Memorials and Letters Illustrative of the Life and Times of John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee (Volume 3) - Mark Napier

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862. Excerpt: ... Section XII.--Antecedents to the ruin of King James. Advent of the Prince of Orange. Troops called from Scotland. Claverhouse created Viscount of Dundee. Design to Assassinate him, shamefully connived at by Hamilton. His gallant escape from the Wild Cats, and the Scotch Convention. The Wild Cats were now reduced to their ninth life. Their caterwauling was still heard in the West, and their tiger-like claw occasionally felt.1 But the Covenant was not destined to supersede Magna Charta. Their Messiah, from Holland, (a poor scalded cat after all),2 had missed his spring. Their millennium was postponed sine die. Claverhouse no longer hunted the country of the Catti. A higher destiny awaited him. He was about to display to the world by a momentary glimpse, 1 " August 21st, 1685.--The Earl of Balcarres is sent to Galloway and the other Western shires, with a commission of fire and sword against these rebels; though they pretended for their excuse that they were in danger of their life for revealing it, if they staid there. And accordingly a base proditorious murder was committed at Lesmahago, on one Mark Ker, for being a taker of Rumbold." On the 12th of November thereafter--" News came from the West that Lieutenant-Colonel Buchan had met with some of those skulking rebels, beside Kilmarnock, and had killed three and taken one of their leaders, called Nisbet, on whose head a price had been put, and therefore they kept him alive."--Fountainhall. Nisbet was hanged. A martyr of course. 2 Poor Argyle (whose demeanour at Montrose's death ought to deprive him of all pity), landed with a veni, vidi, that did not conclude like Ceesar's. On the 18th of June 1685, he snapped a pocket pistol at a drunken weaver, who run him to water in a ford of the Clyde near Paisley, an...