Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/299

 12 s. i. APRIL s, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

29$

' GOD SAVE THE KING ' ( 10 S. iii. 108). W. B. H. asks for a reference to what ap- peared to be an authoritative announcement in the form of an official letter as to the proper rendering of the opening lines cf the National Anthem. This has, apparently, remained unanswered. This question of the right version having been again raised at the London County Council, I had occasion to look into the subject, and came across the following letter in The Times of Dec. 20, 1901 :

Marlborough House, Pall-mall, S.W.

Nov. 21, 1901.

GENTLEMEN, I have submitted your two letters to the King, and I am commanded to inform you in reply that he is not prepared to decide which is the proper rendering of the National Anthem. No official declaration will, therefore, be made on the subject. Your obedient servant,

FRANCIS KNOLLYS.

The letter is addressed to Messrs. Bayley and Ferguson, and is, no doubt, that meant by W. B. H. The present version of " our gracious King " instead of " our lord the King is a legacy from the accession of Queen Victoria (see 8 S. iii. 107).

J. HENRY QUINN. Chelsea, S.W.

CLAVEBHOUSE (12 S. i. 169).!. Mr. T. F. Henderson, in the 'D.N.B.,' s.v. 'Graham, John,' says :

" Two women, Margaret Maclachlan andMargaret Wilson, were drowned on the sands of the Solway Firth for refusing to take the abjuration oath. They were sentenced on 18 April [1685] at a court where David Graham, Claverhouse's sheriff-depute and brother, sat as one of the judges; they were re- manded by the Privy Council on 1 May, and recommended to the royal mercy, hut they were nevertheless executed on 11 May. Whether they were executed because James, now King, refused to interpose, is unknown. The fact that the execu- tion took place within the jurisdiction of Claver- house, and that his brother was one of the judges at the trial, necessarily associated his name with the execution in popular tradition. Nor have the apologizers of Claverhouse recognized the exact circumstances of his relation to it. But for his quarrel with Queensberry, the issue of the special commission, and his omission from the new Privy Council, it would have been difficult to believe that he was not in some degree responsible for the execution. Napier has tried less to disprove the connection of Claverhouse with the execution than to show that it never took place at all ; but a pamphlet published by the Rev. Archibald Stewart m 1869, 'History vindicated in the Case of the Wigtown Martyrs,' must be regarded as establish- ing the fact of the execution beyond all doubt. There is no evidence that the women were prose- cuted directly or indirectly at the instance of Claverhouse ; there is nothing to show that he was in the district while the case was under considera- tion or in suspense, and it is impossible to state whether he even knew anything of the case until

all was over. All that can be positively affirmed i^ that the act in accordance with which they were condemned to death was one which had his full approval, and that one of the judges was his brother who enjoyed his full confidence, and up till then had acted under his special directions ; but apart from this there is the widest room for con- jecture as to what Clarerhouse did do or would have done."

And see Andrew Lang's * History of Scotland,' vol. iii. pp. 384, 386-8, 396, for an interesting and vigorous account of the Wigtown martyrs. Margaret Wilson was 18 (or 23), Margaret M'Lauchlan or Lauch- lison 63 (or, on the evidence of her own. fellow-parishioners, 80).

2. ' D.N.B.' (xxii. 349) remarks : " The circumstances of Dundee's death [at Killie- crankie] allowed full play to the imagination of the Covenanters. No one had seen him shot, and he was supposed to have obtained a charm from the devil against leaden bullets ; various accounts became current as to how he met his death ; but that which ultimately found general acceptance- was that he was shot by his own servant ' with a silver button he had before taken off his own coat r (Howie, 'God's Judgement on Persecutors/ p. xxxix). In accordance with this tradition- Dundee is depicted by Scott among the ghastly revellers in * Wandering Willie's Tale ' as having ' his left hand always on his right spule-blade to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made.' "

Did Mr. Lloyd George remember this tradition when some time ago he referred to* " silver bullets " ? A. B. BAYLEY.

The following is the epitaph in Wigtown Church, and quoted in the appendix of ' The Cloud of Witnesses,' on Margaret Wilson : Murdered for owning Christ supreme, Head of his Church, and no more crime But her not owning Prelacy And not abjuring Presbytery, Within the sea, tied to a stake, She suffered for Christ Jesus' sake.

A. GWYTHEB.

With reference to the alleged execution of two women by drowning on the seashore, see Paget's ' Puzzles and Paradoxes,' Black- woods, 1874 (of which Andrew Lang wrote that it contained good reading), which refutes various barbarities attributed to Claverhouse.. Louis R. LETTS.

Dollis Park, Finchley.

An eloquent description of the incident referred to by MB. A. S. E. ACKEBMANN, of Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson suffering death for their religion in Wigtown- shire in the flood tide of the Solway, will be- found in vol. i. chap. iv. of Macaulay's. ' History of England.' There is no reason, to question the substantial accuracy of the description, though doubtless this atrocity