Crime & punishment > Times of Claverhouse, or, Sketches of the persecution

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THE TIMES OF CLAVERHOUSE.
mates, whom they even threatened to kill on the
spot, or to roast alive over the fire. They pos¬
sessed the power of military execution, and conse¬
quently they scrupled at no deed of atrocity when
it served their purpose. Their commanders were
infamous men, men of blood and of rapine. Dar¬
ing, imperious, and cruel, they never failed to pur¬
sue, with the recklessness of furies, their measures
to an extreme point, and, in some cases, went so
far beyond their commission, that the authorities,
in a few instances, were obliged to recall them, in
order to maintain something like a show of equity
in their procedure. The dragoons, with such men
as Claverhouse, and Lag, and Dalzell, could not
be other than abandoned men, and scourges to their
oppressed country. Claverhouse was artful, avari¬
cious, and vengeful; Lag was infamous for his
coarseness, profanity, and cruelty; Dalzell was a
savage. These men had a goodly number of co¬
ordinates in rank, in character, and in persecuting
violence. Their subordinates in military station
amounted to a great host, who, having the command
of small parties, overspread the country, producing
a distress which no pen can describe. These petty
officers naturally copied the example of those above
them in command, and generally far outstripped
them in recklessness and crime. Inglis and Stra-
chan, Bannatine and Bruce, Cornet Graham and
Bonshaw, with the whole horde of their compeers,
were the regular scorpions that inflicted a pain so
intolerable as to raise a cry of universal distress
over the land, so that men’s ears were made to
tingle, and a cold shuddering crept over their frame.
It is impossible to exaggerate in statement the