ace is rarely vouchsafed.

[67] Walker's "Biographia Presbyteriana:" Lochiel's Memoirs.

[68] See _ante_, p. 92: also Napier, ii. 360, for a letter to the Lord
Chancellor, June 9th, 1683. "I am as sorry to see a man die, even a
Whig, as any of themselves. But when one dies justly, for his own
faults, and may save a hundred to fall in the like, I have no scruple."

CHAPTER VIII.

Both in Scotland and England events were now moving fast to their
inevitable conclusion, but of Claverhouse's part in public affairs there
is for the next three years little record. Only two of his letters have
survived between May, 1685, and October, 1688, when the disastrous march
into England began. From one of these it is clear that his restoration
to favour at Whitehall had not improved his position at Edinburgh.
Gratitude was not then a common virtue among public men. Claverhouse had
done for his colleagues all that he had promised. The recollection of
their debt to him, and the unlikelihood of their being able to increase
it, did not serve to endear to them this successful soldier of fortune,
who had indeed helped them to their ambition, but who had thereby shown
a dangerous capacity for helping himself. At the head of these
malcontents was, of course, Queensberry, though, as the King had shown
himself determined not to lose the services of his brilliant captain, it
was necessary for the Treasurer to give his jealousy a guarded form. He
complained to Dumbarton (then commanding the forces in Scotland) that
Claverhouse had misused some of his tenants, though in what manner is
not clear. There is a letter from Claverhouse expressing in respectful
terms his regret at Queensberry's annoyance, which he declares to have
been founded on misapprehension of the facts.

"I am convinced (he writes) your Grace is ill-informed; for,
after you have read what I wrote to you two days ago on that
subject, I daresay I may refer myself to your own censure.
That I had no desire to make great search there, anybody may
judge. I came not from Ayr till after eleven in the
forenoon, and went to Balagen with forty heritors again
night. The Sanquhar is just in the road; and I used these men
I met accidentally on the road better than ever I used any
in these circumstances. And I may safely say that, as I
shall answer to God, if they had been living on my ground I
could not have forborne drawing my sw