to cancel all other civil commissions previously granted.  Unless, therefore, some particular reservation had been made in Westerhall’s favour, of which there is no existing record, he had no more jurisdiction than Claverhouse, and both were equally guilty of breaking the law.  It was, indeed, still open to Claverhouse to act as he had acted with John Brown—­to put the abjuration oath, and, on its being refused, to order the recusant to instant execution.  There is no mention by any of the Covenanting writers that this oath was offered to Hislop.  But unless it was, it is difficult to see how either Westerhall or Claverhouse could have been empowered to kill him.  Nor is it likely that the latter, knowing well how many sharp eyes were on the look-out in Edinburgh to catch him tripping, would have ventured on so flagrant a breach of the law.  It must also be remembered that neither Wodrow nor Walker, nor any writer on that side, has charged Claverhouse with exceeding the law.  They cry out against the cruelty of the deed, but on its unlawfulness they are silent.  We must suppose, therefore, that Hislop’s case was the case of John Brown:  he had refused the oath, and was therefore liable to death.  But we cannot suppose that if Claverhouse had stood firm he could not have saved the lad’s life.  It is absurd to believe that at the head of his own soldiers, with another captain of the same way of thinking by him, such a man as Claverhouse was not strong enough to carry his own will against one who had not even the powers of an ordinary justice of the peace.  We must, therefore, conclude that he was unwilling at that time to run the risk of further disgrace by any charge of unreasonable leniency to rebels.  Like Pilate, he was willing to let the prisoner go; but, like Pilate again, he preferred his own convenience, and the prisoner was put to death.

On Defoe’s list of victims murdered, as he calls it, by Claverhouse’s own hand is the name of Graham of Galloway.  The young man, he says, being pursued by the dragoons, had taken refuge in his mother’s house; but being driven out thence was overtaken by Claverhouse and shot dead with a pistol, though he offered to surrender and begged hard for his life.  Shield so words his version of the story as to make it doubtful whether the shot was fired by Claverhouse himself.  In the “Cloud of Witnesses” it is not even made certain that Claverhouse was present.  At the close of the year in which this alleged murder was committed Sir John Dalrymple brought his action against Claverhouse.  It is not likely that so shrewd a lawyer would have overlooked such a chance as this, a case of murder committed in his own country; for murder it would certainly have been, were Defoe’s story true.  In 1682 military executions had not been sanctioned by law; and for a soldier to shoot a man offering to surrender would have been as clear a case of murder as was the butchery on Magus Moor.  Yet throughout Dalrymple’s indictment is no hint of any such offence.  Claverhouse is accused of oppression by excessive fines and illegal quartering of troops, of malversation, and so forth; but of taking man’s life unlawfully there is no single word.