" Westerhall voted for instant
death, while Claverhouse pleaded for the lad, and only yielded at last
on the other's insistence, saying: "The blood of this poor man be upon
you, Westerhall. I am free of it." He thereupon ordered the captain of a
Highland company, then brigaded with his own men, to provide a
firing-party; but the Highlanders angrily refused, and the troopers had
to do the work. Both versions, it will be seen, agree in representing
Claverhouse as inclined to mercy but overborne by Westerhall. The
question remains, how was it that the former, a masterful man and not
easy to be silenced when he was in the right, could not save this poor
lad if he had a mind to do so?
The answer is in truth not easy to find. The explanation that Westerhall
was at that particular time superior in authority to Claverhouse will
hardly serve. It is true that the latter had just then no civil
jurisdiction at all, either to condemn or pardon--no commission of
justiciary, as he wrote to Queensberry. He had been since the close of
the previous year in disgrace at headquarters, in consequence of a
quarrel between him and the Treasurer, arising out of some action of
Colonel James Douglas, the latter's brother, of which Claverhouse seems
to have expressed his disapproval rather too warmly. His name had
accordingly been removed from the list of Privy Councillors soon after
James's accession, and himself deprived of all his civil powers.
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