The case of two of these men, that of Peter Gillies and John Bryce has been cited by Macaulay as one of the instances of the crimes by which Claverhouse and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the Western Lowlands into madness. His account, based on that given by Wodrow, refutes the statement made by De Foe as to the absence of all legal formality. He admits that the two artisans were tried by a military tribunal consisting of fifteen men; and thus sets aside what both Shields and De Foe put forward as the crowning atrocity of the deed. But, on the other hand, by mentioning the execution amongst other alleged instances of Claverhouse’s cruelty, he leaves the reader under the impression that it was he and his dragoons who acted as judge and jury. Now Wodrow distinctly states that, on being taken to Mauchline, Gillies and Bryce, ‘with some others, were examined by Lieutenant-General Drummond,’ and that ‘an assize was called of fifteen of the soldiers,’ with Drummond himself as ‘Commissioner of Justiciary.’ Claverhouse’s name does not once occur in Wodrow’s detailed account of the incident, and evidence to connect him directly and personally with the trial or execution is consequently wanting.
The last instance drawn from ‘the history of a single fortnight,’ of that lamentable month of May 1685, is the summary execution of Andrew Hislop, in Eskdale Muir. There are two accounts of it. One of them is to be found in ‘The Cloud of Witnesses.’ The other is given by Wodrow. About Hislop himself, the latter tells us that he was but a youth, and lived with his mother, to whom one of the ‘suffering people’ had come for shelter, and in whose house he had died. For her charity towards the proscribed Covenanter, and for affording his body burial, the poor widow brought down upon herself the vengeance of the Laird of Westerhall, who though ‘once a Covenanter, a great professor and zealot for the presbyterian establishment,’ had become a violent persecutor of his former brethren, ‘as all apostates generally are.’ To signalise his loyalty, Westerhall pulled down the woman’s cottage, carried off everything that was portable, and drove her with her children into the fields. Her eldest son Andrew, however, was reserved for a worse fate, as to the actual circumstances of which there are conflicting narratives. That contained in the book commonly known as ‘The Cloud of Witnesses’ states that Westerhall delivered him up to Claverhouse, ‘and never rested until he got him shot by Claverhouse’s troops.’ Wodrow, though he was acquainted with this account, and actually refers to it, so far departs from it as to make Claverhouse the lad’s captor. ‘Claverhouse,’ he says, ‘falls upon Andrew Hislop in the fields, May 10th, and seizes him, without any design, as appeared, to murder him, bringing him prisoner with him to Eskdale, unto Westerhall that night.’