is all to no purpose.  For we will be no sooner gone, but in comes their Ministers, and all repent and fall back to their old ways.  So that it is vain to think of any settlement here, without a constant force placed in garrison.  And this is the opinion of all the honest men here, and their desire.  For there are some of them, do what they like, they cannot keep the preacher from their houses in their absence, so mad are some of their wives.”

His remedy was to raise a hundred dragoons for a permanent garrison:  the Crown was to pay the soldiers, and the country would find maintenance for the horses, he bearing his own part as “a Galloway laird,” which he was as trustee of Macdowall’s estate.  The command of this new force he was willing to undertake without any additional pay.

It does not seem that this remedy was ever sanctioned; but at any rate Claverhouse so managed matters that a month later he was able to report to the Council that all was “in perfect peace.”

“All who were in the rebellion are either seized, gone out of the country, or treating their peace; and they have already so conformed, as to going to the Church, that it is beyond my expectation.  In Dumfries not only almost all the men are come, but the women have given obedience; and Irongray, Welsh’s own parish, have for the most part conformed; and so it is all over the country.  So that, if I be suffered to stay any time here, I do expect to see this the best settled part of the Kingdom on this side the Tay.  And if these dragoons were fixed which I wrote your Lordship about, I might promise for the continuance of it....  All this is done without having received a farthing money, either in Nithsdale, Annandale, or Kirkcudbright; or imprisoned anybody.  But, in end, there will be need to make examples of the stubborn that will not comply.  Nor will there be any danger in this after we have gained the great body of the people; to whom I am become acceptable enough; having passed all bygones, upon bonds of regular carriage hereafter."[37]

For these services Claverhouse was summoned to Edinburgh to receive the thanks of the Council, to whom he presented an official report of his proceedings which is no more than a summary of his letters to Queensberry.[38]

It was not likely that a man so uniformly successful and of such high spirit would be able to steer clear of all offence to men, who probably felt towards him much as Elizabeth’s old courtiers felt towards the triumphant and masterful Raleigh.  Nor, conscious of his own powers and confident in the royal favour, is it probable that he was always at much pains to avoid offence, for, though neither a quarrelsome nor a wilful man, he had his own opinions, and was not shy of expressing them when he saw fit to do so.  With all his constitutional regard for authority and his soldier’s respect for discipline, Claverhouse would suffer himself to be browbeaten by no one.  In those jealous intriguing days a man who could not fight for his own hand was bound to go down in the struggle.  Claverhouse was now to give a signal proof that he both could and would fight for his when the need came.