Claverhouse had not long assumed his new duties before he discovered that the ‘rebels’ and ‘conventiclers’ were not the only people with whom he had to deal, and that a task far more difficult than hunting them down or scattering their meetings would be to expose the connivance of some of the leading families, and to check the disorders arising from it. As early as the 5th of March, in a letter to Queensberry, he wrote, ‘Here, in the shire, I find the lairds all following the example of a late great man, and still a considerable heritor among them, which is, to live regularly themselves, but have their houses constant haunts of rebels and intercommuned persons, and have their children baptized by the same; and then lay all the blame on their wives; condemning them and swearing they cannot help what is done in their absence. But I am resolved this jest shall pass no longer here; for it is laughing and fooling the Government; and it will be more of consequence to punish one considerable laird, than a hundred little bodies. Besides, it is juster; because these only sin by the example of those.’ At the date of this communication, Claverhouse had already begun to carry out the policy to which it referred; and a letter written four days earlier supplies important details as to the course which he had adopted. ‘The way that I see taken in other places, is to put laws severely, against great and small, in execution, which is very just; but what effects does that produce, but more to exasperate and alienate the hearts of the whole body of the people? For it renders three desperate where it gains one; and your Lordship knows that in the greatest crimes it is thought wisest to pardon the multitude and punish the ringleaders, where the number of the guilty is great, as in this case of whole countries. Wherefore, I have taken another course here. I have called two or three parishes together at one church, and after intimating to them the power I have, I read them a libel narrating all the Acts of Parliament against the fanatics; whereby I made them sensible how much they were in the King’s reverence, and assured them he was relenting nothing of his former severity against dissenters, nor care of maintaining the established government; as they might see by his doubling the fines in the late Act of Parliament; and, in the end, told them that the King had no design to ruin any of his subjects he could reclaim, nor I to enrich myself by their crimes; and, therefore, any who would resolve to conform, and live regularly, might expect favour; excepting only resetters and ringleaders. Upon this, on Sunday last, there was about three hundred people at Kirkcudbright church; some that for seven years before had never been there. So that I do expect that within a short time I could bring two parts of three to the church.’