WODROW THE HISTORIAN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—In fairness to the memory of Robert Wodrow (1679-1734), a distinguished minister of the Church of Scotland held in great reverence by his contemporary compeers, the careful librarian of the University of Glasgow, an assiduous and scrupulous historian and a judicially minded man, may I be permitted to controvert the following statement made in your issue of May 27th last by Sir Evelyn Grant-Duff : " Macaulay derived his information regarding the so-called ` persecuted ' chiefly from Wodrow's History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scot- land, which is about as trustworthy a source as would be a Sinn Fein record of the doings of the British Army in Ireland, 1916-22 "?
My experience of the trustworthiness of Wodrow, after years of study of his extant manuscripts and printed work, which are preserved in libraries in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and some of whioh are in my possession, is that Wodrow, setting out to write accurately and priding himself on this endeavour, accu- mulated an enormous mass of carefully copied-out documents relative to the history of Scotland, especially in the seventeenth
century, and obtained holograph letters'relative to disputable facts of importance, and even affidavits from persons of repute who lived in " the killing time "—sufferers, magistrates, clergy, and land proprietors. Testimony to the murder of John Brown, " the Christian carrier," was afforded by a relative of Clever- house himself. Consequently Wodrow, before penning a single line, fortified himself with every available statement of fact possible. This assertion is borne out by the fact that in the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh there are preserved 138 volumes of Wodrow's manuscripts, embodying narratives, memoranda, letters, legal documents, originals and copies, and 0th-ex valuable testimonies regarding the various covenants. There are also twenty volumes of miscellaneous manuscripts, notebooks, sermons, &c., besides written " Analecta or Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences mostly relating to Scotch ministers and Christians." (The Maitland Club pub- lished these in four volumes.) Similar volumes are preserved in the Library of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh. In Glasgow University there are many volumes containing " Memoirs of Reformers," some of which have been published by the Maitland Club.
Being well acquainted with the works of all the Scottish writers of history, I venture to assert that no one did excel, or could excel, Wodrow in his honest and honourable endeavour to obtain the facts of any case he chronicles, which he presents to the reader with care and candour. He was scrupulous, even to being finical. The very printed appendices of documents in his famous folios prove that he was a model historian. No essential fact in the story of the " Sufferings," as told by Wodrow, has been upset by modern detractors. His History was approved by the General Assembly of the Church, and was dedicated to King George I., who authorized a grant of 100 guineas out of the Treasury for his meritorious work. Surely the time is now past for wasting sympathy upon John Graham of Claverhouse and other persecutors, when it is known by reference to the minutes of the Privy Council that Graham and other soldiers were often present as members of the Council when the unjustifiable and repressive laws were made which they in their fidelity duly executed, just as the historian
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