be able to judge of that hero by a truer test than what he calls, in a striking alliterative climax, the fanaticism of a Wodrow, the fancy of a Scott, or the ferocity of a Macaulay!" Nor let us be so unjust as to deny to Mr. Napier the merit of research, although it will appear before we have done with him that he has prodigiously overrated his own achievements. It is certain he has no lack of zeal for the cause to which he has devoted himself. He evidently feels that he is engaged in a religious work. He evidently believes that he has a great mission to perform in setting the world right by showing that the bloody Claverhouse of tradition was the most humane of men, and that the Cameronians, whom he hunted on the hills, were Thugs,' assas'sins,' 'ruffians,' and wild cats.' 6 He believes in his paradox, as thoroughly as the Covenanters believed in their covenant; and we suppose that, like them, he would cheerfully die for it.

6

He

The first portion of the Memorials of Dundee is taken from an unfinished MS., left by the late Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. This Mr. Sharpe was an Edinburgh celebrity in his day. He was a friend of Sir Walter Scott; fond of antiquarian research; possessed of some wit; an ardent highchurchman and Tory, and regarded with proud disdain all Presbyterians and Whigs. Scott spoke of him, in complimentary fashion, as the Horace Walpole of Scotland. took a curious way of showing his contempt for the Covenanters; he carefully edited and published two high-flying covenanting manuscripts. The first was Kirkton's Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland;' and the other was 'Law's Memorials of Memorable Things.' The text of these devout believers in Presbytery and the Covenant he illustrated by notes of his own; and it is amusing, though not edifying, to read the sneers of the editor at what he conceives to be the fanaticism of his author. The notes often display much out-ofthe-way reading, but they are always designed to cast discredit on the historian, or to exhibit in a ridiculous light the heroes of the history. For scandalous stories he had an especial affection; and every piece of filthy gossip retailed by the pamphleteers and libellers of the time in regard to the preachers and leading nobles of the kirk, he has piously preserved for the instruction of the readers of Kirkton and Law. Such a man was quite after Mr. Napier's own heart; and as he had begun a Life of Claverhouse, but died, leaving it in an unfinished state, the MS. is now printed and made to form the first part of the Memorials of Dundee. Having thus seen something regarding the composition of the book, we must now hasten on to examine its contents.

John Graham, the subject of the Memorials,' was born in the

year 1643. According to the Scotch fashion, he was usually called by the name of his paternal property of Claverhouse,' in Forfarshire, a designation which was sometimes abbreviated into Clavers. In 1665 he matriculated at St. Leonard's College, St. Andrew's, where he probably picked up a little learning, but which he never afterwards turned to account. Sir Walter Scott, in criticising one of his letters, remarked that he spelled like a washerwoman; and others have caught up and echoed the pointed expression. But the truth is, the rules of spelling were not fixed in Scotland in his time, and Claverhouse spelled neither better nor worse than his contemporaries. After finishing his university education, which appears to have been at an age much riper than was or is usual in Scotland, he repaired to France and served as a volunteer under the banners of the 'grand monarque.' France was the land to which Scotch military adventurers had from time immemorial resorted to seek for glory and pay; but in Germany and Holland a new field for enterprise had been recently opened up. William, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of Holland, was at the head of the Dutch armies, and the young Scotchman probably thought that by his patronage he might obtain more rapid promotion than he could in Catholic France, no longer the ally of his native country. For this, or some other reason, he changed sides, passed from France into Holland, and managed to secure the place of a cornet in one of William's own troops of horse-guards. The battle of Seneff was fought two years afterwards, and there is a story, though not very well authenticated, that during the changing fortunes of that eventful day, the cornet was the means of saving the Prince's liberty, if not his life. His charger had floundered in a bog, and in a few minutes more he would have been surrounded by the French cavalry, when Graham dismounted and brought him off on his own horse. Mr. Napier groans deeply over this incident in the opening career of his hero; for, had he only left the Dutch Stadtholder to perish in his marsh, there had been no revolution,- no claim of right to secure our liberties, and we should still have been living under the benign sway of the Stuarts. brave action,' says the biographer, was performed in an evil 'hour for himself and his native monarchs. Had it not been for his luckless aid, the persecutor of his family, the evil genius of the unfortunate James, the fiend of Glencoe, might have sunk innocuous and comparatively unknown in the depths of a 'Batavian marsh.' The cornet, as the story goes, received the command of a troop of horse for his gallantry; but, presuming on the obligation under which he had laid the Prince, he shortly

This

The

afterwards solicited a regiment which had become vacant. Prince pleaded a previous promise as an excuse for declining to grant the request; but our ambitious cavalier thought himself slighted, and left the service in disgust, which, of course, gives occasion to his biographer to declaim against Dutch ingratitude. In 1676, or 1677, he returned to his native country to seek for employment there. Let us glance at the state of Scotland at the period of his return.

The

Scotland had never renounced, as England had, its allegiance to the Stuarts. On the death of Charles I. it proclaimed Charles II., and paid for its loyalty by the disastrous defeats of Dunbar and Worcester. At the Restoration the rejoicings were as universal as they were insane. A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed, sermons were preached, barrels of ale and wine broached; and in rude fire-works Oliver Cromwell was seen pursued by the devil, to the immense delight of the people. The new monarch wrote a letter to the Presbytery of Edinburgh promising to protect the Church established by law. Presbytery enclosed the precious document in a silver shrine. The Earl of Lauderdale, who was known to have the royal confidence, wrote to an eminent minister, named Douglas, assuring him that no alteration was designed in the government of the Church, and that at the King's request he had already drawn up a proclamation for the calling of a General Assembly. It had been well if the King had kept by his pledged word, for if he had done so he would have preserved for ever the hearts of his Scottish subjects. And Presbytery now was different from what it had been twenty years before, when the Assembly domineered over the Parliament, insulted the King, and sent an army over the border to extirpate prelacy and sectarianism, according to the solemn league and covenant. The frenzy of these high-handed days was gone. The fever had consumed its own strength; moderation of sentiment had returned; and had the Presbyterian clergy been preserved and fostered by the King's breath, if they did not become obsequious they would at least have been loyal.

But there were soon indications that this was not the policy of the Government. So soon as the monarch felt himself firmly seated on the English throne, he knew he might do with Scotland as he pleased, and in his heart he had no liking for Presbytery. The Marquis of Argyle and James Guthrie, an able but a somewhat violent Presbyterian minister, were sent to the scaffold, for causes which would have consigned the advocates who conducted their prosecution, the jury who tried them, the judges who condemned them, and indeed one half of the

whole kingdom, to the same fate. The Parliament passed the famous Recissory Act, and thus destroyed by one stroke of the pen the whole legislation of the last twenty years. That period was to be a blank in the history of the country-a desolation and a warning. This was followed by the restoration of Episcoрасу- —a thing as hateful as Popery to the covenanted Scotchman of two centuries ago. Still the nation was weary of contention and longed for peace, and had a particle of moderation or common sense guided the counsels of the King, the change might have been effected without the State being convulsed. But it was resolved to make the ministers who had been inducted into their parishes during the Commonwealth, feel the yoke. They were required to seek presentation from the patrons, and institution from the bishops, under pain of the forfeiture of their benefices. They hesitated to comply with what seemed to them not only a personal humiliation but an open abandonment of their most cherished principles; and in consequence of this three hundred of them were driven from their manses, their livings, and their parishes. The whole west of Scotland had scarcely a single minister left. The Royal Commissioner, the Primate, and the Privy Council were themselves aghast at the ruin they had wrought.

4

It was not so easy to supply the vacancies which had been made. Bishop Burnet says that a hue and cry went out over all the country for ministers; but at a period when the educated class was comparatively small, qualified ministers could not easily be found; and in the hurry of filling so many pulpits, many men of low origin and no literature, and some of grossly immoral life, got access to the church. Few of them were distinguished for their piety or accomplishments, and the people contemptuously called them the bishops' curates. The seed was already sown which was to spring up and bear such bitter fruit. The deed was done which was to deliver Scotland to the horrors of persecution and civil war. The people could not desert in their day of need the pastors whom they loved, and devoutly wait upon the ministrations of men who had unjustly supplanted them, and were in their eyes the representatives of the black prelacy which they had solemnly abjured in their covenant with God, as an accursed thing. The ousted ministers secretly came into their parishes and held religious meetings in any convenient place they could procure in a kitchen, a barn, or the hall of a gentleman's house. When no such place could be procured, they met on the hill-side. The people flocked in crowds to hear them; they brought their children to them to be baptised; they received from them the sacrament of the Holy

Supper. The parish churches were deserted. This was the origin of the series of legislative Acts against conventicles, increasing in severity till it was made death to be present

at one.

One should think it would be difficult even to apologise for such barbarous legislation, but Mr. Napier is not abashed. He is ready to defend even greater horrors than this. It was, he says, a mere piece of legislative threatening-never meant to be carried into execution-a brutum fulmen. It is strange to hear of the Parliament being in sport, erecting bugbears to frighten the people, passing Acts which they never intended to execute; but it seems stranger still when we read these Acts by the light of the times,-when we read of the hundreds who were fined, imprisoned, outlawed, banished for contravening them, till at last they were fairly goaded into rebellion, and then the hangman came and did his office. It were insulting to the character of the Scotch to suppose that they could be thus oppressed and trampled on without being indignant. Their first outbreak against their oppressors took its rise in Galloway, from pity for a poor man who was being maltreated by some soldiers for not paying his church fines, and resulted in the rout and slaughter of the Pentland Hills. Upwards of thirty executions followed the fight, striking terror and dismay into every district of Scotland.

Such was the state of matters when Claverhouse returned from the wars to his native country. His country might be said to be in profound peace. No foreign foe was upon her borders. No schemes of conquest were revolved: but conventicles were increasing. The Presbyterian population persisted in loving their Presbyterian pastors, and wherever they preached they flocked to hear them. The flagitious Government of Lauderdale, a renegade from Presbytery and the Covenant, attempted to make the gentry responsible for their tenants, and, failing to manage this, let loose upon the western shires, where the Presbyterian spirit was strongest, a horde of wild caterans from the highland hills. These, settling upon the richest districts of the country like a flight of locusts, left a wilderness where there was a garden. The barbarous experiment failed; hundreds were ruined; but conventicles were not put down, and another plan was resolved upon. Several troops of horse were raised, to be constantly employed in scouring the southern and western counties, levying fines, seizing outlaws, and above all in suppressing conventicles. Claverhouse managed to get the command of one of these troops, and now at last we find him in the field of his fame.