Grahame of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee

Preface

TENNYSON once said that biography should be written by a man who wholly loved the subject of his work, yet loved with a discriminating love ; and it is certain that, while discrimination is essential, a merely academic interest never adequately takes the place of personal sympathy and insight. " Biography — alas ! even the biography of intimate friends — involves, as soon as one tries to penetrate the inner life, a great deal of guess-work " ; and if this is the case in writing of a friend and contemporary, how much more difficult it is to see clearly into the dim recesses of the past ; to enter into the hearts of men whose manners were not as our manners, whose beliefs were not as our beliefs, and whose life's work has been overturned by Time, the great destroyer. Small marvel that the biographer who can show clearly the significance of an historic character is lamentably rare, life being short and art long, and, as Matthew Arnold adds, false information very plentiful.

In such an arduous undertaking many attempt and few succeed ; and even those who have succeeded — those who have breathed life into the dust from dead men's bones, and triumphed over space and time — have scant cause for complacency, knowing as they do that " the best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst no worse if imagination amend them." Imagination, if by imagination we mean sympathy and power to see the inner meanings lying hidden under facts, is as vital a necessity to the historian as to the novelist ; but this illuminating quality has been conspicuously lacking in many a biographer, who, pouring forth upon his reader's head an undigested mass of facts, leaves in obscurity the one essential point, the character and disposition of his subject.

The character of Claverhouse, whether regarded from a worldly or a philosophic standpoint, repays careful study ; and as in his diplomatic letters he intentionally makes simultaneous appeal both to the higher aspirations and to the selfish ambitions of the men whose service and alliance he was courting in his master's interest, so at the present time he will be found to have a twofold power, and in different ways will attract minds which otherwise have little in common. Those who confess to a romantic leaning towards lost causes, and who set high value on the moral attributes of constancy and of inviolable fidelity, will have every reason to pay homage to the memory of King James's champion ; while men ambitious of success may learn its secret from the career of that great leader who, starting his campaign with " neither commission, money, nor ammunition," and with only some forty or fifty horsemen, could by his own unaided efforts and sheer personal magnetism get together in less than four months an army of 6000 Highlanders. The student of character will look upon all the previous forty years of Claverhouse's life chiefly as the prelude to those four eventful months in which he, who from youth upwards " toiled so much " at duties often uncongenial, was granted at last the opportunity to prove himself a " new phoenix risen from the ashes of Montrose."

The present biography — completed early in 1905, some months before the publication of Professor C. Sanford Terry's erudite work on the same subject — was put aside in hope that possibly among the Vatican catalogues of manuscript, or in the private charter chests of famous Scottish families, I might be fortunate enough to come upon important new material ; not such material as is called new merely because it has been hitherto unpublished, but material which would have thrown a flood of light on the disputed points of Claverhouse's life and settled once and for all the controversy as to the time and manner of his death. I believed the missing finish to the Standard-Bearer's epic might be found ; and that I might discover somewhere in concealment letters of Claverhouse to his wife, to his devoted brother David, to his friend

VI

Balcarres, or to his staunch supporter Cameron of Lochiel ; or, best of all, his letters to King James relating to the early phases of the Highland war and plans for the projected Restoration. But such hopes are as far as ever from fulfilment.

The most valuable discovery in connection with Claverhouse was the unearthing by Mark Napier — from the multitudinous Buccleuch and Queensberry MSS. — of the numerous letters written by the " Persecutor " to the Lord High Treasurer Queensberry, one of which is here reproduced in facsimile. Napier's book was brought out in 1859, and in 1880 Sir William Fraser published Claverhouse's correspondence with the eighth and last Earl of Menteith. Since then, though here and there a letter or a fact has come to light, Claverhouse's more recent biographers have rearranged existing evidence, repudiated legendary lore, and cleared away excrescences, rather than added any startling new matter. None of them have presented a complete and living portrait of their subject ; and it is a significant fact that, in a military sense, justice has not been rendered in the nineteenth or the twentieth century to the man who in his own day was esteemed " a second Montrose." This is because biography and history are oftenest produced by mere scholastic theorists, seldom equipped to understand, much less to demonstrate to others, the full significance of a great soldier's strenuous career.

The ideal biographer for a distinguished man of action should preferably be of kindred moral calibre and practical experience ; and there are famous soldiers now alive who by their mental qualities and personal achievements are better fit than I am to depict Dundee's campaign of 1689 and to reveal his merits as a General. But such men, makers of our modern history, rarely can allow themselves the leisure requisite to write historic works relating to a bygone age ; and therefore I took upon myself to carry out a task in which a man of letters who is also a civilian must of necessity be handicapped. I have however been materially aided by the expert criticism of such men of action as I have

vii been privileged to count among my friends, and so the chief claim of this Life of Claverhouse to stand apart from any of its predecessors is that the victor of Killiecrankie is here for the first time depicted from the military and practical and not the academic, antiquarian, or sentimental standpoint.

I should mention that although the vagaries of seventeenth-century spelling are too familiar in the scholar's eyes to call forth either comment or apology, there are other readers to whom such orthographic eccentricities constitute a tiresome distraction from the matter ; and on their account in quoting Claverhouse's letters and those of his contemporaries I have preferred to spell as we would spell to-day. In a work the interest of which is primarily human, and not archaeological, I see no reason to be tied to obsolete orthography which may impede the passage of thought from mind to mind across the centuries. Even in the matter of a title I will not vex modern eyes by strange orthography ; but while discarding " Dundie" in favour of the present mode of spelling, I adhere to " Grahame " as not only used by Claverhouse himself but used still by his nearest representatives, the Barclay-Grahames of Morphie.

Obedient to a famous critic's justifiable reminder that the function of biography is to present a living character, and not to heap up masses of detail, I relegate to footnotes and appendices such controversial, supplementary and explanatory particulars as are intended rather for historic students than for average readers.

It is hoped that while the chronology of Claverhouse's career up to the Revolution, the itineraries of his subsequent campaign, the tabular pedigree, and the voluminous bibliography, will render this work convenient for the purposes of reference, the narrative and maps may prove of interest no less to the general public than to those military readers who by the nature of their calling are best fitted to appreciate " Dark John the Warrior."

Michael Barrington.

Neiv Tears Day, 1 9 1 1 .

VIII

NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

1WISH to express my gratitude primarily to Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Hutton, K.C.M.G., C.B., whose illuminating military criticism has enabled me to do tardy justice to Dundee's Highland campaign. My thanks are also due to the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry for allowing me to select from the letters of Claverhouse in his possession one specially suitable for reproduction in facsimile. My thanks are also due to the Marchioness of Bute for giving me an opportunity to examine at leisure nine of Claverhouse's letters to Lord Linlithgow. To the Earl of Airlie and Sir Alexander Grierson of Lag I am indebted for copies of letters from Claverhouse to their respective ancestors ; and I should likewise mention my debt to the late Lord Herries for a copy of a contemporary transcript (in the Constable-Maxwell MSS.) of Dundee's speech to his troops before the battle of Killiecrankie, and his subsequent letter to King James round which so heated a controversy has raged since 1826 when its authenticity was first questioned. I owe much to the late Right Rev. John Dowden, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh, for the loan of various rare theological pamphlets of the seventeenth century ; and to the late Principal Story of Glasgow for valuable encouragement and advice ; also to the late Rev. Alexander Murdoch, Canon of St Mary's, Edinburgh, the learned editor of the Grameid, who read the first draft of my work and gave me the benefit of his criticism. The late Earl of Strathmore gave kind permission to me to have the famous Glamis portrait of Claverhouse specially reproduced for this biography ; and I must thank Mrs Milbank Leslie-Melville for a similar privilege with regard to the portrait of Claverhouse at Melville House, Fife.

To the Hon. Hew Dalrymple I am under obligations for a photograph of a portrait of Claverhouse now in his possession, and to Mr A. G. Maxtone Grahame of Cultoquhey for giving me facilities to procure a reproduction of the Cultoquhey portrait ; both these portraits are described in Appendix II. For information on various points relating to portraits or documents connected with my subject, I must offer my thanks to the Marchioness of Bath ; Miss F. B. Grahame of Morphie; Miss B. M. Barclay-Grahame of Morphie; Miss Olave Cunninghame Graham; Miss Murdoch; Sir G. F. Warner, Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum; Mr J. Seymour Lucas, R.A., F.S.A. ; Mr A. Francis Steuart, advocate; Mr Edward Watson ; Mr James Caw, Director of the Scottish National Galleries ; Dr J. Maitland Thompson of H.M.'s Register House, Edinburgh ; Mr Horace Hart, printer to the University of Oxford; Mr F. Madan, Sub-librarian of the Bodleian Library; Mr A. W. K. Miller, of the British Museum, and finally to Mr W. J. Hay, antiquarian publisher and bookseller, of John Knox's House, Edinburgh, whose unostentatious but important researches in connection with his country's past should command the sympathy and admiration of all who cherish the historic memory of bygone Scotland. M. B.

ix

Contents

PAGE

PREFACE v

I. THE FIRST THIRTY-ONE YEARS I H. EXPERIENCES IN THE SOUTH- WEST OF SCOTLAND 43

Chapter I : The First Thirty-One Years, 1648- 1679

FAME," wrote Claverhouse's friend Sir George Mackenzie, " is a revenue payable only to our ghosts " ; and nothing is more open to discussion than the seemingly erratic payment of that revenue. It appears sometimes as though the reputation of an historic character is determined less by his actual conduct when alive than by the interpretation put upon it in after times ; and it is a somewhat melancholy reflection that a great man's name must be at the mercy of a posterity which is probably ignorant of — or markedly antipathetic to — the principles by which he was actuated. The despotic monarchy for which Claverhouse lived and died is so opposed to the popular political standards of the present day that it has been classed among such extinct ideals as the independence of Thebes, the martial supremacy of Rome, and the freedom of the Holy Sepulchre. Yet though creeds change and dynasties are overthrown character remains of eternal interest, and to a philosophic mind there is much food for thought in applying the test of Time to bygone causes. The later Stuart Kings do not come well out of this ordeal. Regarded not through the rose-coloured glasses of glamour and sentiment, but with the stern judicial eye of the dispassionate observer, their reputations suffer considerably from exposure to a bright light ; but it must be admitted that they had the power of drawing out the deepest and most strenuous devotion from men of strong minds and fine intellects. The exploits of the four Cavalier leaders, Strafford, Prince Rupert, Montrose, and Dundee, will always serve to keep in remembrance the monarchs who were capable of inspiring such ardent fidelity and such heroic services.

Dundee — to whom Swift alludes as " the best man in Scotland," and to whose integrity and abilities even his personal enemies bear grudging witness — has, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, been depicted as a demigod and as a monster, both of which creations have done much to obscure his character as a man. The difficulty of understanding him has been considerably exaggerated by those who ignore the spirit of his race and who disregard the political conditions of the age in which he lived.

He came of a family which for the previous five hundred years had played no inconsiderable part in Scottish history. William de Grahame was one of the witnesses to the foundation charter of Holyrood Abbey ; Sir John de Grahame, the friend and brother-in-arms of Wallace, died fighting at Falkirk against the English ; Sir Patrick de Grahame, " a goodly knight," fell valiantly at the battle of Dunbar, " lamented and applauded even by his enemies." It was his heir Sir David — taken prisoner at Dunbar in 1296 — to whom King Robert Bruce granted a charter of the lands of Old Montrose. Sir David's son, another Sir David, joined the ill-fated expedition of King David II. into England, and with him was captured at the battle of Neville's Cross. His eldest son, Sir Patrick de Grahame, was one of the hostages for the ransom of this luckless monarch. Sir Patrick's son and heir, Sir William of Kincardine, also invaded England ; and he too endured imprisonment in an English fortress, after the battle of Homildon Hill in 1402.

This Sir William de Grahame, marrying first a daughter of Sir John Oliphant, was ancestor by her of the " Great Marquess" of Montrose. Before 141 6 he had formed an alliance with the royal family, his second wife being the Lady Mary, daughter of Robert III. (the unhappy King in "The Fair Maid of Perth"), and sister to James I. of tragic memory.1 It was the eldest son of this union, Sir Robert Grahame of Fintry and Strathcarron, who was progenitor of the Grahames of Claverhouse.2

The loyalty of the two greatest of the Grahames, Montrose and Dundee, to the ill-fated house of Stuart, was so impassioned that it seems as though they had striven by acts of unparalleled devotion to wipe out the one blot of treason which stained the honour of their name — the midnight assassination of James I. by their kinsman Sir Robert Grahame of Strathearn. This Sir Robert — " a great gentleman and an earl's son," endowed with " wit and eloquence," wonderfully subtle and " expert in the law " — hating the King for his efforts to curb the headstrong nobility, rose and denounced him in council, laying violent hands upon him, execrating him as a tyrant, and threatening to arrest him in the name of the three estates of the realm.3 His daring protest was treated contemptuously by his Sovereign lord, who, instead of imprisoning the offender as a more far-seeing despot would have done, confiscated his lands and sent him into exile. Then Sir Robert, lurking in hiding in the Highlands among the " wild Scottis," " conspired and imagined " how he might " destroy his King," and wrote renouncing his allegiance — vowing fearful vengeance for the wrongs of his order.4

1 Claverhouse's royal ancestress, the Lady Mary Stuart, was married four, if not five, times, ist, to George Douglas, Earl of Angus; 2nd, to Sir James Kennedy of Dunure, ancestor of the Earls of Cassillis and Marquesses of Ailsa ; 3rd, probably to Sir William Cunninghame of Kilmaurs ; 4th, to Sir William de Grahame ; 5th, to Sir William Edmondstone, ancestor of the Edmondstones of Duntreath. She died after 1458, and was buried in the parish church of Strathblane. (Balfour-Paul, Scots Peerage.)

3 " Life and Death of King James the First of Scotland," Maitland Club, pp. 49-50.

4 Sir Robert was uncle of Malise Grahame, Earl Palatine of Strathearn (see Pedigree), who had been deprived of his earldom by the King on the ground that Strathearn was a royal title. It was at the Parliament of 1433 tnat Sir Robert defied King James; and his subsequent conspiracy against the throne was joined by Walter, Earl of Atholl, the King's uncle, whose conduct is marked by treachery of the grossest kind, whereas Sir Robert at least was frank and open in his emnity. Tracked down and captured after the King's murder, Sir Robert was subjected to frightful tortures, which he faced in that same haughty scornful spirit which had led him in the first place to defy the King. His vigour, courage and endurance, were remarkable, and he died as he had lived, aflame with furious hatred, and disdaining to pretend a penitence he did not feel.

How the King met his doom at the Blackfriars Monastery in Perth — despite the agonised warnings of the " woman of Ireland" who begged him to turn back and fly from danger1 — is one of the tragedies familiar to us all. How the treacherous Chamberlain had taken away the bolts and bars from the door of the Queen's room that the murderers might burst in unopposed at midnight ; how Catherine Douglas, putting her arm through the empty stanchion-holds, held the door and thus for a few moments kept the assassins at bay ; how the heroic monarch fought like a lion, and fell at last, covered with wounds, his death-stroke dealt by Sir Robert Grahame — all this may have been a nursery tale for Claverhouse and his brother and sisters, for their cousins of Fintry claimed descent from the brave Catherine Douglas. Her daughter Jonete married Sir Robert of Fintry, nephew of the murdered King ; and it was this Fintry who by his second wife had been father of the first John Grahame of Claverhouse.2 In the last John Grahame of Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, was to culminate the glory of the Grahames ; and with him was to fall the power of the most imprudent, most romantic, most unfortunate, and most unstable race that ever strove to rule a turbulent kingdom.

Though Claverhouse's ancestors had been closely concerned in some of the most thrilling events of Scottish history, the five generations immediately preceding him have left no mark by which we may distinguish them from any other country gentry of impressive pedigree and moderate fortune. They must, however, have been more or less in touch with the affairs of their respective days, for the second John Grahame of Claverhouse was brother-in-law to the famous Cardinal Beton, and his grandson, Sir William Grahame of Claverhouse, was one of the curators of the great Montrose and witness of his marriage contract. This Sir William's grandson, another William Grahame of Claverhouse, in 1645 — the year of Montrose's victory at Kilsyth and overthrow at Philiphaugh — married Magdalen Carnegie,

1 " Life and Death of King James the First of Scotland," p. 52. * See Pedigree.

cousin and namesake of Montrose's wife, and daughter of Montrose's faithful ally, James, Lord Lour. In 1647 Lord Lour, in virtue of his loyal services to Charles I., was created Earl of Ethie, a title subsequently changed by him for that of Northesk, by which it will be more convenient to refer to him. Lord Northesk, friend and follower of Montrose, was grandfather of Claverhouse ; and as he lived to the ripe age of eighty-eight his grandson thus had ample opportunity of hearing reminiscences of the " Great Marquess " he was afterwards to emulate.1

The boy Claverhouse, his brother David, and his sisters Magdalen and Anna would, we may reasonably assume, have spent some happy hours of their childhood under the grandpaternal roof of Ethie, an old red sandstone castle, haunted, so says tradition, by the ghost of Cardinal Beton, who had long ago been Abbot of Arbroath close by.

It is a common maxim of heredity that great men not infrequently inherit some of their most striking characteristics from their mothers or their grandmothers ; but unfortunately we know little about Claverhouse's mother, and still less of his grandmother.2

His dark complexion and dark hair apparently were heritages from his mother's side of the house 3; but as for his character, the sources whence it was derived must always be a mystery. He alone of all his family attained to that pre-eminence which marks the difference between genius and mere talent. The finished product we shall see in the campaign of 1689 ; and, for the sake of what we know he ultimately became, we now must try and trace his childhood, and the forming of his principles, from the few landmarks that the history of his country and surroundings will afford.

1 Lord Northesk died at Ethie, January 8, 1667, at which date Claverhouse was in his nineteenth year.

2 His maternal grandmother was Magdalen Haliburton of Pitcur, widow of John Erskine of Dun. She died before Claverhouse was born, and when Claverhouse was about four years of age his grandfather married again, another widow, Marjory Maule, whose first husband had been William Nairne of Sandford. (Fraser's " History of the Carnegies," vol. ii., pp. 351-352.)

3 I judge this from the portraits of the first and second Earls of Northesk, at Ethie Castle.

Born in 1648,1 the opening years of his life were those in which the Royalist party was sunk in the profoundest gloom ; when Montrose- — declaring that he lived only to avenge the death of Charles I. — went forth on his last daring enterprise, and was betrayed into the hands of his enemy.

At a period when many Scottish Cavaliers, broken in spirit and ruined in fortune, were flying abroad — rather than live in a country first ruled by the Covenanters who had sold their King, and then conquered by the English Puritans who had beheaded him — there can be little doubt that an impressionable child must have made early acquaintance with the stern realities of life and the bitterness of the times.

In the spring of 1650, when Claverhouse was under two years old, Montrose, the greatest of all Scottish soldiers, perished on the scaffold. In the autumn of the same year came the terrible defeat of the Scots by Cromwell at Dunbar, inaugurating a time of abject misery for the afflicted country. The Presbyterian clergy — who, strange as it may seem, were then all-powerful on military councils, and ruled the generals with rods of iron — in their fanatic zeal not only had insisted on the army being "purged" of every officer suspected of the slightest Royalist leanings, but also had compelled the Covenanting General Leslie to abandon his position on the heights and meet the foe down on the plain. The Scottish army — ill-disciplined, ill-officered, and utterly demoralised by those internal jealousies and sharp dissensions which were inevitably part of its peculiar character — had not a chance against the generalship of Cromwell. Though the Covenanters numbered 18,000 Foot and 8000 Horse, whereas Cromwell's army was reduced by sickness to 11,000 in all, Cromwell's commanding genius more than atoned for lack of numbers,

*As his parents were married in 1645, and his sisters are believed to have been their eldest children, 1648 is the probable date for Claverhouse's birth. Professor Terry points out that on June 24, 1669, Claverhouse, on the ground that he was still a minor, was deprived of a commission that had been bestowed on him in the previous February as a Commissioner of Excise and J.P. for Forfarshire; on September 2 in the same year he was reappointed, having presumably attained his majority in the interval. These details, and the fact that on August 5, 1669, he had a precept for infefting him as his father's heir in the lands of Easter Brigton, have enabled Professor Terry to calculate that he was born probably some time in July. (Terry, p. 6.)

and the battle has been characterised as " the greatest action fought by an English army since Agincourt." 1

There is no need to go through the campaign, of which this was the opening scene ; sufficient to say that Scotland, after maintaining her haughty independence during many centuries, was at last bowed down beneath the English yoke. Such was the outcome of that short-sighted policy Montrose had combated with all his strength and fervour from the moment he divined where it would ultimately lead. His warnings had fallen on deaf ears ; and within a twelvemonth of his death Scotland was in the English victor's hands right up to Inverness.

The last stronghold in the Lowlands to defy the conqueror was the town of Dundee, less than a dozen miles from Claverhouse's home, Glenogilvy. The Puritan General Monck did not err on the side of mercy ; eight hundred men and a couple of hundred women and children were put to the sword, and the Governor, Lumsden of Montquhanie, was shot in cold blood an hour after he had received quarter.2

It is only fair to add that slaying in cold blood and violating promises of quarter were habits not restricted to the English soldiery. The most notorious instance in the Scottish army is the case of the Irishmen who surrendered after Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh.3 In the eyes of the Covenanters— as well as of the English Puritans — it was a scriptural obligation to smite the Amalekite, and when the Amalekites were Irish Catholics the obligation was redoubled. To have kept faith with Papists would have been sheer sinful folly from the standpoint of " God's chosen people." Claverhouse as a boy is certain to have been told of the Philiphaugh incident, and of the way a noted minister of the Kirk stood watching the prisoners fall, exclaiming in tones of unctuous joy, "The

1 Fortescue, " History of the British Army," vol. i., p. 245.

2 " Sir James Turner's Memoirs," p. 4. Turner's wife was in Dundee at the time of the siege. Turner had been in Lumsden's regiment. General Monck gave Lady Magdalen Grahame of Claverhouse, whom he calls "Lady Carnigges of the Glenn," an "order of Protection," August 30, 1651 ("Duntrune Papers," Terry, p. 123), so she and her children were in no physical danger, but the mental horror of the situation must have been extreme.

3 September 13, 1645.

wark gangs bonnily on," a phrase which passed into a proverb.1 Very similar was the fate of the Macdonalds who rashly surrendered to Leslie at Dunavertie. The Covenanting General would have spared them, but " that excellent man " his chaplain threatened him with the curse of God if he should fail to wipe out the Malignants. The ministers, with their grim power of excommunication, could terrorise even hardy soldiers such as Leslie, and to propitiate the Kirk the prisoners were forthwith promptly massacred, Leslie remarking in disgust to his spiritual tyrant, " Well, Mr John, have you gotten your fill of blood for once ? " 2

The unhappy condition of Scotland under the dominion of the Covenant and the Commonwealth was sorely lamented by the majority of Scotsmen, and a letter from Principal Baillie, written at the end of 1658, when Claverhouse was about ten years of age, sounds a mournful and almost despairing note :

" The country lies very quiet ; it is exceedingly poor ; trade is naught ; the English have all the money. Our noble families are almost gone. Lennox has little in Scotland unsold ; Hamilton's estate, except Arran and the barony of Hamilton, is sold ; Argyll can pay little annual rent for 700,000 or 800,000 merks, and he is no more drowned in debt than in public hatred, almost of all, both Scots and English. The Gordons are gone ; the Douglasses are little better ; Eglinton and Glencairn on the brink of breaking ; many of our chief families estates are cracking, nor is there any appearance of any human relief for the time." 3

Claverhouse's family doubtless shared in the national poverty and depression, and his boyhood must have been

1 Balhaldie, p. 76. See also Guthry's "Memoirs," p. 203, 2nd ed., 1748, and Munro's " Spirit of Calumny and Slander," pp. 10 and n.

2 " This was reported by many that heard it," says Guthrie, who represents Argyll as joining his word to that of the chaplain. Sir James Turner ("Dugald Dalgetty") was serving then in the Covenanting army, and he says that the minister " never ceased to tempt" Leslie to bloodshed. ("Memoirs," p. 46.) See also Sharpe's edition of Kirkton's "History of the Church of Scotland," pp. 45, 49. Mr John Nave (Neave, or Nevoy), the clerical butcher in question, was chaplain to Lord Loudoun, and (so Wodrow says) "much valued by his lordship."