Graham, JOHN, VISCOUNT DUNDEE, was the elder son of Sir William Graham of Claverhouse, in Forfarshire. His birth is placed with more likelihood in 1649 than in 1643, for he did not matriculate at St Andrews till February 1665. After three years there, then four perhaps soldiering under Turenne, in 1672 he entered the Dutch service as cornet in the Prince of Orange's horseguards. In 1674 at the battle of Seneff he saved (according to the Grameid) William's life; in 1677 he returned to Scotland, and next year received a commission as lieutenant in a troop of horse commanded by his cousin, the third Marquis of Montrose. At this time the government of Charles II. was engaged in its insane attempt to force Episcopacy upon the people of Scotland. A system of fines and military coercion was carried on against all nonconformists; conventicles and field-preachings were prohibited; penalties were inflicted on all who even harboured the recusants; and the nation lay at the mercy of informers. Maddened by oppression, and fired by a fierce zeal for the Covenant, the western peasantry flew to arms; but their efforts were irregular and detached, and each successive failure only aggravated their sufferings. Many were executed; the gaols were crowded with prisoners; and those who fled were outlawed, and their property confiscated. In this miserable service Claverhouse, now sheriff-depute of Dumfriesshire, was employed. At Drumclog, on Sunday, 1st June 1679, he encountered an armed body of Covenanters, but was defeated, some forty of his troopers being slain, and himself forced to flee from the field. Three weeks later, at Bothwell Brig, he served as a simple captain of cavalry. These are the only affairs that can even by courtesy be called battles in which Claverhouse was engaged in Scotland previous to James II.'s abdication. They displayed no generalship. In detecting and hunting down the Covenanters he evinced the utmost activity; still, he had nothing whatever to do with the Wigtown martyrdoms, and if he caused shoot John Brown, the 'Christian Carrier,' it was after finding of arms and refusal to take the oath of abjuration. He rose to the rank of colonel, and in 1682 became sheriff of Wigtownshire, in 1683 was sworn a privy-councillor, in 1684 got a gift of the Forfarshire estate of Dudhope, and was made constable of Dundee. That same year he married Lady Jean Cochrane, the daughter of a Whig house, who bore him one short-lived son, and who afterwards wedded the Viscount of Kilsyth. In November 1688, on his march up to London to stem the Revolution, Claverhouse was raised to the peerage as Viscount Dundee; four months later he rode with fifty troopers out of Edinburgh, and, being joined by the Jacobite clans and three hundred Irish, raised the standard for King James against William and Mary. After various rapid movements in the north, he seized Blair Castle, the key of the Highlands; and General Mackay, commanding the government forces, marched against him from Edinburgh. On the evening of 27th July 1689 the two armies met at the head of the Pass of Killiecrankie. Mackay's force was between 3000 and 4000; Dundee's only 2000. Two minutes decided the contest; before the wild rush of the clansmen the redcoats wavered, broke, and ran like sheep. Their loss was 2000, the victors' 900 only; but one of the 900 was Ian Dhu nan Cath (or 'Black John of the Battles'), as the Highlanders called Dundee. A musket-ball struck him as he was waving on his men, and he sank from his saddle into the arms of a soldier named Johnstone. 'How goes the day?' murmured Dundee. 'Well for King James,' said Johnstone, 'but I am sorry for your lordship.' 'If it is well for him,' was the dying man's answer, 'it matters the less for me.' Wrapped in two plaids, his body was borne to Blair Castle; and in the church of Old Blair they buried him, where in 1889 the Duke of Athole placed a tablet to his memory.
'Bloody Claverse,' 'Bonnie Dundee'—the two names illustrate the opposite feelings borne towards one whom the malice of foes and the favour of friends have invested with a factitious interest. He was neither the devil incarnate that legend and Lord Macaulay have painted him, nor the 17th-century Havelock of Aytoun, Napier, and Paget. True, Wodrow himself admits that 'the Hell-wicked-witted, bloodthirsty Graham of Claverhouse hated to spend his time with wine and women;' Lochiel's biographer records how he never was heard to swear, and how, 'besides family worship, performed regularly evening and morning in his house, he retired to his closet at certain hours, and employed himself in that duty.' But, then, we have Claverhouse's own admission (1679): 'In any service I have been in I never inquired farther in the laws than the orders of my superior officers'—an admission that accuses whilst excusing, and that is applicable to his whole career. Bonnie at least he was in outward form, with the 'long dark curled locks,' and the 'melancholy haughty countenance,' which we know by his portraits and by Scott's matchless description.
The letter purporting to be written to James II. by Dundee after he had got his death-wound, and first published in Macpherson's Original Papers (1775), is almost certainly a forgery, though not Macpherson's. The Grameid is a long but unfinished Latin epic by James Philip of Almericlose (c. 1656–1713), one of Dundee's followers. Written in 1691, it was first edited by the Rev. A. D. Murdoch for the Scottish History Society (1888). Mark Napier's Memorials and Letters of Dundee (3 vols. 1859–62) is perhaps the worst life in the language, still well worth sifting. See also Aytoun's Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers (1849); Paget's Paradoxes and Puzzles (1874); Claverhouse, by Mowbray Morris ('English Worthies' series, 1887); and Clavers, the Despot's Champion, by 'a Southern' (1889).