Two cases yet remain of the five cited by Macaulay.  With one of these—­the case of the three men shot near Glasgow for refusing to pray for the King—­no writer has ever pretended to implicate Claverhouse personally; but with the other he is directly concerned.  Andrew Hislop was the son of a poor widow in whose house a proscribed Covenanter had lately died.  This was discovered by one Johnstone of Westerhall, an apostate Presbyterian, and, like most of his class, particularly bitter against his former associates.  He turned the woman with her younger children into the fields, pulled down her house, and dragged the eldest son before Claverhouse, then marching through that part of the country.  So Macaulay tells the story, following for once the “Cloud of Witnesses” rather than Wodrow.  According to the latter, Claverhouse found Hislop wandering about the fields, and carried him before Westerhall, “without any design, as appeared, to murder him.”  Westerhall voted for instant death, while Claverhouse pleaded for the lad, and only yielded at last on the other’s insistence, saying:  “The blood of this poor man be upon you, Westerhall.  I am free of it.”  He thereupon ordered the captain of a Highland company, then brigaded with his own men, to provide a firing-party; but the Highlanders angrily refused, and the troopers had to do the work.  Both versions, it will be seen, agree in representing Claverhouse as inclined to mercy but overborne by Westerhall.  The question remains, how was it that the former, a masterful man and not easy to be silenced when he was in the right, could not save this poor lad if he had a mind to do so?

The answer is in truth not easy to find.  The explanation that Westerhall was at that particular time superior in authority to Claverhouse will hardly serve.  It is true that the latter had just then no civil jurisdiction at all, either to condemn or pardon—­no commission of justiciary, as he wrote to Queensberry.  He had been since the close of the previous year in disgrace at headquarters, in consequence of a quarrel between him and the Treasurer, arising out of some action of Colonel James Douglas, the latter’s brother, of which Claverhouse seems to have expressed his disapproval rather too warmly.  His name had accordingly been removed from the list of Privy Councillors soon after James’s accession, and himself deprived of all his civil powers.  His punishment did not indeed last long, nor was it allowed to affect his military rights.  An order for his restoration to the Council had been signed on the very day of Hislop’s death (though he did not take his seat again till July), but his civil powers had not been renewed.  Westerhall was one of those who had in the previous year been empowered by royal commission to try prisoners, and his commission was still running when Claverhouse was disgraced.  But on April 20th General Drummond was appointed to the supreme authority in all the southern and western shires, and his appointment was expressly declared