The extant correspondence between Claverhouse and Queensberry closes with a letter bearing date of the 3rd of July 1685. It is a report as to the manner in which an order from the Secret Committee with regard to the disposal of the moveables of rebels for the maintenance of the royal forces had been carried out. It is a straightforward and business-like statement, setting forth how the money already received had been laid out, and requesting instructions with respect to the sums still due.
Apart from the desire which every honourable man would feel, and with which Claverhouse may be credited, of placing himself above suspicion in all that concerned the management of the funds that came into his hands, he had special reason for exercising exceptional care in the matter in view of the humiliating treatment to which he had been subjected shortly before. In the preceding month of March, Queensberry, as High Treasurer had given orders to the cash-keeper to charge Claverhouse on a bond he had given to the Exchequer, for the fines of delinquents in Galloway. Claverhouse had replied that his brother, the Sheriff-depute, was gathering them in, and craved for delay, whereupon he was allowed five or six days’ grace. He objected that considering the distance, such a concession was as unreasonable as giving no time at all. To this the Treasurer had retorted, ‘Then you shall have none.’
Claverhouse had paid the money; but he was not content to remain under the imputation which Queensberry’s action towards him implied. He had repeatedly applied for leave to proceed to London, for the purpose of explaining his conduct to the King, both in this transaction and in other matters which had been made the grounds of complaints against him, and which had led to his temporary disgrace. He had been persistently refused, and it was not till the end of the year that he had an opportunity of pleading his cause before James. Then, however, he did it to good purpose. According to Fountainhall, ‘the King was so ill-satisfied with what the Treasurer had exacted of Claverhouse, that he ordered the Treasurer to repay it.’
On the 24th of December 1685, Claverhouse returned to Edinburgh in company with the Earl of Perth. The Chancellor had recently abjured Protestantism, and stood in high favour with the King. But if, as Halifax sarcastically remarked, his faith saved him at Court, it made him impossible in Scotland. Within a few weeks of his arrival, on Sunday, the 31st of January, there was a popular demonstration against the avowed and public meetings for the celebration of Mass and other acts of ‘Papish worship.’ The disorderly crowd, in which the apprentices of Edinburgh figured conspicuously, fell upon one of the priests, and compelled him, under threats of death, to renounce popery, and, on bended knees, to take the test oath. Others, as they came from church, were roughly treated and had mud thrown at them.