1684.
It will excite surprise to find the Bloody Claverse interposing for a gentler justice in behalf of ordinary criminals—he who coolly ordered the summary death of so many people in Clydesdale and Galloway, for merely sentimental offences. But, while the nil admirari is nowhere more applicable than in matters concerning human inconsistency, it were perhaps no more than justice to one who was at least a gallant soldier and a steadfast friend in adversity to the sovereign who had employed him, if we remembered how amiable in private life have been many modern statesmen noted for severity in public action. Claverhouse was a political enthusiast, who had made up his mind to the particular course—rather a rough one—by which the interests of his country were to be protected and advanced; and with the help of a strong will, and under the call of what came to him as duty, he scrupled not to walk in that path, though by no means inhumane or harsh in the matters of ordinary life. In a letter to the Earl of Aberdeen, written in June 1683, he reveals to us his principle of action in a sentence: ‘I am,’ says he, ‘as sorry to see a man die, even a Whig, as any of themselves; but when one dies justly for his own faults, and may save a hundred to fall in the like, I have no scruple.’[313]
Oct.
One Marion Purdie, dwelling at the West Port of Edinburgh, once a milk-wife, and now a beggar, was apprehended and imprisoned as a witch. She was accused of laying diseases and frenzies upon her neighbours. The king’s advocate was now giving little heed to such cases, and so poor Marion ‘dies of cold and poverty in prison about the Christmas.’—Foun.
Oct.
It is remarked at this time that Colonel Douglas was training and exercising his regiment with extreme diligence. He studied to get his men all of one height, and would allow none to keep their beards long or have bad cravats or cravat-strings, being anxious that they should all look young and brisk. When they were deficient in these articles, he bought them new ones with their pay. He also ‘caused them all tie their hair back with a ribbon, so it cannot blow in their eyes when they visy at their firing.’ (Can this have been the origin of tied hair?) A more important regulation still of this commander—‘He discharges any of their officers to keep cellars, whereby they made their soldiers waste their pay in drinking.’—Foun.
Oct.