1685 - The Cochranes and Bonnie Dundee

[This is part of  a series of articles on the year 1685.  You might want to read the Overview first.]

June 18, 1685

Family ties, political loyalties, and religious convictions in 1685 can be confusing.  I get confused just by the many names and titles assigned to a single person.  For example the leader of the 1685 Argyll Rebellion was the 9th Earl of Argyll, also known as Archibald Campbell.  The leader of the king's army in Argyll was John Murray, or the Marquis of Atholl who lived in Blair Castle.  And it goes on.

The wealth and power that came with alignment with the King trumped any religious conflicts for many in the ruling class.  For others, their Covenant to only recognize Christ as the head of the church was more important than allegiance to a King who sought the ecclesiastical crown as well as the secular crown.  When it came to choosing sides in battle, a clansman had no choice but to fight for his clan chief irregardless of religious or political leanings.

When political, religious, and family forces collided, strange alliances sometimes occurred.  One in particular was the marriage of Jean Cochrane to John Graham of Claverhouse.

John Graham, also known as Bonnie Dundee and Bluidy Clavers, but most commonly just as "Claverhouse," was one of the more colorful and controversial actors of the day.   In 1685 he was only 37 years old.  He was a respected Officer in the Royal Army (in another year he would be promoted to Major General), a member of the Scottish Privy Council, Sheriff of Wigtown, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Annandale, Constable of Dundee, and the proprietor of extensive lands.

John Graham of Claverhouse

For the past seven years his military mission had been to suppress the illegal religious gatherings of Presbyterians.  These were known as the Covenanters.  They were unwilling to take an oath to the King that recognized him as the Head of the Church.  Claverhouse disrupted the secret "Conventicles" of the Covenanters and they demonized him in word and print (see this example).

Just a year previous, on June 10, 1684, Claverhouse married "the Honourable Jean Cochrane."  This marriage fell into the category of "political" as this alignment of two powerful families would increase Claverhouse's wealth and power.  The Cochranes, however, were well known Covenanters.  In fact, Jean Cochrane's uncle, Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree, was exiled in the Netherlands with Argyll.

Jean Cochrane - Lady Claverhouse

Jean's mother may have been averse to the wedding as she did not sign the matrimonial contract. Claverhouse looked on the apparent contradiction as follows:  (I changed spellings for ease in reading.  The reader is directed to John Graham of Claverhouse by Charles Sanford Terry, M.A. for the direct transcription.  It can be found at archive.org.)

I look on myself as a cleanser. I may cure people guilty of that plague of presbytry by conversing with them, but cannot be infected, and I see very little of that amongst those persons but may be easily rubbed off.  And for the young lady herself, I shall answer for her. Had she been right principled [Had she been as Whiggish as her family] she would never, inspite of her mother and relations, made choice of a persecutor, as they call me.

Perhaps there was a fourth factor at work here--falling in love.

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On June 18, 1685, Claverhouse found himself far from the action of the Argyll Rebellion.  He commanded a royal regiment of horse near Selkirk and the "Borders" to prevent communication between Monmouth's and Argyll's armies.

Sir John Cochrane, the uncle of Lady Claverhouse, was in command of the last surviving unit of rebels.  [Argyll, the leader of the rebellion, had been captured earlier in the day.]  After a brief skirmish in Renfrewshire (land that Cochrane knew well) his forces dispersed. 

"Ten days after the skirmish at Muirdyke [in Renfrewshire] Cochran was betrayed to the authorities, but his life, though doubly forfeited on account of his share in the Rye-House Plot and in this rebellion, was spared in consequence of a ransom of £5,000 Sterling being paid by his father, Lord Dundonald, to some of the priests about the Court. In order to afford a pretext for remitting the death penalty he was taken to London, where he had an interview with James II, in which it was alleged that he had revealed secrets of importance." (A Scots Earl in Covenanting Times..., John Willcock (google book)

Epilogue

Claverhouse was wounded at the battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 and died soon after near Blair Castle.  He is buried in the ruins of St Bride's Kirk at Blair Castle, the estate of John Murray, Marquis of Atholl.

St. Bride's Kirk - Claverhouse tomb in portal on right side

Lady Claverhouse remarried.  She died in 1695 in the Netherlands when the Inn she was staying at collapsed.