Wodrow admits that ‘it may be the rescue of some prisoners of Kirkcudbright by some of the wanderers a little before this, was the pretext for all this cruelty.’ But he says no word from which it can be gathered that the party which broke open the Tolbooth of Kirkcudbright could reasonably be suspected of including some of the men who murdered Peirson. He gives no hint of his knowledge that it was whilst pursuing these rioters that Claverhouse came upon the Deeside fugitives; and it almost seems as though, by a slight change of name, he wished to conceal the fact that the James Macmichan, whose body was treated with such ‘strange barbarity and spite,’ was no other than the James Macmichael whom he himself names as the actual murderer of Peirson. The information which he failed to supply may be got from Fountainhall, who, in his ‘Historical Notices,’ under date of the 20th of December, announces the receipt of letters from Claverhouse, reporting that he had met with a party of the rebels, who had skulked, that he had followed them, killed five, and taken three prisoners, some of whom were the murderers of the minister of Carsphairn, and that he was to judge and execute the three prisoners by his justiciary powers. Such is the origin and development of one of those ‘atrocities’ to which Claverhouse owes the opprobrious epithet of ‘bloody.’ For an impartial judgment of the extent of Claverhouse’s personal connection with some of the incidents of this particular period, it must be remembered that early in the year Colonel Douglas was appointed on special duty against the ‘Western fanatics.’ In addition to this, on the 27th of March, the judicial powers previously held by Claverhouse were also conferred on Douglas, as Justice in all the southern and western shires. The instructions given him by the Privy Council contained a special clause referring to the treatment of women that might be brought before him or any of the members of his Commission. Only such as had been active in a signal manner in treasonable courses were to be examined; and those if found guilty, were to be drowned. It was in accordance with this provision that Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson were condemned to death. Whether the sentence was actually carried out, or whether the account of their drowning on the sands of the Solway Firth given by Wodrow and repeated by Macaulay be wholly apocryphal, as Napier maintained, is a question into which it is not necessary to enter, though the difficulty of believing that so circumstantial a narrative can be a mere Covenanting fiction may readily be admitted. But it is not unimportant to point out that Claverhouse was neither directly nor indirectly concerned either in the trial, the sentence, or the execution, and that, though still nominally a Privy Councillor when Douglas superseded him, he was absent from the meeting at which his rival was appointed Justice, and at which the drowning of women was ordered.