More than twelve months earlier, on the report that an ‘indulgence’ was to be granted, he had protested to Queensberry against such a course, and had expressed a hope that nobody would be so mad as to advise it. There is every reason to suppose that, as soon as the opportunity occurred, he laid before the King opinions consonant with this, and was directly instrumental in the appointment of a Circuit Court of Justiciary for the enforcement of the Test Act. It was his views which the royal proclamation embodied in the statement that the indemnities, indulgences, and other favours granted to the fanatic and disaffected party had hitherto produced no other effect than to encourage them to further disorders and to embolden them to abuse the royal goodness; it was his conviction to which it gave utterance in the assertion that neither difference in religion, nor tenderness of conscience, but merely principles of disloyalty and disaffection to the Government moved them to disturb the quiet of the King’s reign and the peace of his kingdom; and it was his experience of the evasions and subterfuges used by them which dictated the steps to be taken, not only for the punishment of obstinate recusants, but also for the encouragement of the well-intentioned whom circumstances might hitherto have prevented from formally signifying their submission and promising obedience. The first sitting of the Circuit Court of Justiciary was to be held at Stirling on the 5th of June. A few days previously, the Privy Council issued an order that Colonel John Graham of Claverhouse should go along with the Justices during their whole progress in the Justice Air, and should command the forces in every place visited by them, with the exception of Glasgow and Stirling, where it was supposed the Lieutenant-General would be present. To this circumstance we owe it that a report of the only case in which sentence of death was pronounced, can be given in his own words. It is contained in a letter to the Lord Chancellor, and is deserving of notice, not merely on account of the facts which it relates, for those may be gathered from other documents, but also because of the sentiments and principles which the writer found opportunity to express in it, and which help us to understand the spirit by which Claverhouse was actuated, and the view which he took of both duty and expediency in carrying out the law.