in his devotion to the Church as he was in his devotion to the Crown, mattered nothing.  The whole question was to him one of military obedience.  Sorely as he may have chafed at the order, he halted his troopers on the banks of the Clyde when Monmouth’s trumpets sounded the recall, with the same readiness and composure that he showed in leading them to the charge down the slopes of Drumclog; and he would have led them against his brothers-in-arms Ross or James Douglas, had they turned rebels, as straightly and keenly as he led them against Hamilton and Burley.  At the same time both his letters and his actions show that he did his best to discriminate between the ringleaders and the crowd:  between the brawling demagogues or the meddlesome priests and the honest ignorant peasants, whose only crime was that they wished to worship God after a fashion the Government chose to discountenance.  It is not necessary to assume that he was moved thereto by any softness of heart:  common-sense, and a sense, too, of justice, would suffice to show him where to strike.  And it will hereafter be seen that, where his commission was large enough, he more than once exercised a discretion not entirely to the taste of the more thorough-going zealots of the Edinburgh Council-board.

The only distinct evidence we have of him at this time is contained in the aforesaid Orders of Council.  From these it appears that he had been charged by the Scottish Treasury with appropriating the public moneys to his use.  He had been appointed for his services trustee to the Crown of the estate of one Macdowall of Freugh, an outlawed Galloway laird; and of this estate it was alleged that he would render no accounts, nor of the fines he had been commissioned to levy on the non-abjuring rebels.  With characteristic fearlessness Claverhouse went straight to London, and in a personal interview satisfied Charles of his innocence, who forthwith ordered him to be reinstated in his commission and all the privileges belonging to it.[35] It is clear, however, that during the greater part of the year 1680 Claverhouse was suspended from both his civil and military employments, and this will account for the duty of punishing the authors of the Sanquhar Declaration devolving not upon him, but upon his lieutenant, Bruce of Earlshall.

The prime mover of the Sanquhar Declaration was Richard Cameron, who had now become the head of the extreme party, henceforth to be known by his name—­a name which still survives as that of a distinguished regiment of the British army.  It was framed in much the same language and to much the same purpose as its predecessor of Rutherglen, though it would not be right to degrade Cameron to the level of Hamilton and his ruffianly associates.  It took its title from having been fixed to the market-cross of Sanquhar, a small town in Dumfriesshire, on June 22nd, 1680.  Exactly a month later Claverhouse’s troopers (though, as I have said, not commanded by Claverhouse himself) came upon the Cameronians in a desolate spot among the wilds of Ayrshire, known as Aird’s Moss.  Richard Cameron was killed at the first charge:  Donald Cargill and Hackston of Rathillet were made prisoners.  Both were taken to Edinburgh and executed, the latter with circumstances of needless barbarity.