Claverhouse was not left long in idleness.  In 1664, the year of the first Indulgence, it had been determined to withdraw the regular troops altogether from Scotland, leaving their place to be supplied by the local militia, which was now practically raised to the condition of a standing army and, contrary to immemorial law, placed under the immediate authority of the Crown.  But the bishops and their clergy had demurred.  They had little fancy for being left with no other protection than a half-disciplined rabble, who, ready as they might be to act against their troublesome countrymen, had no more respect for a lawn sleeve than for a homespun jerkin.  A few troops of regular cavalry were therefore retained, and one regiment of Foot Guards.  The former were commanded by Athole, the latter by Linlithgow.  Towards the end of 1677 a fresh troop of cavalry was raised, and the command given to the young Marquis of Montrose, grandson to him who had died on the scaffold and kinsman to Claverhouse.

Claverhouse applied to him for employment, and it appears from Montrose’s answer that the application had been warmly backed by the Duke of York.  “You cannot imagine,” runs the letter, “how overjoyed I should be to have any employment at my disposal that were worthy of your acceptance; nor how much I am ashamed to offer you anything so far below your merit as that of being my lieutenant; though I be fully persuaded that it will be a step to a much more considerable employment, and will give you occasion to confirm the Duke in the just and good opinion which I do assure you he has of you.”  The writer goes on to say that he himself was expecting instant promotion, and to promise his kinsman a share in whatever fortune might befall him:  none but gentlemen, he adds, are to ride in his troop.  The offer was accepted, and the promotion was not long delayed.

The Indulgence had failed, as by some at least of those who had countenanced it it had been expected to fail.  The Opposition, led at Edinburgh by Hamilton and Argyle, and backed in London by Monmouth and Shaftesbury, which had for some time past been working openly against Lauderdale, had also for the moment failed.  The Commissioner’s hands were strong.  With the King and the Duke of York at his back, and, in Edinburgh, Sharp, Burnet, and the majority of the Episcopalian clergy, together with all the needy nobles who loved best to fish in troubled waters, Lauderdale could afford, as he thought then, to laugh at all opposition.  To assume that his design had been from the first to goad the West into open rebellion affords, indeed, a simple explanation of a policy that in its persistent unwisdom and brutality seems strangely irrational and monstrous, even for such times and men.  But it is rash to take any policy as certain in those dark and crooked councils, unless it be—­as probably in Lauderdale’s case it was, and as it assuredly was in the case of most of his creatures—­the policy of personal