t these jealous fellows were not to have it all their own way. In the
autumn of the same year Claverhouse was summoned to London with
Balcarres to be heard on a complaint he had in his turn to make against
Queensberry. Early in the spring he had been peremptorily ordered to
discharge a bond he had given to the Treasury for fines due from
delinquents in Galloway. He answered that his brother (then
Deputy-Sheriff of that shire) was collecting the fines, and requested
more time for payment. On being told that he might take five or six
days, he replied that, considering the difficulty of collection and the
distances to be travelled, they might as well give him none. "Then,"
answered Queensberry, "you shall have none."[71] Claverhouse had many
times applied for leave to be heard in his own defence; but Murray had
hitherto persuaded the King to answer that no audience could be granted
to him until he had made his peace with the Treasurer and been restored
to his seat at the Council. But the name of Queensberry was not now the
power it had been at Whitehall. It is difficult to believe that he was
much more concerned with religion than Lauderdale; but he was, at any
rate by profession, a staunch Protestant, and there were those among
his colleagues ready to take every advantage of this passport to James's
disfavour. It was determined to hear what Claverhouse had to say for
himself. He was summoned to London, graciously received by the King, and
pleaded his cause so effectually that the Treasurer was ordered to
refund the money.

Claverhouse and Balcarres returned to Edinburgh on December 24th. With
them came the Chancellor Perth and his brother, John Drummond, the new
Lord Melfort. The brothers were in James's best books, for they had
recently professed themselves converted to the Roman Catholic faith by
the convincing logic of the papers found in Charles's strong-box and
made public by the King.[72] But they were not so popular in Edinburgh.
The new year opened with something very like a No Popery riot. Lady
Perth was insulted on her way home from mass by a baker's boy. The Privy
Council ordered the lad to be whipped through the Canongate, but the
'prentices rose to the rescue of their comrade. The guard was called
out: there was firing, and some citizens fell. There was disaffection,
too, among the troops: one soldier was arrested for refusing to fire on
a Protestant: another was shot for threatening to run his sword through