Upon the approach of our party, McDonnel, laird of Cappagh, dismissing his prisoners, retired farther into the mountains; whereupon we who were sent against him continued to destroy all the houses and corn, from the time of Lammas to the tenth of September: and then we advanced toward the borders, to join the Scotch army, which at that time was marching toward England, against the prince of Orange, who then intended an invasion. We arrived there the first of October, after a march of two hundred miles.
General Drummond being then dead, James Douglas, brother to the duke of Queensberry, succeeded him as commander in chief: and Graham laird of Clavers (about this time created lord Dundee[1]) was major general. On the first of October the army passed the Tweed, and drew up on the banks, on the English side; where the general gave a strict charge
- ↑ John Graham, created viscount Dundee by king James, was a major general of the Scottish army, and a privy counsellor, in the reign of Charles II. He was then employed in reducing the west of Scotland, and in forcing the dissenters to comply with the constitution of the established church, by imposing heavy taxes upon them, which was one of the methods of making proselytes in that kingdom. But he was a man of too noble a nature, to execute his orders in their full rigour. Granger, IV, 277.
session of a contested estate by force, and a grant of a military power to effect it, was illegal, arbitrary, and tyrannical, totally inconsistent with the liberty of the people, and the coronation oath of the king: but to give orders to revenge an opposition by the murder, not only of the men, but of all the women and children belonging to the injured party, was an instance of cruelty that disgraced human nature, and would have been a crime of the deepest die, if there had been no positive institution, and neither law nor compact existing upon earth.
