Later
historians have been sometimes less careful in distinguishing between
the two men. At least in one striking instance, the misdeeds of this
ruffian have been circumstantially charged to the account of his more
famous and important colleague.
It will be remembered that in the picture Macaulay has drawn of
Claverhouse the soldiers under his command, and by implication
Claverhouse himself, figure as relieving their sterner duties by a
curious form of relaxation. They would call each other, he says, by the
names of devils and damned souls, mocking in their revels the torments
of hell. The authority for this surprising statement is Robert Wodrow,
who was not born when Claverhouse returned to Scotland, and whose
history of the Scottish Church was not published till more than thirty
years after the battle of Killiecrankie.[18] Wodrow's work is very far
from being the contemptible thing some apologists for Claverhouse would
have us believe; but he is not a witness whose unsupported testimony it
is always safe to take for gospel-truth. He wrote at a time when the
naturally romantic imagination of the Scottish peasantry, stimulated by
the memories of old men who had known the evil times, had largely
embellished the facts he set himself to chronicle; and following the
fashion of his day (indeed, as one may say, the fashion of many
historians who cannot plead Wodrow's excuse), he was not always careful
to separate the romance from the reality, even where the latter might
have better served his turn.
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