Note 66 — Chapter VII · [49]

For example, the story told of Claverhouse sparing a man's life for the sport his capture had afforded, but ordering his ears to be shorn off. This may be found in a book called "Gleanings among the Mountains, or Traditions of the Covenanters," published at Edinburgh, in 1846, by the Rev. Robert Simpson, of Sanquhar. The same gentleman is responsible for an earlier volume, "The Times of Claverhouse," in which the Covenanters are described as a class of "quiet and orderly men," maintaining the standard of their gospel in "the most peaceful and inoffensive way." In neither volume is any authority offered for these stories: even the evidence of time and place is rarely vouchsafed.