also given to Claverhouse to redeem this
property from the Chancellor at twenty years' purchase; and it seems
also to have been privately agreed between them that the purchase-money
was not to be exacted, on condition of the former buying certain other
lands in the neighbourhood that the latter wished to dispose of. But the
crafty Chancellor saw an easier and quieter way to get hold of his
money. For the sum of eight thousand pounds he privately relinquished
all his rights to Lauderdale, thus leaving the latter free to deal with
Claverhouse on his own terms. This bit of sharp practice was effected in
August 1683; and it was not till the following March that the business
was finally settled, after a long and tedious wrangle before the Court,
in the course of which Claverhouse seemed to have found occasion to
speak his mind pretty sharply to the Chancellor. On the question of the
former's right to demand Dudhope on the terms of twenty years' purchase
Lauderdale had to give way; but on the other question of clearing the
title he was so difficult to deal with that the King himself had to
interfere; and not till a peremptory order had gone down from Whitehall,
cancelling the royal pardon till all the terms of the original agreement
had been satisfactorily settled, was the affair finally closed, the
title cleared, and Claverhouse established as master of the long-coveted
estate.

It was not till the autumn of 1684 that Claverhouse found himself master
of Dudhope and Constable of Dundee. Meanwhile one of the few domestic
events of his life that have come down to us had taken place. On June
10th he had been married to the Lady Jean Cochrane, granddaughter to the
old Earl of Dundonald.

This young lady was the daughter of William, Lord Cochrane, by
Catherine, daughter of the Presbyterian Earl of Cassilis and sister to
that Lady Margaret Kennedy whom Gilbert Burnet had married. Her father
had died before Claverhouse came on the scene, leaving seven children,
of whom Jean was the youngest. Her mother, whose notoriously Whiggish
sympathies had brought both her husband and father-in-law into
suspicion, was furiously opposed to the match; though worldly prudence
may have touched her heart as well as religious scruple, for
Claverhouse, though he had risen fast and was marked by all men as
destined to rise still higher, was hardly as yet perhaps a very eligible
husband for the pretty Lady Jean. But in truth it was a strange family
f