I propose now to examine, with more care than there has yet been occasion for, those charges of wanton and illegal cruelty which have for close upon two centuries formed the basis of the popular—­I had almost written the historical—­conception of the character of Claverhouse.  I have used the words “illegal cruelty” because Claverhouse is not only commonly believed to have far surpassed all his contemporaries in his treatment of the Scottish Covenanters, but to have even gone beyond the sanction of a law little disposed to be illiberal in such matters.  Some reason has, I trust, been already shown for at least reconsidering the popular verdict.  But as we are now approaching that period of his life when, for a time all too short for his own reputation, Claverhouse at last found free play for those eminent abilities which none have denied him, it will be well, before passing into this larger field, to be finally rid of a most tiresome and distasteful duty.  The controversial element is, I fear, inseparable from this part of the subject, but I shall endeavour to do with as little of it as possible.

Although the significant title of “the Killing Time” seems to have been occasionally used in Scotland during the subsequent century to cover the whole period from Lauderdale’s administration to the Revolution, yet the phrase was originally and more properly applied to the years of James’s reign alone.  The most notorious of the acts attributed to Claverhouse were, as a fact, committed within that time; but it will be more convenient not to adhere too rigidly to chronological sequence, and to take the charges rather in order of their notoriety and of the importance of those who have assumed them to be true.  Following this order, the two first on the list will naturally be the death, by Claverhouse’s own hand, of John Brown, and the deaths, by drowning on the sands of Solway Firth, of the two women, Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson—­popularly known as the Wigtown Martyrs.

An attempt has been made to prove that this last affair is a pure romance of Covenanting tradition.  It has never been disputed that the women were tried for high treason (that is to say, for refusing to abjure the Covenant and to attend Episcopal worship) and condemned to death; but it has been denied that the sentence was ever carried into effect, on the strength of a reprieve granted by the Council at Edinburgh before the day of execution.  That a reprieve, or rather a remand, was granted is certain, as the pages of the Council register remain to this day to testify.  But it is not so certain that the decision of the Council at Edinburgh ever reached the magistrates at Wigtown; and that, if it did reach them, they at least paid no attention to it, remained for upwards of a century and a half the fixed opinion of all writers and readers of history.  The women were sentenced on April 18th, 1685:  the remand is dated April 30th, but the period for which it was to run has been left blank, pending the result of a recommendation for full pardon with which it was accompanied:  the sentence was executed on May 11th—­in Wodrow’s words, “a black and very remarkable day for blood in several places.”