Claverhouse | Page 7

in castra reduxi? H?cne mihi meriti persolvis pr?mia tanti? Proh scelus! O Soceri rapti nequissime sceptri!"
The translation, which is certainly, as Napier calls it, both imperfect and free, is to this effect:
"When the fierce Gaul through Belgian stanks you fled, Fainting, alone, and destitute of aid, While the proud victor urged your doubtful fate, And your tired courser sunk beneath your weight; Did I not mount you on my vigorous steed, And save your person by his fatal speed? For life and freedom then by me restored I'm thus rewarded by my Belgick Lord. Ungrateful Prince!"
[6] The stories of Claverhouse's conduct at Seneff, and of the quarrel at Loo, are told in the "Life of Lieut.-General Hugh Mackay," by John Mackay of Rockfields, and in the "Memoirs of the Lord Viscount Dundee," published in 1714, and professing to be written by an officer of the army. This little book is remarkable chiefly as being the first recorded attempt at a biography of Dundee. The writer was possibly not an officer, nor personally acquainted with Dundee. But he had certainly contrived to learn a good deal about him and his affairs; and as later research has either corroborated or, at least, made probable, much of his information, it seems to me quite as fair to use it for Dundee, as to use the unsupported testimony of the Covenanters against him. According to his biographer, Mackay himself was Claverhouse's successful rival. According to the earlier writer, the man was David Colyear, afterwards Lord Portmore, and husband of Catherine Sedley, Lady Dorchester, James's favourite and ugliest mistress.
CHAPTER II.
It will be necessary now to review the condition of Scotland at the time when Claverhouse began first to be concerned in her affairs, and of the causes political and religious--if, indeed, in Scottish history it be ever possible to separate the two--which produced that condition. Without clearly understanding the state of parties which then distracted that unhappy country, it will not be possible clearly to understand the position of Claverhouse; and without a clear understanding of his position, it will certainly not be possible to form a just estimate of his character. It is by too readily yielding to the charm of a writer, who had not then for his purpose the impartial estimate of a human character so much as the embellishment of a political principle, that public opinion has been for many years content to accept a savage caricature in place of a portrait. It would be impertinent to say that Macaulay did not understand the circumstances into which Claverhouse was forced, and the train of events which had caused them; but it would not have suited his purpose so clearly and strictly to have explained them that others might have traversed the verdict he intended to be established. He heard, indeed, and he determined to hear, only one side of the case: indeed, at the time he wrote, there was not much to be heard on the other; and on the evidence he accepted the verdict was a foregone conclusion. It is impossible altogether to acquit Claverhouse of the charges laid to his account, nor will any attempt here be made to do so; but even the worst that can be proved against him, when considered impartially with the circumstances of his position and the spirit of the time, will, I think, be found to take a very different complexion from that which has been somewhat too confidently given to them.[7]
When Charles the Second was restored to the throne of his fathers he was hailed in Scotland with the same tumultuous joy that greeted him in England. The Scottish nation was indeed weary of the past. It was weary alike of the yoke of Cromwell and of the yoke of the Covenant. The first Covenant--the Covenant of 1557--had been a protest against the tyranny of the Pope: the Covenant of 1643 was a protest against the tyranny of the Crown. It was the Scottish supplement, framed in the religious spirit and temperament of the Scottish nation, to the English protest against ship-money. The voice, first sounded among the rich valleys and pleasant woods of Buckinghamshire, was echoed in the churchyard of the Grey Friars at Edinburgh. Six months later the triumph of Presbyterianism was completed, when in the church of Saint Margaret's at Westminster the Commons of England ratified the Solemn League and Covenant of Scotland. Over the wild time which followed it will be unnecessary for our purpose to linger. The work was done: then followed the reaction. In both countries the oppressed became in turn the oppressors. The champions of religious liberty became as bigoted and intolerant as those whose intolerance and bigotry had first goaded them into rebellion. The old Presbyterian saw the rise of new modes of worship