdom," Claverhouse used to call it), killed the sentry who challenged them, broke open the gaol, set all the prisoners free, and then marched victoriously off, beating the town drum, with such of their rescues as would go with them, and all the arms they could lay hands on.

It is clear, then, from a comparison of the dates and names, that the men killed at Auchencloy were no innocent folk met together for prayer, but certainly included Peirson's murderer, and probably some of those concerned in the rescue at Kirkcudbright, as the place where they were surprised was but a few miles from that town. Moreover, it appears from another account that, so far from these men having been shot unresistingly, they were part of a larger force which had only been dispersed after a sharp skirmish.[64]

One more instance, and this part of my business will be done. Defoe names Robert Auchinleck as shot by Claverhouse without examination for not answering his challenge, the man, as was subsequently discovered, being too deaf to hear what was said to him. There is no mention elsewhere of Robert Auchinleck; but Shields includes in his list a man called Auchinleck, of Christian name unknown, who was killed in similar circumstances; and Wodrow gives a different version of the death of one William Auchinleck, both assigning the act to one Captain Douglas, who was marching from Kirkcudbright with a company of foot.[65]

These instances have been chosen as the most notorious and the most circumstantially recorded of the indictments made against Claverhouse. Of the traditions that gathered in the following century about his name I have taken no notice, nor of the vague charges brought by writers of still later date on no better authority than those traditions.[66] It was inevitable that as time wore on these floating legends would be gathered to one common head, and that the most important figure would be selected to bear the sins of all. It is of course possible that many and more damning instances might be added to the foregoing list, of which the record has now perished. But the most that can be done is to take what the counsel for the prosecution have brought forward, and to examine it as strictly as can now be possible.

It must always be difficult to reconsider with absolute impartiality any verdict that has been generally accepted for close upon two hundred years. On the one hand, there is a not unnatural disinclination for the trouble necessary to re-open a case already heard and judged: on the other, is a most natural inclination to take every fresh fact discovered, or every old blunder detected, as of paramount importance. The explorer in strange lands is too apt to take every mole-hill for a mountain. And when the verdict is one that has been endorsed by Macaulay, he must be a bold man indeed who thinks to upset it. Nevertheless, something has, I hope, been done to bear out my belief that Claverhouse has been too harshly judged. No attempt has been made to gloss over or conceal any crime that can be brought fairly home to him. The case of Andrew Hislop (a far blacker case than the more notorious one of John Brown) has been left as it stands, so far as the imperfect evidence enables us now to judge it. If that one case be held enough to substantiate the general verdict, if nothing can be set against it, there is no more to be said—save that, if this be justice, many a better man than Claverhouse must go to the wall.

One thing, at least, should be clear. He was no capricious and unlicensed oppressor of a God-fearing and inoffensive peasantry, but a soldier waging war against a turbulent population carrying arms and willing to use them. I have nowhere tried to soften the bitter tale of folly, misrule, and cruelty which drove those unhappy men into rebellion, nor to heighten by a single touch their responsibility for their own misfortunes. I have not tried to find excuses for the men whose orders Claverhouse obeyed, nor arguments to show that in the circumstances such orders were inevitable. But I have tried to show that in no single instance, of which the record is complete, did he go beyond the letter of his commission, and that in more than one instance he construed its spirit with a mildness for which he has never yet been given credit.