exta trahebat
Vulnere tardatus sonipes generosus hiante:
Insequitur clamore cohors fanatica, namque
Crudelis semper timidus, ai vicerit unquam.«
                                                       MS. Bellum Bothuellianum.
 
30 This affair, the only one in which Claverhouse was defeated, or the insurgent
Cameronians successful, was fought pretty much in the manner mentioned in the
text. The Royalists lost about thirty or forty men. The commander of the
Presbyterian, or rather covenanting party, was Mr. Robert Hamilton, of the
honourable House of Preston, brother of Sir William Hamilton, to whose title and
estate he afterwards succeeded; but according to his biographer, Howie of
Lochgoin, he never took possession of either, as he could not do so without
acknowledging the right of King William (an uncovenanted monarch) to the crown.
Hamilton had been bred by Bishop Burnet, while the latter lived at Glasgow; his
brother, Sir Thomas, having married a sister of that historian. »He was then,«
says the Bishop, »a lively, hopeful, young man; but getting into that company,
and into their notions, he became a crack-brained enthusiast.«
Several well-meaning persons have been much scandalised at the manner in which
the victors are said to have conducted themselves towards the prisoners at
Drumclog. But the principle of these poor fanatics (I mean the high-flying, or
Cameronian party) was to obtain not merely toleration for their church, but the
same supremacy which Presbytery had acquired in Scotland after the treaty of
Rippon, betwixt Charles I. and his Scottish subjects, in 1640.
The fact is, that they conceived themselves a chosen people, sent forth to
extirpate the heathen, like the Jews of old, and under a similar charge to show
no quarter.
The historian of the Insurrection of Bothwell makes the following explicit
avowal of the principles on which their General acted: -
»Mr. Hamilton discovered a great deal of bravery and valour, both in the
conflict with, and pursuit of, the enemy; but when he and some other were
pursuing the enemy, others flew too greedily upon the spoil, small as it was,
instead of pursuing the victory; and some, without Mr. Hamilton's knowledge, and
directly contrary to his express command, gave five of those bloody enemies
quarter, then let them go. This greatly grieved Mr. Hamilton when he saw some of
Babel's brats spared after that the Lord had delivered them into their hands,
that they might dash them against the stones. - Psalm cxxxvii. 9. In his own
account of this, he reckons the sparing of these enemies