a clear, shining light fallen this day, the greatest been tried with the violent death of her husband Christian that ever I conversed with.' Walker's narrative of the death of Brown is as follows. Between five and six in the morning, he says at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy sonsThomas Weir who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steel who was suddenly shot afterwards when taken. The said Marian Weir, sitting upon her husband's grave, told me, that before "The said John Brown having performed the that she could see no blood but she was in danworship of God in his family, was going, with age to faint, and yet she was helped to be a witness to all this without either fainting or confusion; except when the shots were let off, her spade in his hand, to make ready some peat ground. The mist being very dark, he knew not until cruel and bloody Claverhouse compassed him with three troops of horse, brought him to his house, and there examined him; who, though he was a man of a stammering speech, yet answered him distinctly and solidly, which made Claverhouse to examine those whom he had taken to be his guides through the muirs, if ever they heard him preach? They answered, 'No, no; he was never a preacher.' He said, if he has never preached, meikle he has prayed in his time.' He said to John, Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die.' When he was praying, Claverhouse interrupted him three times; one time that he stopt him, he was pleading that the Lord would spare a remnant, and not make a full end in the day of his anger, Claverhouse said, 'I gave you time to pray, and ye are begun to preach.' He turned upon his knees and said, 'Sir, you know neither the nature of preaching or praying, that calls this preaching. Then continued without confusion. When ended, Claverhouse said, Take goodnight of your wife and children.' His wife, standing by with her child in her arms that she had brought forth to him, and another child of his first wife's, he came to her and said, 'Now, Marian, the day is come that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me.' She said,Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you.' Then,' he said, 'this is all I desire; I have no more to do but die.' He kissed his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them, and his blessing. Claverhouse ordered six soldiers to shoot him. The most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?' She said, 'I thought ever much eyes dazzled." But That this wild, picturesque, and touching story should have taken strong hold on the poetical imagination and kind heart of Sir Walter Scott, can be no matter of surprise to any one. That it did so, is shown, not only by his frequent reference to it, but by the mode in which his genius has interwoven some of the most affecting incidents into the beautiful episode of Bessie Maclure.* the historian had a far different task from that of the novelist. His duty was to compare the two narrations, and to examine how much of either should be admitted as trustworthy evidence. That Walker's testimony is sufficient to convict Wodrow of falsehood in asserting that the soldiers mutinied, and that Claverhouse was himself the executioner of John Brown, is abundantly clear. Walker's informant was the widow of John Brown, an eyewitness of the transaction, and most hostile to Claverhouse. She told the story "sitting on her husband's grave." To suppose that she could have omitted such a circumstance as that her husband's eloquence had moved the hearts of the soldiers to mutiny, and compelled their commander to take upon himself the revolting office of an executioner, would be absurd. Nor is this all. We find the circumstances of his death narrated with the utmost particularity, no doubt by the widow herself, and there is not from beginning to end a hint that the soldiers shrank from executing the commands of their officer. But when we come to the adjuncts of the expressions supposed to have been used by story, to the conversation, to the particular Claverhouse, to his imputed " obduracy and profanity," his " seared conscience and adamantine heart," the question assumes a very different aspect. of him, and now as much as ever. He said, It were but justice to lay thee beside him. She said, 'If you were permitted I doubt not but your crueltie would go that length; but how will ye make answer for this morning's work?' He said, To man I can be answerable, and for God, I will take him in my own hand.' Claver- The poetical power of Walker's mind was house mounted his horse, and marched, and left of no mean order. As Sir Walter Scott obher with the corpse of her dead husband lying serves, his "simple but affecting narrative," there; she set the bairn on the ground, and and his "imitation of scriptural style, progathered his brains, and tied up his head, and duces in some passages an effect not unlike straighted his body, and covered him in her plaid, and sat down and wept over him. It what we feel in reading the beautiful Book being a very desert place, where never victual of Ruth." The narrative constantly runs grew, and far from neighbors, it was some time into the form of dialogue. Every one before any friends came to her. The first that knows, and none better than those who have came was a very fit hand, that old singular read Lord Macaulay's History with care, how Christian woman in the Cummerhead, named Elizabeth Menzies, three miles distant, who had Old Mortality, chap. vi. † Minstrelsy, App. A. dangerous the dramatic talent is to a histo- | for any thing beyond that fact, his testirian. In the majority of instances, even in mony must be received with caution. MiliLord Macaulay's own History, when we have tary executions are, under any circumstances, had occasion to test the accuracy of passages sufficiently horrible: they are peculiarly so which he has inclosed between inverted com- when they take place during a civil war. mas, as being the very words of the speaker, But, before we come to any conclusion upon we have found them incorrectly quoted. It the conduct of Claverhouse in this instance, seems in the highest degree improbable that we must inquire, first, what was the temper an illiterate woman, such as Marion Brown, of the times, and what manner of men he should be able, after many years, accurately had to deal with; and, secondly, what were to repeat the particular words which passed the particular circumstances of the individduring such a scene of horror as, under any ual case. With regard to the first, we will circumstances, the death of John Brown content ourselves with three instances, and must have been. There are, besides, incon- they shall all be of the most notorious kind, sistencies and mistakes in the narrative which and proved by the most unexceptionable eviare easily detected: Thus, the neighbor who dence. visits the widow in her affliction is, in one copy of the Life, Elizabeth Menzies, and in another, Jean Brown, whilst she is still represented as the mother of Thomas Weir and David Steel, the latter of whom is said to have been "suddenly shot when taken." We know, however, that so far from this being the fact, David Steele was neither taken nor shot, but fell beneath the broadswords of the dragoons in a fray, during which they attempted to capture him.† We may, therefore, fairly take Walker's account as trustworthy, for the fact that John Brown fell by the carbines of the soldiers, acting under the orders of Claverhouse; but On the 3d of May, 1679, David Hackston of Rathillet, John Balfour of Kinloch, and seven others, some of whom were gentlemen of good family, set forth, mounted and armed, for the purpose of waylaying and murdering one Carmichael, sheriff-depute of the county of Fife, who was obnoxious to the Covenanters, and whom they expected to find hunting in the neighborhood of Scotstarbet. Carmichael was, however, warned of his danger by a shepherd, and escaped. After spending the greater part of the morning in a fruitless search, Rathillet and his party were about to disperse, when a boy came up and informed them that the Arch *The following are a few instances, taken almost at random:ORIGINAL. "He [i.e., Claverhouse] told Keppoch in the presence of all the officers of his small army, that, he would much rather choose to serve as a common soldier amongst disciplined troops, than command such men as he, who seemed to make it his business to draw the odium of the country upon him.... He begged that he would immediately begone with his men, that he might not hereafter have an opportunity of affronting the genera at his pleasure, or of making him and the better-disposed troops a cover to his robberies."-Memoirs of Locheil, 243. "When it was objected that he [i.e., Glengarry] would not be able to make it good, since his followers were not near equal to Locheil's in numbers, he answered that the courage of his men would make up that defect."-Memoirs of Locheil, 254. "The Lords replied, Nay, we all well remember you particularly mentioned the flower-pots.' -Sprat's Narrative, 70. "Lord President. Young, thou art the strangest creature that ever I did hear of. Dost thou think we could imagine that the Bishop of Rochester would combine."" etc.-Sprat's Narrative, 71. "I left him praying God to give him grace to repent; and only adding that else he was more in danger of his own damnation than I of his accusation in Parliament."-Ibid., second part, p. 3. "I would rather, he said, carry a musket in a respectable regiment, than be captain of such a gang of thieves."-Macaulay, iii. 340. "When he was reminded that Locheil's followers were in number nearly double of the Glengarry men- No matter,' he cried, one M'Donald is worth two Camerons.'""-Macaulay, iii. 341. "Then the whole board broke forth, How dare you say so? We all remember it.'"-Macaulay, IV. 252. “Man,' cried Carmarthen, wouldst thou have us believe that the bishop combined,'" etc. "God give you repentance,' answered the bishop: for, depend upon it, you are in much more danger of being damned, than I of being impeached.” ”. Macaulay, iv. 253. The actual meaning may not be much altered in these examples, but it is not Claverhouse, Glengarry, Carmarthen, or Sprat that speaks, but Lord Macaulay, and a slight change of phraseology converts a dignified remonstrance into a brutal insult, and a pious exhortation into something very like a vulgar oath, and that, too, put into the mouth of a bishop! Lord Macaulay's inverted commas are always to be regarded with extreme caution. † Crighton's Memoirs. ‡ Wodrow, ii. 27. exclaimed in horror to his comrades, to "spare those gray hairs." The daughter threw herself before her father, and received two wounds in a fruitless attempt to save him. When their bloody work was done, the murderers remounted their horses and left her on the moor with the mutilated body of her father.* bishop's coach was in a neighboring village and that he would soon pass near the spot where they then were. Disappointed of their intended victim chance thus threw in their way one who was even more the object of their hatred. It was true that there was no recent or immediate cause for exasperation against Sharpe, but he was an apostate, -he had abandoned Presbyterianism for Such was the murder of Archbishop Episcopacy seventeen years before, he was Sharpe. It is recorded by Sheilds, who, we an archbishop, he had already once nar- are told by Wodrow, was "a minister of exrowly escaped the pistol of an assassin, the traordinary talents and usefulness, well seen shot which was intended for him having taken in most branches of valuable learning; of effect upon his friend, the Bishop of Orkney, a most quick and piercing wit, full of zeal he was known to have shown little mercy and public spirit; of shining and solid piety; towards those who had shown none to him, a successful, serious, and solid preacher, and —he was old, unarmed, utterly defenceless, useful minister in the Church, moved with accompanied by no one but his daughter and love to souls, and somewhat of the old apossome domestic servants, who were wholly tolic spirit," in the following words:unable to offer any effectual resistance to "That truculent traitor, James Sharpe, the nine men well armed and mounted. The arch-prelate, etc., received the just demerit temptation was too strong to be resisted. of his perfidy, apostacy, sorceries, villanies, Rathillet and his party had come out ex- and murders sharp arrows of the mighty pressly to commit murder. Their appetite for crime was sharpened by disappointment, when the victim they had least hoped, but most desired to immolate, presented himself ready for slaughter. Their resolution was immediately taken: the pistols which had been loaded, and the swords which had been sharpened for the murder of Carmichael, were turned against the archbishop, and they spurred their horses to their utmost speed after the carriage. The coachman, alarmed at their pursuit, quickened his pace, and the archbishop, looking out, and seeing armed men approaching, turned to his daughter and exclaimed, "Lord have mercy upon me, my poor child, for I am gone!" He had scarcely spoken when three or four pistols were fired at the coach, and the best mounted of the pursuers, riding up to the postillion, struck him over the face with his sword, and shot and hamstrung his horse. The coach being thus stopped the assailants fired into it upon the archbishop and his daughter, and this time with more effect, for the former was wounded. The archbishop opened the door, came out of the coach, and begged the assailants to spare his life. "There is no mercy," they replied, "for a Judas, an enemy and traitor to the cause of Christ." He then begged for mercy for his child. The details of the butchery are too revolting to be repeated. One of the murderers even * James Russell, one of the murderers, gives the following account of the final act of the tragedy: "Falling upon his knees, he said, ' For God's sake, save my life; and his daughter, falling upon her knees, begged his life also.. John Balfour stroke him on the face, and Andrew Henderson stroke him on the hand, and cut it, and John Balfour rode him down; whereupon he, lying upon his and coals of juniper. For, upon the 3d of May, 1679, several worthy gentlemen, with some other men of courage and zeal for the cause of God and the good of the country, executed righteous judgment upon him in Magus Muir, near St. Andrews." At the same time, Hackston, of Rathillet is commemorated as a "worthy gentleman who suffered at Edinburgh on the 30th of July, 1680," one of a "cloud of witnesses for the royal prerogatives of Jesus Christ!" Such is the language in which the fact that this infamous murderer was hanged is recorded by the historians of the Covenant! Something of the same spirit seems still to survive. A recent historian of the Church of Scotland says, after giving an account of the archbishop's murder, "It was such a deed as Greece celebrated with loudest praises in the case of Harmodius and Aristogiton, and Rome extolled when done by Cassius and Brutus." The skirmish at Drumclog, immortalized in Old Mortality, took place on the 1st of face as if he had been dead, and James Russell, hearing his daughter say to Wallace [the Archbishop's servant] that there was life in him yet, in the time James was disarming the rest of the bishop's men, went presently to him, and cast off his hat, for it would not cut at first, and haked his head him and cursed him, and called him a bloody murin pieces. Having done this his daughter came to derer; and James answered, they were not murderers, for they were sent to execute God's vengeance on him."-James Russell's Account of the Murder of Archbishop Sharpe; Kirkton, 418. *See State Trials, x. 791; Wodrow: Russell's Narrative, Kirkton; Sir Wm. Sharp's Letter, Kirkton, App. † Wodrow, iv. 233. Hind Let Loose. Iletherington's History of the Church of Scotland, 94, as to Sharpe's murder. suspected of favoring "popery, papists, and purgatory," and in having been heard to declare that "he feared none of the Whigs, nor any thing else, but rats and mice." On this provocation, James M Michael and three others, one night in the middle of November, 1684, went to the manse, knocked at the door, and upon its being opened by Mr. Peirson, immediately shot him dead on his own threshold.* Instances of the most cold-blooded murder might be multiplied by thousands. But we must now consider the second question, and inquire, what were the circumstances, and what the conduct, of Claverhouse in the particular case of John Brown. Lord Macaulay's assertion that he was sentenced to death because he was "convicted of nonconformity" is pure invention. Neither Wodrow nor Walker assign any cause; the former, indeed, expressly says, "Whether he [Claverhouse] had got any information of John's piety and nonconformity, I cannot tell;" and we shall presently see that Lord Macaulay might just as truly have said that John Thurtel was hanged for reading Bell's Life in London. June, 1679, within a month after the arch- the courage to reside alone, without even a bishop's murder. The insurgents were servant, in the solitary manse belonging to commanded by Robert Hamilton, a near that parish. His offence consisted in being connection and pupil of Bishop Burnett. Following the example of the Covenanters at Tippermuir, whose watchword was "Jesus and no quarter," he gave, as he himself informs us, strict orders, that "no quarter should be given." * These orders, were, however, disobeyed during his absence, and five prisoners were spared. Hamilton, returning from the pursuit of Claverhouse, found his followers debating whether mercy should be shown to a sixth, when he put an end to the argument by slaughtering the unhappy prisoner in cold blood with his own hand. Seven years afterwards we find him exulting in the act. "None could blame me," he says, "to decide the controversy, and I bless the Lord for it to this day!" This was the man whom Lord Macaulay has truly designated as "the oracle of the Extreme Covenanters," and justly denounced as a "bloodthirsty ruffian." That his conduct met with the sympathy and approval of his followers, is shown by the fact that we find him still in command of the insurgent forces under the title of General Hamilton, at the battle of Bothwell Brig, in conjunction with Hackston of Rathillet, the murderer of the archbishop. The banner which floated over their heads is still in existence, † and, after the desecrated motto, "For Christ and his Truths," bears, in blood-red letters, the words, "No Quarter for the Active Enemies of the Covenant." Reckoning upon certain victory, these champions of the Prince of Peace, had erected upon the battle-field a high gallows, and prepared a cartload of new ropes, in order that there might be no more such steppings aside" as had occurred when the five prisoners were spared at Drumclog. It is somewhat inconsistent with the supposed ferocity of the commanders of the royalist troops that these preparations were not turned against the insurgents upon their defeat. Such were the leaders of the Covenanters -men of rank, station, and education. As may well be supposed, their example was not thrown away upon their more humble and ignorant followers. Of the numberless outrages committed by them, we will select one only, and narrate the facts as they came from the mouths of the perpetrators of the crime. Peter Peirson, the curate of Carsphairn, was a bold and determined man, and had *Hamilton's Letter to the Sectaries-Dec. 7, 1685. † Nap., Memoirs of Dundee, 228. Crighton's Memoirs. John Brown was a "fugitated rebel." His name appears a year before in a list appended to a proclamation of those who had been cited as rebels in arms, or rather of rebels who had not appeared.† Sir Walter Scott says, with perfect truth, "While we read this dismal story, we must remember Brown's situation was that of an avowed and deter mined rebel, liable as such to military execu tion." What then does Lord Macaulay mean by asserting that "he was blameless in life, and so peaceable that the tyrants could find no offence in him, except that he absented himself from the public worship of the Episcopalians?" That he was blameless and peaceable in the eyes of those who regarded Hackston of Rathillet as "one of Sion's precious mourners and faithful witnesses of Christ, a valiant and much-honored gentleman," who shouted "Jesus and no quarter!" at Tippermuir-who felt that they had forfeited the favor of God because they had abstained from "dashing the brains of the brats of Babel against the stones" at Drumclog-who fought under the "bluidy banner," and prepared the gibbet and the new ropes at Bothwell Brig-we can readily understand. But that any historian should be * Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 467. + Wodrow, App. vol. ii. p. 110. The entry is as follows: "Muirkirk, John Brown of Priestfield, for Reset." found, in the middle of the nineteenth century, deliberately to adopt such a statement, we confess fills us with surprise. but Ploughlands, we pursued two fellows a great way through the mosses, and in the end seized them. They had no arms about them, and deYet such, unhappily, is the fact. Year nied they had any. But being asked if they would after year, and edition after edition, Lord take the abjuration, the eldest of the two, called Macaulay has given the trash of Wodrow to rise in arms against the king, but said he knew no John Brown, refused it; nor would he swear not to the public, backed by his own high author-king. Upon which, and there being found bulity. It was in vain that Professor Aytoun lets and match in his house, and treasonable papers, laid before him the evidence which proved, I caused shoot him dead; which he suffered in the most conclusive manner, that Wodrow very unconcernedly. The other, a young fellow was contradicted by contemporary authorities, that even by his own party his Ilistory was denounced as a collection of "lies and groundless stories." It was in vain that his attention was directed to the fact that Sir Walter Scott, though himself adopting a view by no means favorable of the character of Claverhouse, rejected the story told by Wodrow, and adopted that told by Walker, and had distinctly pointed out the fact that John Brown was an avowed rebel, amenable to the law, such as it then was-that the assertion that he was "convicted of nonconformity," and had committed no offence except that he absented himself from the public worship of the Episcopalians," was not only unsupported by any evidence whatever, but betrayed a want of knowledge of the state of Scotland at the time. Still the story of the Christian carrier appeared over and over again without even a note or a hint from which the reader could surmise that its authenticity had ever been even questioned. It appeared as the sole evidence on which Lord Macaulay relied for painting Claverhouse with the features of a fiend, and bestowing upon him the nickname of "The Chief of Tophet!" So the matter stood at the time of the appearance of the last edition of Lord Macaulay's History. Within the last year, however, a valuable addition has been made to the materials previously before the world for the history of that period of Scottish annals. The Queensberry Papers, preserved among the archives of the Buccleuch family, have been examined, and amongst the extracts from those valuable documents which have been recently published by Mr. Mark Napier, in his Memoirs of Dundee, is the original despatch which Claverhouse sent to the Duke of Queensberry, then the high treasurer of Scotland and head of the government, on the 3rd of May, 1685, giving an account of the execution of John Brown only two days after the event. One might almost fancy that the spirit of the hero had been awakened from its slumbers by the sound of the only voice whose slanders he deigned to answer: "May it please your Grace,-On Friday last, amongst the hills betwixt Douglas and the and his nephew, called John Brownen, offered two with his halbert; and if your grace thinks |