gular clergy, who complain extremely when I tell
them I have no order to apprehend anybody for past misdemeanours."[16]
And this scrupulous observance of his orders, at a time when a little
excess of zeal was unlikely to be regarded as a very serious blunder, is
yet more strikingly illustrated in his next letter, written a week later
from Dumfries. In that town, at the southern end of the bridge over the
Nith, the charity of some devout Covenanting ladies had lately set up a
large meeting-house. The clergy, as wild against the Covenanters as
Lauderdale himself, were very importunate with Claverhouse to demolish
this hotbed of disaffection; but he, though he confessed privately to
his chief his annoyance at seeing a conventicle held with impunity "at
our nose," answered all importunities with a calm reference to his
orders. The southern end of the bridge was in Galloway, and in Galloway
his commission did not run. The authority of the Deputy-Sheriff of the
shire was therefore called into play, and with his countenance the
offending building was quickly razed to the ground. In his report of
this business Claverhouse writes:--"My Lord, since I have seen the Act
of Council, the scruple I had about undertaking anything without the
bounds of these two shires is indeed frivolous, but was not so before.
For if there had been no such act, it had not been safe for me to have
done anything but what my order warranted; and since I knew it not, it
was to me the same thing as if it had not been. And for my ignorance of
it, I must acknowledge that till now, in any service I have been, I
never inquired further in the laws than the orders of my superior
officers." This will not be the only occasion on which Claverhouse will
be found keeping strictly within the lines of his commission, instead
of, as he has been so frequently charged with doing, wantonly and
savagely exceeding it.

This Deputy-Sheriff (or Steward, as the phrase then ran) needs a word to
himself, both on his own account, as representing a certain phase of
character unfortunately too common to the time, and as the real author
of many of the cruel deeds of which Claverhouse so long has borne the
blame. Sir Robert Grierson of Lag was regarded in his own district with
an energy of hatred to which even the terror inspired by Claverhouse
gave place, and which has survived to a time within the memory of men
still living. In the early years of this century the most monstrous
trad