en as the most notorious and the most
circumstantially recorded of the indictments made against Claverhouse.
Of the traditions that gathered in the following century about his name
I have taken no notice, nor of the vague charges brought by writers of
still later date on no better authority than those traditions.[66] It
was inevitable that as time wore on these floating legends would be
gathered to one common head, and that the most important figure would be
selected to bear the sins of all. It is of course possible that many and
more damning instances might be added to the foregoing list, of which
the record has now perished. But the most that can be done is to take
what the counsel for the prosecution have brought forward, and to
examine it as strictly as can now be possible.

It must always be difficult to reconsider with absolute impartiality any
verdict that has been generally accepted for close upon two hundred
years. On the one hand, there is a not unnatural disinclination for the
trouble necessary to re-open a case already heard and judged: on the
other, is a most natural inclination to take every fresh fact
discovered, or every old blunder detected, as of paramount importance.
The explorer in strange lands is too apt to take every mole-hill for a
mountain. And when the verdict is one that has been endorsed by
Macaulay, he must be a bold man indeed who thinks to upset it.
Nevertheless, something has, I hope, been done to bear out my belief
that Claverhouse has been too harshly judged. No attempt has been made
to gloss over or conceal any crime that can be brought fairly home to
him. The case of Andrew Hislop (a far blacker case than the more
notorious one of John Brown) has been left as it stands, so far as the
imperfect evidence enables us now to judge it. If that one case be held
enough to substantiate the general verdict, if nothing can be set
against it, there is no more to be said--save that, if this be justice,
many a better man than Claverhouse must go to the wall.

One thing, at least, should be clear. He was no capricious and
unlicensed oppressor of a God-fearing and inoffensive peasantry, but a
soldier waging war against a turbulent population carrying arms and
willing to use them. I have nowhere tried to soften the bitter tale of
folly, misrule, and cruelty which drove those unhappy men into
rebellion, nor to heighten by a single touch their responsibility for
their own misfortunes. I have not tried