Though Claverhouse was reinstated in his commission, he does not appear to have been actively employed during the year 1681, the second year of the Duke of York’s administration in Scotland, and the year also of the Test and Succession Acts, which were destined to cost another Argyle his head.  Early in 1682 the Duke of York returned to England, to which fact Wodrow attributes “a sort of respite of severities,” notwithstanding that Claverhouse was once more commissioned for his old work in the West, and with even ampler authority than before.  In addition to his military powers, he was appointed Sheriff of Wigtownshire and Deputy-Sheriff of Dumfriesshire and the Stewartries of Kirkcudbright and Annandale; and he was also specially invested with a commission to hold criminal courts in the first-named shire and to try delinquents by jury.  His letters to Queensberry[36] begin in February 1682, and from this time onward his actions become easier to follow.  These letters give a very full and fair idea of his method of procedure, and in one of them is a passage worth quoting as evidence how far that method as yet deserved the hard epithets which have been so freely lavished on it.  The despatch is dated from Newton in Galloway, March 1st, 1682.

“The proposal I wrote to your Lordship of, for securing the peace, I am sure will please in all things but one,—­that it will be somewhat out of the King’s pocket.  The way that I see taken in other places is to put laws severely, against great and small, in execution; which is very just; but what effects does that produce, but more to exasperate and alienate the hearts of the whole body of the people; for it renders three desperate where it gains one; and your Lordship knows that in the greatest crimes it is thought wisest to pardon the multitude and punish the ringleaders, where the number of the guilty is great, as in this case of whole countries.  Wherefore, I have taken another course here.  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; and in the end told them, that the King had no design to ruin any of his subjects he could reclaim, nor I to enrich myself by their crimes; and therefore any who would resolve to conform, and live regularly, might expect favour; excepting only resetters and ringleaders.  Upon this, on Sunday last, there was about three hundred people at Kirkcudbright Church; some that for seven years before had never been there.  So that I do expect that within a short time I could bring two parts of three to the Church.  But when I have done,—­that