ith him for all the royal forces then
employed in the western shires. That what he calls "spulies,
depredations, and violences" were committed on Claverhouse's authority
may be freely granted: they were precisely such as a strict obedience to
the letter (and no less to the spirit) of his commission would have
enjoined--the levying of fines, the seizure of arms, horses, and other
movable property from all suspected of any share in the rebellion who
would not absolve themselves by taking the oath of abjuration, and from
all resetters, or harbourers, of known rebels. It would be idle to
refuse to believe that many unjust and cruel acts were not committed at
this time, as we know they were committed subsequently, merely because
they cannot be succinctly proved. It is unlikely that Claverhouse
himself wasted over-much time on sifting every case that was brought in
to him by his spies; and where he was not himself present--and it must
be remembered that he was not the only officer engaged in this service,
and also that his own soldiers were often employed under his lieutenants
on duties he was personally unable to attend to--it is hard to doubt
that much wild and brutal work went on. The whole case, in short, except
in a very few instances (which will be examined elsewhere), is one
solely of hearsay and tradition; and it is no more than common justice
in any attempt to define Claverhouse's share in it, to give him the
benefit of the doubt where it is not directly contrary to the proved
facts and the evidence of his despatches. For Claverhouse, it should be
also and always remembered, may be implicitly trusted to speak the truth
in these matters, for the simple reason that he was not in the least
ashamed of his work. We may well believe that it was not the work he
would have chosen; but it was the work he had been set to do; and his
concern was only to execute it as completely as possible. He was a
soldier, obeying the orders of his superiors, for which they and they
only were responsible. That their orders matched with his feelings,
religious as well as political, for Claverhouse was as thorough in his
devotion to the Church as he was in his devotion to the Crown, mattered
nothing. The whole question was to him one of military obedience. Sorely
as he may have chafed at the order, he halted his troopers on the banks
of the Clyde when Monmouth's trumpets sounded the recall, with the same
readiness and composure that he showed in