Amongst the many devices resorted to at this time, with a view to enforcing conformity, there is one which, because of its immediate consequences, is deserving of special mention. In October 1677, the Council addressed a letter to the Earls of Glencairn and Dundonald and to Lord Ross, requiring them to call together the heritors of the shires of Ayr and Renfrew, and to urge on them the necessity for taking effective measures to repress conventicles. The answer given to the three noblemen and forwarded by them to Edinburgh was practically a refusal though it took the form of a plea of inability on the part of those whose co-operation had thus been invoked. This alleged powerlessness was made an excuse for the next step taken by the Government, that of quartering a body of eight thousand Highlanders in the disaffected counties, on those who refused to subscribe a bond by which every heritor made himself answerable, not only for his wife, children, and servants, but also for his tenants. The commission for raising the Highlanders authorised them to take free quarters, and, if need were, to seize on horses as well as on ammunition and provisions. They were indemnified against all pursuits, civil and criminal, which might at any time be intented against them or anything they should do, by killing, wounding, apprehending, or imprisoning such as should make opposition to the King’s authority, or by arresting such as they might have reason to suspect. For two months the clansmen availed themselves to the full of the arbitrary powers with which the royal warrant invested them. At length the Duke of Hamilton appealed directly to the King to put an end to the oppression exercised in his name by the Highland men; and an express was sent down from London, requiring the Council to disband them and to send them back to their homes. This brings events down to 1678, the year in which Claverhouse was appointed to the command of the dragoons who were to make another effort to disperse the conventicles against which so many Acts of Parliament and decrees of Council had been directed in vain, and which even the depredations of the Highland host had failed to check. ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— III DISPERSING THE CONVENTICLERS BY the end of 1678 Claverhouse was at Moffat, expecting to be joined by one of the newly-levied troops of dragoons—that under Captain Inglis. From that town he forwarded to the Earl of Linlithgow, Commander-in-chief of the King’s forces, the first of a series of despatches which contain a precise and detailed account of his movements at this time. As indicating the spirit in which he had undertaken the duties assigned to him, and the strict and literal obedience to orders that characterised his execution of them, the document is both interesting and valuable. It is dated the 28th of December, and runs as follows:—