Two of them, and both ministers,
were immediately executed: five others, as though to appease the cruel
ghost of Sharp, were hanged on Magus Moor: of the rest, the most part
were set at liberty on giving bonds for their future good behaviour,
while the more obstinate were shipped off to the plantations.
Claverhouse was now sent back to his old employment. Though none of his
own letters of this time have survived, it is clear from an Order of the
Privy Council that shortly after the affair at Bothwell he was again
entrusted with the control of the rebellious shires. There is
unfortunately no record of his own by which it is possible to check the
vague charges of Wodrow, who wisely declines to commit himself to
particulars on the ground that "multitudes of instances, once flagrant,
are now at this distance lost," while not a few, he candidly admits,
"were never distinctly known." In the rare cases in which he becomes
more specific in his complaints, he does not make it clear that the
offences were committed in Claverhouse's presence, nor even that they
were always committed by soldiers of his troop--"the soldiers under
Claverhouse" seem to stand with him for all the royal forces then
employed in the western shires. That what he calls "spulies,
depredations, and violences" were committed on Claverhouse's authority
may be freely granted: they were precisely such as a strict obedience to
the letter (and no less to the spirit) of his commission would have
enjoined--the levying of fines, the seizure of arms, horses, and other
movable property from all suspected of any share in the rebellion who
would not absolve themselves by taking the oath of abjuration, and from
all resetters, or harbourers, of known rebels.
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