s surely
a fact as well authenticated as any in the martyrology of the Scottish
Covenant.

There is, as I have said, an excellent reason for not dragging my
readers through the obscure and barren mazes of this controversy; and
like all good reasons it is a very simple one. Claverhouse was present
neither at the trial nor the execution. He had, indeed, no more to do
with the deaths of these two women than Cameron, who had been five years
in his grave, or Wodrow, who was but five years old. It is true that one
of his family was present, but this was his brother, David Graham,
Deputy Sheriff of Galloway, and but lately made one of the Lords
Justices of Wigtownshire. Macaulay does not directly name Claverhouse as
concerned in this affair; but it is one out of five selected by the
historian as samples of the crimes by which "he, and men like him,
goaded the Western peasantry into madness"--a consummation which, it may
be observed in passing, had been effected twelve years before
Claverhouse had drawn sword in Scotland. It is not certain that Macaulay
believed the Graham who sat in judgment on these women to have been John
Graham of Claverhouse. But it is certain that the effect of his
narrative has been, in the minds of most English-speaking men, to add
this also to the long list of mythical crimes which have blackened the
memory of the hero of Killiecrankie.[53]

But over the other affair there rests no shadow of doubt. That
Claverhouse, and he alone, is responsible for the death of John Brown
stands on the very best authority, for it stands on his own. It is not,
indeed, certain that he shot the man with his own hand. This is Wodrow's
story, and as usual he gives no authority for it. "With some
difficulty," he writes,

"he was allowed to pray, which he did with the greatest
liberty and melting, and withal in such suitable and
scriptural expressions, and in a peculiar judicious style,
he having great measures of the gift as well as the grace of
prayer, that the soldiers were affected and astonished; yea,
which is yet more singular, such convictions were left in
their bosoms that, as my informations bear, not one of them
would shoot him or obey Claverhouse's commands, so that he
was forced to turn executioner himself, and in a fret shot
him with his own hand, before his own door, his wife with a
young infant standing by, and she very near the time of her
delive