Before the mighty dead.
We laid our chief in Douglas Kirk,
The heart in fair Melrose;
And woeful men were we that day—
God grant their souls repose!
THE BURIAL MARCH OF DUNDEE
It is very much to be regretted that no competent person has as yet undertaken the task of compiling a full and authentic biography of Lord Viscount Dundee. His memory has consequently been left at the mercy of misrepresentation and malignity; and the pen of romance has been freely employed to portray, as a bloody assassin, one of the most accomplished men and gallant soldiers of his age.
It was the misfortune of Claverhouse to have lived in so troublous an age and country. The religious differences of Scotland were then at their greatest height, and there is hardly any act of atrocity and rebellion which had not been committed by the insurgents. The royal authority was openly and publicly disowned in the western districts: the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, after more than one hairbreadth escape, was waylaid, and barbarously murdered by an armed gang of fanatics on Magus Muir; and his daughter was wounded and maltreated while interceding for the old man's life. The country was infested by banditti, who took every possible opportunity of shooting down and massacring any of the straggling soldiery: the clergy were attacked and driven from their houses; so that, throughout a considerable portion of Scotland, there was no security either for property or for life. It is now the fashion to praise and magnify the Covenanters as the most innocent and persecuted of men; but those who are so ready with their sympathy, rarely take the pains to satisfy themselves, by reference to the annals of the time, of the true character of those men whom they blindly venerate as martyrs. They forget, in their zeal for religious freedom, that even the purest and holiest of causes may be sullied and disgraced by the deeds of its upholders, and that a wild and frantic profession of faith is not always a test of genuine piety. It is not in the slightest degree necessary to discuss whether the royal prerogative was at that time arbitrarily used, or whether the religious freedom of the nation was unduly curtailed. Both points may be, and indeed are, admitted,—for it is impossible to vindicate the policy of the measures adopted by the two last monarchs of the house of Stuart; but neither admission will clear the Covenanters from the stain of deliberate cruelty.
After the battle of Philiphaugh, the royalist prisoners were butchered in cold blood, under the superintendence of a clerical emissary, who stood by rubbing his hands, and exclaiming—"The wark gangs bonnily on!" Were I to transcribe from the pamphlets before me the list of the murders which were perpetrated by the country people on the soldiery, officers, and gentlemen of loyal principles, during the reign of Charles II., I believe that no candid person would be surprised at the severe retaliation which was made. It must be remembered that the country was then under military law, and that the strongest orders had been issued by the Government to the officers in command of the troops, to use every means in their power for the effectual repression of the disturbances. The necessity of such orders will become apparent, when we reflect that, besides the open actions at Aird's Moss and Drumclog, the city of Glasgow was attacked, and the royal forces compelled for a time to fall back upon Stirling.