the market-cross
of Sanquhar, a small town in Dumfriesshire, on June 22nd, 1680. Exactly
a month later Claverhouse's troopers (though, as I have said, not
commanded by Claverhouse himself) came upon the Cameronians in a
desolate spot among the wilds of Ayrshire, known as Aird's Moss. Richard
Cameron was killed at the first charge: Donald Cargill and Hackston of
Rathillet were made prisoners. Both were taken to Edinburgh and
executed, the latter with circumstances of needless barbarity.

Though Claverhouse was reinstated in his commission, he does not appear
to have been actively employed during the year 1681, the second year of
the Duke of York's administration in Scotland, and the year also of the
Test and Succession Acts, which were destined to cost another Argyle his
head. Early in 1682 the Duke of York returned to England, to which fact
Wodrow attributes "a sort of respite of severities," notwithstanding
that Claverhouse was once more commissioned for his old work in the
West, and with even ampler authority than before. In addition to his
military powers, he was appointed Sheriff of Wigtownshire and
Deputy-Sheriff of Dumfriesshire and the Stewartries of Kirkcudbright and
Annandale; and he was also specially invested with a commission to hold
criminal courts in the first-named shire and to try delinquents by jury.
His letters to Queensberry[36] begin in February 1682, and from this
time onward his actions become easier to follow. These letters give a
very full and fair idea of his method of procedure, and in one of them
is a passage worth quoting as evidence how far that method as yet
deserved the hard epithets which have been so freely lavished on it. The
despatch is dated from Newton in Galloway, March 1st, 1682.

"The proposal I wrote to your Lordship of, for securing the
peace, I am sure will please in all things but one,--that it
will be somewhat out of the King's pocket. The way that I
see taken in other places is to put laws severely, against
great and small, in execution; which is very just; but what
effects does that produce, but more to exasperate and
alienate the hearts of the whole body of the people; for it
renders three desperate where it gains one; and your
Lordship knows that in the greatest crimes it is thought
wisest to pardon the multitude and punish the ringleaders,
where the number of the guilty is great, as in this case of
whole count