find it best for a while to know, or take little notice; for it gives him but ground of talking, and serves no other end.’ Even if Queensberry was as discreet as his correspondent advised him to be, there is no reason for supposing that Melfort considered himself bound to keep Claverhouse in ignorance of the stormy scene described by Murray. But although the newly-promoted Brigadier must have been well aware of the device by which his enemies had found means of coupling a slight with what was intended to be a mark of royal favour, he had the wisdom and the self-restraint to show no consciousness of it. A letter which he wrote to Queensberry on the 16th of June, bears testimony to his calm and self-respecting conduct, whilst, at the same time, it shows that the Lord Commissioner was as spitefully intent as ever on finding opportunities or excuses for annoying and humiliating him. Documents for the reconstruction of the whole case are not available. All that can be ascertained is that, in carrying out the precautionary measures which his additional powers justified and which the emergency required, he had requisitioned the assistance of some of Queensberry’s tenants. This had been construed into an offence, and made the subject of a report to the commander-in-chief who had no course open to him but that of intimating the Duke’s displeasure to his subordinate. The reply, addressed to Queensberry himself was respectful but dignified. ‘I am sorry,’ he wrote, ‘that anything I have done should have given your Grace occasion to be dissatisfied with me, and to make complaints against me to the Earl of Dumbarton. I am convinced your Grace is ill informed; for after you have read what I wrote to you two days ago on that subject, I daresay I may refer myself to your own censure. That I had no design to make great search there anybody may judge. I came not from Ayr till after eleven in the forenoon, and went to Balagen, with forty heritors against night. The Sanquar is just in the road; and I used these men I met accidentally on the road better than ever I used any in these circumstances. And I may safely say, that, as I shall answer to God, if they had been living on my ground, I could not have forborne drawing my sword and knocking them down. However, I am glad I have received my Lord Dumbarton’s orders anent your Grace’s tenants, which I shall most punctually obey; though, I may say, they were safe as any in Scotland before.’