Claverhouse | Page 3

It would be as foolish to take these witnesses too literally, as it is
foolish to call Claverhouse a blockhead because he could not spell
correctly. For many years after his death men of position and abilities
far more distinguished and acknowledged than his, were not ashamed
to spell with a recklessness that would inevitably now entail on any
fourth-form boy the last penalty of academic law. Scott says that
Claverhouse spelled like a chambermaid; and Macaulay has compared
the handwriting of the period to the handwriting of washerwomen. The
relative force of these comparisons others may determine, but it is
certain that in this respect at least Claverhouse sinned in good company.
The letters of even such men as the Lord Advocate, Sir George
Mackenzie, and the Dalrymples,--letters written in circumstances more
favourable to composition than the despatches of a soldier are ever
likely to be--are every whit as capricious and startling in their
variations from the received standard of orthography. If it is impossible
quite to agree with his staunch eulogist, Drummond of Bahaldy, that
Claverhouse was "much master in the epistolary way of writing," at
least his letters are plain and to the purpose; and the letters of a soldier

have need to be no more.
It is, of course, unlikely that he could have been, even for those days, a
cultivated man. The studies of youth are but the preparation for the
culture of manhood; and after his three quiet years at Saint Andrews
were done, his leisure for study must have been scant indeed. But all
we know of his character, temperament, and habits of life forbid the
supposition that he wasted that precious time either in idleness or
indulgence. His bitterest enemies have borne witness to his singular
freedom from those vices which his age regarded more as the
characteristics than the failings of a gentleman. The most scurrilous of
the many scurrilous chroniclers of the Covenanters' wrongs has owned
in a characteristic passage that his life was uniformly clean.[3] Gifted
by nature with quick parts, of dauntless ambition and untiring energy
both of mind and body, he was not the man to have let slip in idleness
any chance of fortifying himself for the great struggle of life, or to have
neglected studies which might be useful to him in the future because
they happened to be irksome in the present. It is only, therefore, in
reason to suppose that he managed his time at the University prudently
and well, and this may easily be done without assuming for him any
special intellectual gifts or graces.
But, as a matter of strict fact, from the date of his matriculation to the
year 1672 nothing is really known of Claverhouse or his affairs. It has,
however, been generally assumed that, after the usual residence of three
years at the University, he crossed over into France to study the art of
war under the famous Turenne. As the practice was common then
among young men of good birth and slender fortune, it is not unlikely
that Claverhouse followed it. A large body of English troops was a few
years later serving under the French standard. In 1672 the Duke of
Monmouth, then in the prime of his fortune, joined Turenne with a
force of six thousand English and Scottish troops, amongst whom
marched John Churchill, a captain of the Grenadier company of
Monmouth's own regiment. But the military glory Claverhouse is said
to have won in the French service cannot have been great: his studies in
the art of war must have been mainly theoretical. In the year 1668, the
year in which Claverhouse is said to have left Scotland for France,

Lewis had been compelled to pause in his career of conquest. The
Triple Alliance had in that year forced upon him the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle. He had been compelled to restore Franche Comté,
though he still kept hold of the towns he had won in the Low Countries.
But the joy with which all parties in England welcomed this alliance
had scarcely found expression when Charles, impatient of the economy
of his Parliament and indifferent to its approval, opened those
negotiations which, with the help of his sister the Duchess of Orleans,
and that other Duchess, Louisa of Portsmouth, resulted in the secret
treaty of Dover. We are not now concerned to examine the particulars
of a transaction which even Charles himself did not dare to confide
entirely to his ministers, familiar as the Cabal was with shameless
deeds. It is enough for our present purpose to remember that, in return
for a large annual subsidy and the promise of help should England
again take up arms against her king, Charles bound himself to aid
Lewis in crushing the rising power of Holland and to