Claverhouse by Mowbray Morris
page 41 of 216 (18%)
page 41 of 216 (18%)
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that without his help this little book would have been still less. Yet I
do think he has been hard upon Claverhouse. Perhaps the scheme of his history did not require, or even allow him, to examine the man's character and circumstances so closely as a biographer must examine them. It is still more important to remember that the letters discovered by Napier in the Queensberry Archives were not known to him. Had he seen them, I am persuaded that he would have found reason to think less harshly of their writer. [8] "The south-west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that come from the north; and from a word 'whiggam,' used in driving their horses, all that drove were called the 'whiggamores,' and shorter, the 'whiggs.' Now in that year, after the news came down of Duke Hamilton's defeat, the ministers animated the people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up, marching on the head of their parishes, with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and headed them, they being about 6,000. This was called the Whiggamores' Inroad: and even after that all that opposed the Court came in contempt to be called Whiggs: and from Scotland the word was brought into England, where it is now one of our unhappy terms of distinction."--Burnet, i. 58. See also Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," ch. xii. Mr. Green, however, thought the word _whig_ might be the same as our _whey_, implying a taunt against the "sour-milk faces" of the fanatical Ayrshiremen.--"History of the English People," iii. 258. [9] Sharpe's notes to Kirkton's "History of the Church of Scotland," pp. 48-9. See also Wishart's "Memoirs of Montrose." |
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