who turn for the first time from the stern, brutal, and profane soldier
of the historian's page to the high-bred and graceful gentleman of the
painter's canvas.

Claverhouse seems to have received his commission in the autumn of 1678.
The earliest of his letters extant is dated from Moffat, a small town
in the north of Dumfriesshire, on December 28th. It is addressed to Lord
Linlithgow, and contains this significant passage: "On Tuesday was eight
days, and Sunday there were great field-conventicles just by here, with
great contempt of the regular clergy, who complain extremely when I tell
them I have no order to apprehend anybody for past misdemeanours."[16]
And this scrupulous observance of his orders, at a time when a little
excess of zeal was unlikely to be regarded as a very serious blunder, is
yet more strikingly illustrated in his next letter, written a week later
from Dumfries. In that town, at the southern end of the bridge over the
Nith, the charity of some devout Covenanting ladies had lately set up a
large meeting-house. The clergy, as wild against the Covenanters as
Lauderdale himself, were very importunate with Claverhouse to demolish
this hotbed of disaffection; but he, though he confessed privately to
his chief his annoyance at seeing a conventicle held with impunity "at
our nose," answered all importunities with a calm reference to his
orders. The southern end of the bridge was in Galloway, and in Galloway
his commission did not run. The authority of the Deputy-Sheriff of the
shire was therefore called into play, and with his countenance the
offending building was quickly razed to the ground. In his report of
this business Claverhouse writes:--"My Lord, since I have seen the Act
of Council, the scruple I had about undertaking anything without the
bounds of these two shires is indeed frivolous, but was not so before.
For if there had been no such act, it had not been safe for me to have
done anything but what my order warranted; and since I knew it not, it