It was not till the autumn of 1684 that Claverhouse found himself master of Dudhope and Constable of Dundee.  Meanwhile one of the few domestic events of his life that have come down to us had taken place.  On June 10th he had been married to the Lady Jean Cochrane, granddaughter to the old Earl of Dundonald.

This young lady was the daughter of William, Lord Cochrane, by Catherine, daughter of the Presbyterian Earl of Cassilis and sister to that Lady Margaret Kennedy whom Gilbert Burnet had married.  Her father had died before Claverhouse came on the scene, leaving seven children, of whom Jean was the youngest.  Her mother, whose notoriously Whiggish sympathies had brought both her husband and father-in-law into suspicion, was furiously opposed to the match; though worldly prudence may have touched her heart as well as religious scruple, for Claverhouse, though he had risen fast and was marked by all men as destined to rise still higher, was hardly as yet perhaps a very eligible husband for the pretty Lady Jean.  But in truth it was a strange family for him to seek a wife in, and many were the whispered gibes the news of his courtship provoked at Edinburgh.  Was this strong Samson, men asked, to fall a prey at last to a Whiggish Delilah?  Hamilton, whose own loyalty was by no means unimpeachable, and who was no friend to Claverhouse, affected to be much distressed by the Lady Susannah’s partiality for the young Lord Cochrane, and made great parade of his disinclination to give his daughter to the son of such a mother without the express consent of the King; and this Claverhouse chose to take as a hit at him, who had not thought it necessary to ask any one’s permission to choose his own wife.  Affairs were still further complicated by the backslidings of Sir John Cochrane, Lady Jean’s uncle, a notorious rebel who was then in hiding for his complicity with Russell and Sidney, and was even suspected of knowing something of that darker affair of the Rye House.  Claverhouse was furious at the gossip.  “My Lord Duke Hamilton,” he wrote to Queensberry,

“has refused to treat of giving his daughter to my Lord Cochrane, till he should have the King and the Duke’s leave.  This, I understand, has been advised him, to load me.  Wherefore I have written to the Duke, and told him that I would have done it sooner, had I not judged it presumption in me to trouble his Highness with my little concerns; and that I looked upon myself as a cleanser, that may cure others by coming amongst them, but cannot be infected by any plague of Presbytery; besides, that I saw nothing singular in my Lord Dundonald’s case, save that he has but one rebel on his land for ten that the lords and lairds of the south and west have on theirs; and that he is willing to depone that he knew not of there being such.  The Duke is juster than to charge my Lord Dundonald with Sir John’s crimes.  He is a madman, and let him perish; they deserve to be damned that own him.