Note 7 — Chapter II

This is, perhaps, the best place to disclaim all intention of scoffing at this great writer and historian. It is a common impertinence of the day in which I have no wish to join. It is not, I hope, an impertinence to say that only those who have, for their own purposes, been forced to follow closely in his tracks can have any just idea of the unwearying patience and acuteness with which he has examined the confused and so often conflicting records of that time, or of the incomparable skill with which he has brought them into a clear continuous narrative. To glean after Macaulay is indeed a barren task. So far, then, from affecting to cavil at his work, I must acknowledge that without his help this little book would have been still less. Yet I do think he has been hard upon Claverhouse. Perhaps the scheme of his history did not require, or even allow him, to examine the man's character and circumstances so closely as a biographer must examine them. It is still more important to remember that the letters discovered by Napier in the Queensberry Archives were not known to him. Had he seen them, I am persuaded that he would have found reason to think less harshly of their writer.