Louis A. Barbé

“ In spite of his superiority in numbers, Mackay did not hide from his men that the task before them was no easy one. In encouraging them to it, he pointed out that, in such a place and with such foemen, they could not hope for safety in flight, but must win it for themselves by the defeat of the enemy. His words were greeted with a cheer, which to Lochiel who heard it, seemed wanting in enthusiasm, and from which he drew for his own followers an omen of victory.
In Dundee’s allocution there was a spirited appeal to the loyalty and patriotism of the clansmen. ”

“ One has occasion to show their vigour after a wrong step to make a nimble recovery. You have done nothing amiss, but trusted too much to honour, and thought all the world held it as sacred as you do.
‘My dear Lord, I hope you will do me the honour to let me hear from you, for if there be nothing for your service here I will be in Scotland immediately, for now I am pretty well recovered. I know my Lord Montrose will endeavour to misrepresent me to your Lordship, but I hope he has forfeited his credit with you, and anything he says to you is certainly to abuse you. ”

“ The Duke is juster than to charge my Lord Dundonald with Sir John’s crimes. He is a madman, and let him perish; they deserve to be damned would own him. The Duke knows what it is to have sons and nephews that follow not advice. ”

“ Beyond that, however, he could only give his bond that, at the King’s return, the money exacted by Keppoch should be made good. Having so far humoured the plundering laird, Dundee depended on his help to engage Mackay. But Keppoch, to whom honour and glory meant little, and for whom booty was everything, found various reasons for refusing his co-operation; whilst his followers declared that they could do nothing without the consent of their master. Their object was, in reality, to add to their spoil, by harrying the country, and to retire with it to their mountain fastnesses. ”

“ It was not till eight o’clock on that summer evening that Dundee gave orders for the advance of his two thousand men. Casting off brogues and plaids the clansmen moved forward down the slope. They were met with a heavy fire, which grew more terrible as they approached the treble line of their opponents. But with wonderful resolution they obeyed the orders given them, and reserved their own till they came to within a few yards of the enemy. ”

“ This difficulty has been met by the suggestion that there were probably other proceedings, of which the accounts omit to make mention; that Hislop was asked to take the oath, and, by refusing to do so, made himself amenable to the full penalty of the law. Such an assumption clears both Westerhall and Claverhouse of the actual guilt of murder. It does not free the latter from the charge of having acted with a weakness and a subserviency as unjustifiable in themselves as they seem foreign to his nature. Under the circumstances, the least that can be claimed for him is an open verdict. ”

“ It is true that the Earl of Menteith himself had good reason for wishing to conciliate Montrose. He was not without hope that the Marquis would ‘effectuate a speedy and right course and method for the relieving of the pressing debts of his poor, though ancient, family.’ Moreover, he had a special favour to beg, and one which illustrates how greatly fallen from its high estate the noble house of Menteith really was. ”

“ When Claverhouse and his troopers rode back to Glasgow, they had no certainty that, in the flush of victory, the Covenanters would not continue the pursuit right up to the city, and endeavour to take the fullest advantage of their success. Indeed, the conduct of the royalist officers rather seems to imply that they recognised the possibility of such a course on the part of the enemy, for they caused half the men to stand to their arms all night. ”

“ Alone of those present, Lochiel had refrained from giving any sign of adherence to the views of either party; and Dundee noticing this, called upon him, in terms most flattering to the old chief, to declare his opinion. It was given without hesitation: To fight the enemy. As he supported this advice by pointing to the eagerness of the men, and by enumerating the disadvantages of a delay, it was observed that Dundee’s countenance brightened, and that he listened with obvious satisfaction to his spirited yet wise words. ”

“ They did so. “Well, I see you are the men I always took you to be; you shall know all my intentions. I can no longer remain here but as a cypher, or be a prisoner to the Prince of Orange, and you know there is but a small distance between the prisons and the graves of Kings. Therefore, I go to France immediately; when there, you shall have my instructions. You, Lord Balcarres, shall have a commission to manage my civil affairs, and you, Lord Dundee, to command my troops in Scotland.”’
After the departure of James, both the noblemen remained in London for a time. ”

“ There was a dragoon all Tuesday night at the change-house at the Bille, and the master of the house confessed to me he let him know nothing of it. They pretend it is for fear of bringing trouble to the country. I sent from the Bille an express to acquaint my Lord Chancellor with it; for I thought it fit the quarters should be advertised not to be too secure, when these rogues had the impudence to go about so.’
Queensberry was as fully convinced as Claverhouse that there had been a plot, which the unforeseen delay in Edinburgh had alone prevented from being put to execution. ”

“ Within less than a fortnight there occurred an incident which supplied Hamilton not only with a justification of the action he had taken, but also with a reason for adopting further measures against Dundee. The Viscount’s commissions as Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief in Scotland had been dispatched from Ireland. They were accompanied with letters from Melfort to both Dundee and Balcarres. To the former he wrote, ‘You will ask, no doubt, how we shall be able to pay our armies: but can you ask such a question while our enemies, the rebels, have estates to be forfeited? ”

“ It is also stated by De Foe, that William Cleland, who, in later years distinguished himself as a soldier and rose to be Lieutenant-Colonel of the Cameronian regiment, actually succeeded in catching hold of Claverhouse’s bridle, and that the latter had a narrow escape of being taken prisoner. Thanks to his coolness and presence of mind no less than to his good fortune, he left the field unscathed, but only when the discomfiture of his men had become so complete as to render any effort to rally them wholly hopeless. ”

“ Fifty-two sail of French warships were already in Ireland; eighty more were on their way from Brest; some of the French fleet had been seen amongst the islands, and had taken the two Glasgow frigates; Edinburgh had lost heart, and offered to surrender if King James would grant terms; in short, everything was so hopeful and so far advanced, that if Macleod did not hasten to land his men, he would have but little occasion to do the King much service. ”

“ On reaching Alvie, Dundee discovered that Mackay had broken up his camp and was in full retreat. For four days he followed him so persistently and so closely that, on one occasion parties of his Highlanders were within shot of the rear-guard. If night had not come on, nothing, in all probability, could have saved the retreating troops. But the ground was dangerous, the march had been long, and the open country of Strathbogie, now only three miles distant, would have given Mackay’s cavalry too much advantage over their pursuers. ”

“ He knew their loyalty to the Stuart cause, and had no hope of being able to induce them to take sides for the new Government. But he might devise means to keep them neutral; and no more was required of him. ‘Keep the Athole men from joining Dundee,’ Mackay had said to him, ‘and that is all I ask, or can expect, from your father’s son.’ He succeeded in bringing together twelve hundred men, with whom he intended to garrison the important Castle of Blair. ”

“ I am informed that the most convenient post for quartering the dragoons will be Moffat, Lochmaben and Annan; whereby the whole country may be kept in awe. Besides that, my Lord, they tell me that the end of the bridge of Dumfries is in Galloway; and that they may hold conventicles at our nose and we not dare to dissipate them, seeing our orders confine us to Dumfries and Annandale. Such an insult as that would not please me; and, on the other hand, I am unwilling to exceed orders, so that I expect from your Lordship orders how to carry in such cases. ”

“ He had learnt that all the castles and forts in England had been given up, some of them, it was reported, by order of the exiled King himself; and no communication from any of his own party had brought him encouragement to further resistance. When, on the faith of a letter from William, he was offered indemnity and full assurance of protection, he agreed to what, under the circumstances, seemed to him to be an honourable capitulation. He was in the very act of evacuating the Castle, his furniture was actually being removed from it, when Dundee and Balcarres came to him. ”

“ For her charity towards the proscribed Covenanter, and for affording his body burial, the poor widow brought down upon herself the vengeance of the Laird of Westerhall, who though ‘once a Covenanter, a great professor and zealot for the presbyterian establishment,’ had become a violent persecutor of his former brethren, ‘as all apostates generally are.’ To signalise his loyalty, Westerhall pulled down the woman’s cottage, carried off everything that was portable, and drove her with her children into the fields. ”

“ I have called two or three parishes together at one church, and after intimating to them the power I have, I read them a libel narrating all the Acts of Parliament against the fanatics; whereby I made them sensible how much they were in the King’s reverence, and assured them he was relenting nothing of his former severity against dissenters, nor care of maintaining the established government; as they might see by his doubling the fines in the late Act of Parliament ”

“ To object that, even as a soldier, he was not bound to support a cause which he knew to be bad, is to ignore what his very enemies recognised—that he was no reckless and ungodly persecutor of religion, but, on the contrary, a man of deep convictions and of strict, almost puritanical, practice. ”

“ If Claverhouse was averse to the summary execution of Hislop, it may very safely be assumed, on the strength of what is known concerning his character, that nothing but his respect for superior authority and the blind obedience to it, which he repeatedly declared to be his guiding principle as a soldier, would have induced him to take any part in it. In that case, the whole responsibility would be removed from him, and laid upon Westerhall, whose orders he merely carried out. ”

“ They were all armed alike, and carried into battle, as their emblem, a bunch of wild heather, hung from the point of a spear. Under Dundee, the Macdonalds formed one battalion of twenty companies. The thousand men that composed the Cameron contingent doubtless included the various septs of the great clan, as well as some of the proscribed and scattered Macgregors, between whom and the Camerons there existed a close friendship.
From the various branches of the Macleans, another thousand men gathered around the blue standard of the tribe. ”

“ To represent him as having incurred the displeasure of his chiefs, and as having been superseded in consequence, is contrary to fact, and wholly unfair to him. Proof is at hand that no blame was laid upon him for the defeat of Drumclog. In a letter written by the Council to Lauderdale on the 3rd of June, it was admitted that he had been overpowered by numbers; and six days later, through Lauderdale, the Chancellor conveyed the King’s thanks to Lord Ross and to Claverhouse for their great diligence and care, and his assurance that he would be very mindful of their conduct on all occasions. ”

“ On the Friday morning Buchan sent his superior officer a report of the stirring incidents of the previous day. After Claverhouse had left him, he had met a man from whom he learnt that there were numbers of rebels in arms in the heart of the hills, on the Clydesdale side, and who gave him a description of the two leaders—one a lusty, black, one-eyed man, with a velvet cap; the other a good-like man, who wore a grey hat. ”

“ Of the army that marched into England, Claverhouse led the cavalry, which consisted of his own regiment of six troops, of Livingstone’s troop of royal Horse Guards, and of Dunmore’s regiment of dragoons. The infantry was under the orders of Douglas, who, in virtue of his rank as Lieutenant-General, was also entrusted with the supreme command of the whole force. The arrangements for the march appear to have been as inadequate as the order for it had been ill-advised. ”

“ Proceeding to Dumfries, where Turner then lay with only a few of his soldiers, the greater number of them being scattered about the country in small parties, for the purpose of levying the fines, they seized him, together with the papers and the money in his possession, and carried him off as a prisoner. After this, ‘in their abundant loyalty,’ as Wodrow characterises it, they went to the Cross and publicly drank to the health of the King and the prosperity of his Government.
In daily increasing numbers the insurgents marched towards Edinburgh. ”

“ Nor can there be any doubt that, from his point of view, Claverhouse had done nothing but what a soldier’s duty required of him. Immediately after the proclamation of Renwick’s manifesto, and the subsequent murder of the two guardsmen at Swyne Abbey, it had been enacted that ‘Any person who owns or will not disown the late treasonable declaration on oath, whether they have arms or not, be immediately put to death, this being always done in the presence of two witnesses, and the person or persons having commission to that effect.’
Such was the law ”

“ In the meantime, Dundee, who, at his interview with Lochiel’s son-in-law, had been assured that as soon as he could get a body of troops together, the clans ‘would risk their lives and fortunes under his command, and in King James’s service,’ was riding through the Highlands in the hope of enlisting recruits for the Stuart cause. From Dudhope, he had proceeded due north, through Glen Ogilvy, to the ‘bare town’ of Kirriemuir. ”

“ At length, about the 25th of May, the gathering of the clans was complete, and Dundee held a review of his army in the plain of Macomer. There was the brave Glengarry with three hundred warriors in the flower of vigorous manhood; and following him closely was his brother with a hundred more. Next came Glencoe, huge-limbed, but strong and active, accompanied by another hundred claymores. Macdonald of Sleat headed a body of five hundred clansmen from the Isles of which he was the Lord. ”