Claverhouse | Page 7

the Convention, is represented as musing over his camp-fire
on the ingratitude of the Prince whose life he had once saved.
"Tu vero, Arctoæ gentis prædo improbe, tanti Fons et origo mali,
Nassovi, ingrate virorum, Immeritum quid me, nunc Cæsaris arma
secutum, Prosequeris toties, et iniquo Marte fatiges? Nonne ego, cum
lasso per Belgia stagna caballo Agmina liligeri fugeres victricia Galli,
Ipse mei impositum dorso salientis equi te Hostibus eripui, salvumque
in castra reduxi? Hæcne mihi meriti persolvis præmia 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