of Margaret Wilson was still living, 'a very aged widow.' Her younger brother too was alive, and was ready to attest all that the minister of Penninghame had written regarding his sister's martyrdom. In 1718 the daughter of Margaret Lauchlison was still living, and is described by the minister of Kirkinner, who had known her for sixteen years, as poor but pious, a widow indeed, the worthy daughter of such a 'martyred mother.'

If all this is not to be regarded as sufficient evidence, there are not ten facts in the history of the world which may not be denied. Accordingly from this period the martyrdom finds a place in every history of the time. De Foe mentions it in his Memoirs of the Church of Scotland,' published in 1717. Wodrow relates it at great length in his History of the Sufferings of 'the Church of Scotland,' published in 1721-2, and at which he had been patiently toiling for the previous seven years. Patrick Walker tells the story in 1727. And last of all Lord Macaulay in our own day has given it a page in his imperishable history. The most remarkable thing of all is this, that no writer till now has ever denied the fact. In not one of the countless letters, pamphlets, diaries, histories, which have been published from the year 1685 down to the year 1862, has there been any specific denial of the facts stated in the host of authorities which we have now quoted. It has been reserved for Mr. Mark Napier to make the astounding discovery that all previous history is false, and the most perfect chain of evidence conceivable no better than a rope of sand. But it may be said that. Wodrow himself acknowledges that even in his day' the advo'cates for the cruelty of the period had the impudence, some of 'them to deny, and others to extenuate, the matter of fact.' We can quite understand this. No doubt there were men then living who would fain deny this atrocity and many others beside. Grierson of Lagg was still living, and, in the change of times, would be as reluctant to confess it as the murderer is to confess his midnight crime. Others through ignorance might deny it, hardly able to believe anything so dreadful. But this negative evidence can have no weight against positive evidence to the contrary, and again we repeat that till Mr. Napier arose, no writer was found so reckless as to dispute the fact.

And how does Mr. Napier get over the immense accumulation of evidence which we have produced, of the existence of most of which he is fully aware? Simply by disbelieving and calling by bad names everything which has been written on behalf of Presbytery and the Revolution. King David said, in his haste, 'all men are liars;' Mr. Napier has said at his leisure, that all

VOL. CXVIII. NO. CCXLI.

D

Presbyterians are liars. The manner in which he speaks of some of our best historical authorities is most scandalous and perfectly unparalleled. He calls Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, a systematic calumniator,' a historical libertine,' by 'nature rather fitted for the stews than the church.' De Foe is spoken of asa virulent collector of calumnious fables;' but his choicest epithets are reserved for Wodrow, one of the worthiest of men. He is an idiot,' a low-minded dominie,' We are

a vulgar glutton of coarse and canting gossip.' told he believed in witches and apparitions and dreams, as if all the world did not do the same. We are informed half a dozen times that his uncle was hanged; as if it were any disgrace to die in the same cause as Algernon Sidney and Russell, and Jerviswood and Argyle. In all seriousness we say, that in almost every page of these Memorials' we find language which we had thought scholars and gentlemen had long ago abandoned to harlots and fishwives. But Mr. Napier endeavours to damage the evidence not only by defaming the authors of the narratives, but by showing that the narratives differ from one another. In answer to this, it is sufficient to say that independent testimonies necessarily vary. Let a hundred truthful witnesses witness the. same event, and they will relate it in a hundred different ways. The horrified crowd who beheld the drowning of the women in the Blednoch, would not be all impressed in the same way with the same circumstances, and would not therefore in telling the tale dwell with the same emphasis upon the same particulars; but, while the narratives vary in the details, we hold they are singularly at one in regard to the main facts, that in the fatal 1685 two women were drowned in the Blednoch, on account of their religious opinions, by the agents of the Government. It is highly probable that tradition added mythical circumstances to the genuine narrative. A mythical halo naturally gathers around every martyrdom; but this does not prove the whole story to be a myth. The story accounts for the myths; the myths do not account for the story. How did the story to which the legendary interest attaches arise? Mr. Napier thinks the trial of the women may account for it, but it requires a faith that could remove mountains to believe this.

Claverhouse was connected with the Wigton Martyrdom only through his brother, who acted as his substitute, and was one of the royal commissioners who condemned the women. His work as a 'persecutor of the saints' was now nearly done; but for his achievements in this chivalric field he was raised to the rank of major-general. In 1686, King James, by virtue of his own

royal prerogative, abrogated all the penal laws in the statutebook against Roman Catholics; and, to appear consistent, he, at the same time, issued a series of edicts by which he suspended the sanguinary Acts which had been passed by the Scottish Parliament against the Presbyterian nonconformists, and allowed them to meet and worship their God in their own fashion, provided they did not disseminate disloyal doctrines, or assemble in the open fields. Othello's occupation was now gone. The churches had peace; and the spirit of rebellion which the persecution had provoked, subsided the moment the persecution was at an end; but it was only a temporary lull; and the storm was now ready to burst which was to drive the Stuart dynasty from the throne. James, blinded by his bigotry, began to meddle with the dignities and emoluments of the English Church; the nation took alarm,- and his fate was sealed. Had he left the great Protestant hierarchy of the south alone, he might have done his worst with Scotland, and Presbyterianism must soon have been trampled out under the hoofs of his dragoons. In September, 1688, James himself announced to the Secret Committee of the Scottish Privy Council the anticipated invasion of the country by the Prince of Orange. Shortly afterwards all the troops in Scotland were ordered to march south to meet the invader, and Graham of Claverhouse received the command of the cavalry. While he was yet on his march, he received his patent of Viscount Dundee from a monarch who must now have felt that his only hope was in the military. Happily the military were not required to act; the demented James became a fugitive; and a revolution at once glorious and bloodless ensued.

The horse whom Claverhouse had led into England, after the flight of the monarch whom they had come to serve, made a gallant though foolish attempt to return to Scotland, but Claverhouse was not at their head. He returned to Scotland, attended by only a few troopers as an escort. He came to attend a convention of the Scotch Estates, which had been summoned by the Prince of Orange to settle the affairs of the kingdom. But he soon found himself uncomfortable in the new companionship which the change of affairs had forced upon him. Edinburgh was filled with Presbyterians from the western and southern counties, the retainers of Hamilton, and the other Whig noblemen who sat in the Convention. Among them must have been some of the relatives and friends of the numerous victims of his cruelty. He was insulted in the streets; scowling visages met him as he entered the Parliament House close; information reached him that a plot was being hatched to assassinate

him and Sir George Mackenzie. He brought the matter before the Convention; and Mackenzie exerted his eloquence to persuade the assembled nobles and burghers to take steps for their safety. The Convention took the deposition of a dyer, who declared he had heard two men say that they would use these 'two dogs as they had used them.' Here the matter rested. The deposition was not very definite; the Convention probably not very hearty in its desire to throw its shield over men who were universally detested; and farther procedure was rendered unnecessary by the flight of Dundee two days afterwards.

6

He fled to his castle of Dudhope, attended by Lord Livingstone and about fifty troopers. In a few days he was followed by a herald, who summoned him to disarm and return to the Convention. In answer to this he wrote a letter to the Duke of Hamilton, the president of the Convention, pleading that he had been obliged to leave Edinburgh, attended by armed followers, as his life had been threatened, begging to be allowed to remain at Dudhope till his wife should be brought to bed, and offering in the meantime either to give security or parole not to disturb the peace.' With this letter before him, Mr. Napier has ventured to challenge Lord Macaulay's account of this passage in our chevalier's history. He declared himself,' says Macaulay, ready to return to Edinburgh, if only he would be 'assured that he should be protected against lawless violence; and he offered to give his word of honour, or if that were not sufficient, to give bail that he would keep the peace.' What is 'parole' if it be not a soldier's 'word of honour,' and what is the difference between 'security' and bail'? The truth is, at the very moment Dundee was writing this letter he was plotting treason, impatiently expecting a commission from the fugitive James as commander-in-chief of the forces in Scotland, and in a month afterwards, notwithstanding his promises and pretensions to the president of the Convention, he was in the field gathering the Highland clans around the royal standard. The battle of Killiekrankie soon followed. The savage screams and fierce onset of the Gaels carried terror into the Lowland soldiery unaccustomed to such a mode of battle, and they were driven in confusion down the defile from which they had emerged. During the short struggle, however, Dundee received a musket-shot, of which he died on the following day.

Having thus traced the history of Claverhouse to its close, we are now able to form an estimate of his character. He was not the monster which the alarmed imagination of the Scotch peasantry pictured him to be. Bullets did not rebound harm

less from his body, nor was the charger which he rode impervious to steel. He hunted conventiclers on the hills rather on account of the commission he held from the king than of any covenant he had entered into with the devil. His many portraits give him a handsome countenance, but in some of them there is betrayed a decidedly forbidding and sulky expression. That he was proud, self-willed, and of a violent temper is allowed even by his apologists. On one occasion he so far forgot himself as to threaten to strike Sir John Dalrymple in presence of the Privy Council; and in truth the best defence which can be made for many of his actions is to say that they were done in hot blood. But to say that he was hot-tempered is very different from saying that he was a man of warm affections. The very opposite appears to have been the case. So far as we can judge from the history of his marriage and of his married life he was of a singularly cold temperament, insensible to love and careless of domestic happiness. His ruling passions were ambition and greed. To rise in the army, to get possession of a forfeited estate, no matter though it were a former friend's, he would do anything, and sacrifice anything. No one will accuse him of sloth in the discharge of his military duties. He was one of the most active officers in the service, and as such he was valued by the Government, and correspondingly hated and feared by the people. The work he had to do was such as would now be entrusted to police agents or worse, but he not only did it but had a pleasure in doing it. He left his nuptial feast to search for a conventicle, he would ride night and day over waste moorlands to come upon the wanderers' by surprise, and if he caught an ignorant ploughman returning from hearing a sermon by Cameron or Cargill, and had him hanged on a tree, he regarded himself as sufficiently rewarded for his toil.

Mr. Napier delights to speak of him as The Great Dundee ; ' but it almost seems to be in mockery. It is like putting a royal robe on a beggar's back. We cannot discover the shadow of greatness in anything he did. Almost his whole military life was spent in dispersing field-preachings,—no very heroic work! He fought two battles; in the first he was disgracefully beaten by a handful of undisciplined but determined Covenanters at Drumclog, and was himself the first or among the first to leave the field. In the second he conquered though he fell, but the victory was due to the rush of the clansmen, and not to the dispositions of the general. Fifty-five years afterwards the Pretender gained a victory from precisely the same causes at Prestonpans; but who has ever dreamt of speaking of the Pretender as a great general? Yet the one, so far as we may