The young lady seems to have been well-favoured, though it is not easy
to learn much from the female portraits of those days, which are all
very much of a piece. What else she may have been it is impossible to
say. She is a name in her husband's history and nothing more, and in the
few stormy years that were yet to run for him she could not well have
been much more. However, she seems to have been well pleased with her
handsome lover; and, in spite of her mother's opposition, the marriage
was pushed briskly forward. The contract was signed at Paisley on June
10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same
place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be
seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame
his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest
brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to
follow, and her cousin John, son of the outlaw of Ochiltree, were also
among the witnesses; and for the bridegroom, his brother-in-arms Lord
Ross[44] and Colin Mackenzie, brother of the Lord Advocate, Sir George
of Rosehaugh. The lady's jointure was fixed at five thousand merks Scots
(something over two hundred and seventy pounds of English money),
secured on certain property in Forfarshire and Perthshire; while she on
her side brought her husband what in those days was reckoned a very
comfortable fortune for a younger child.[45]
The marriage was made under an evil star. Hardly had the blessing been
spoken when word came down in haste from Glasgow that the Whigs were up.
Since the Sanquhar Declaration and the deaths of Cameron and Cargill,
the Covenanters had been comparatively quiet. The work of pacification
had indeed not slackened, but rather taken a fresh departure in the
appointment of a Court of High Commission, or Justiciary Circuit, which
in the summer of 1683 was held in the towns of Stirling, Glasgow, Ayr,
Dumfries, Jedburgh, and Edinburgh. Claverhouse was expressly ordered to
attend the justices in their progress as captain of the forces, except
at places where the Commander-in-Chief would naturally be present. But
though the discovery of the Rye House Plot had just then stirred the
kingdom to its centre, and given fresh energies both to the Government
and its enemies, only three men suffered during this circuit, of whom
two were convicted murderers. In each town members of the gentry as well
as of the common people flocked to take the Test; some to clear
themselves of suspicion, others only to air their loyalty, but all, in
the words of the report, cheerfully. Where time, moreover, was asked for
consideration, it was granted on good security. But from the end of
July, 1683, to the day of his marriage, Claverhouse seems to have been
occupied almost entirely with his duties as Councillor at Edinburgh, and
only to have left the capital for brief tours of inspection through the
western garrisons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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