who had not then for his purpose the impartial estimate of a human
character so much as the embellishment of a political principle, that
public opinion has been for many years content to accept a savage
caricature in place of a portrait. It would be impertinent to say that
Macaulay did not understand the circumstances into which Claverhouse was
forced, and the train of events which had caused them; but it would not
have suited his purpose so clearly and strictly to have explained them
that others might have traversed the verdict he intended to be
established. He heard, indeed, and he determined to hear, only one side
of the case: indeed, at the time he wrote, there was not much to be
heard on the other; and on the evidence he accepted the verdict was a
foregone conclusion. It is impossible altogether to acquit Claverhouse
of the charges laid to his account, nor will any attempt here be made to
do so; but even the worst that can be proved against him, when
considered impartially with the circumstances of his position and the
spirit of the time, will, I think, be found to take a very different
complexion from that which has been somewhat too confidently given to
them.[7]

When Charles the Second was restored to the throne of his fathers he was
hailed in Scotland with the same tumultuous joy that greeted him in
England. The Scottish nation was indeed weary of the past. It was weary
alike of the yoke of Cromwell and of the yoke of the Covenant. The first
Covenant--the Covenant of 1557--had been a protest against the tyranny
of the Pope: the Covenant of 1643 was a protest against the tyranny of
the Crown. It was the Scottish supplement, framed in the religious
spirit and temperament of the Scottish nation, to the English protest
against ship-money. The voice, first sounded among the rich valleys and
pleasant woods of Buckinghamshire, was echoed in the churchyard of the
Grey Friars at Edinburgh. Six months later the triumph of