door;” but, in truth, a reason to account for their parting is very easily found.  With the campaign of 1677 all fighting on the Continent was stayed for a time.  Claverhouse’s profession was fighting.  After the peace of Nimeguen in 1678 Scotland was the only European country then offering a chance of employment to a soldier of fortune.  In 1677, accordingly, he resigned his commission in the Dutch service and crossed over into England, taking with him a reputation for courage and ability that at once recommended him to the King and Duke of York for a man likely to be useful in such affairs as they had then on hand.  Indeed, the character that it is clear he brought back with him from Holland is alone sufficient to disprove the story of the quarrel in the courtyard at Loo.[6]

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Fountainhall’s “Historical Notices:”  Napier’s “Memorials of Dundee,” i. 183.  The decision in question is dated July 24th, 1687, and certainly appears to prove that Claverhouse did not attain his majority till 1664, which would fix his birth in the year above given.

[2] The “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel” were printed for the Abbotsford Club in 1842.  They are believed to have been written between 1730 and 1740 by John Drummond of Bahaldy, a grandson, or great-grandson, of Lochiel.  Several copies of the manuscript are in existence, of which the best is said by the editor to be the one then in the possession of Mr. Crawfurd of Cartsburn.  It is written in a clear hand upon small quarto paper, and bound in two volumes.  On the fly-leaf of the first volume is written “Aug. 7. 1732, Jo.  Drummond.”  See also Burnet’s “History of My Own Time,” ii. 553; Dalrymple’s “Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland,” i. 344; Burton’s “History of Scotland,” vii. 360; Napier’s “Memorials of Viscount Dundee,” i. 16-32, and 178-9.  Burnet married Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of the Earl of Cassilis and aunt of Lady Dundee.  In point of style and arrangement, of taste and temper—­in everything, in short, which helps to make literature, Napier’s book is perhaps as bad as it is possible for a book to be.  But his industry is unimpeachable; and, through the kindness of the late Duke of Buccleuch, he was able to publish no less than thirty-seven letters written in Claverhouse’s own hand to the first Duke of Queensberry, not one of which had been included in the collection printed for the Bannatyne Club in 1826, nor was, in fact, known to be in existence by anyone outside the family of Buccleuch.  His book includes also the fragment of a memoir of Dundee and his times, left in manuscript by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, of Hoddam, Walter Scott’s friend.  The memoir was thrown up, it is said, in despair on the appearance of “Old Mortality.”  Some idea of the extent to which Napier suffered from the Lues Boswelliana may be gathered from the fact that he regards even the Claverhouse of that incomparable romance as a libel.