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 father-in-law, for in February 1677–8 the duke commended Claverhouse for a lieutenancy to the Marquis of Montrose, who was then raising the first troop for the duke's regiment of horse guards in Scotland (, i. 185). The purpose of raising the new regiment was to curb the covenanters. There is no evidence as to when Claverhouse received his lieutenant's commission, but on the promotion of Montrose on 21 Nov. to the command of the regiment he was made captain of Montrose's troop. Shortly afterwards he was sent to the south of Scotland to begin his prolonged effort for the subjugation of the covenanters.

The disaffected districts embraced the counties of Ayr, Lanark, Dumfries, and Galloway. Thirty years previously seven thousand peasants from these districts had joined in the ‘whigamore raid.’ Their uncompromising determination to have a ‘covenanted king’ had also ruined the romantic attempt of Montrose in behalf of Charles II, and had brought Montrose to the scaffold. The memory of Montrose was cherished by every Graham with peculiar and proud regret, and Claverhouse especially regarded the career of Montrose as the highest model for his imitation. Claverhouse had thus with the covenanters a personal and hereditary feud. In his crusade he was sincerely in earnest. He possessed nothing of the joviality and careless love of pleasure associated with the typical cavalier. He was reputed to be truly pious, and even the covenanters themselves admitted that the ‘hell wicked-witted, bloodthirsty Graham of Claverhouse … hated to spend his time with wine and women’ (‘Life of Walter Smith’ in, Biographia Presbyteriana, ii. 56).

With his single troop Claverhouse was entrusted with the duty of repressing conventicles in Dumfries and Annandale. The earliest record of his doings is contained in a letter of his own to his commander-in-chief, the Earl of Linlithgow, dated 28 Dec. 1678 (, ii. 187–8), announcing his arrival in Moffat and his intention to march to Dumfries, where he purposed to quarter his troop. Its purport is a request for a more comprehensive commission to authorise not merely the prevention of conventicles, but the apprehension of persons who could be proved to have previously attended them, and also to permit him in emergencies to take the initiative beyond the bounds of Dumfries and Annandale. He had learned of the existence on the Galloway side of the bridge at Dumfries of a covenanting meeting-house disguised as a byre, erected by some wealthy covenanting ladies. Having received a special commission from the council, Claverhouse with a squad of his dragoons superintended its destruction by a number of countrymen, ‘all fanatics’ (ib. p. 189), who had been pressed into the work by the deputy-sheriff of Galloway, Grierson of Lag [q. v.] His letters of this period show a scrupulous desire to repress unlicensed outrages committed by dragoons. At the same time it is abundantly evident that when he was convinced of the guilt of any one he did not regard the total absence of legal proof as an insuperable obstacle to proceedings against him. Thus, regarding the brother of a notorious covenanter, who had been apprehended by mistake for the man himself, he writes: ‘Though he may be cannot preach as his brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he; wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go with the rest’ (ib. p. 191). His energetic vigilance failed to strike sufficient terror, and it gradually dawned on him that in his main purpose of suppressing conventicles he was being practically baffled. The hilly, pastoral country was very difficult to watch. ‘Good intelligence,’ Claverhouse writes on 8 Feb. 1679, ‘is the thing we want most here. Mr. Welsh and others preach securely within twenty or thirty miles off; but we can do nothing for want of spies’ (ib. p. 193). News of his own movements, and even of the proceedings and orders of the council, seemed prematurely to reach the persons against whom action was being taken. On 28 Dec. 1678 he begged that any new orders might be kept as secret as possible, ‘and sent for me so suddenly as the information some of the favourers of the fanatics are to send may be prevened’ (ib. p. 188); and on 24 Feb. 1679 he chafes because ‘there is almost nobody lays in their beds that knows themselves in any way guilty, within forty miles of us’ (ib. p. 194). Another difficulty by which he was at first greatly hampered was the inefficiency of the old hereditary jurisdictions, and the passive attitude adopted by many of the lords of regality. To meet this the king, on 18 Jan., by express warrant, empowered the council to name such sheriffs and bailies deputies in such bounds as they should find necessary to deal solely with religious delinquencies; and in accordance with this order Claverhouse and his lieutenant, Bruce of Earlshall, were on 11 March named sheriff deputes of Dumfries and Annandale.

Gradually it became evident that the measures of the government were driving the peasants to desperation. ‘Mr. Welsh,’ he writes to Linlithgow, ‘is accustoming both ends of the country to face the king's forces,