Was He Bluidy Clavers or Bonnie Dundee?
Why Scotland Still Can’t Agree on John Graham
History has never been able to settle on John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. Was he the gallant cavalier who died with his plume aloft at Killiecrankie, a hero of loyalty and courage remembered in song as Bonnie Dundee? Or was he the ruthless persecutor of Covenanters, the scourge of the southwest, forever cursed as Bluidy Clavers? His story is one of paradox and passion, and it is the subject of my new book Bluidy Clavers or Bonnie Dundee: The Life and Death of John Graham of Claverhouse, which will be available on Amazon. The book explores Dundee’s life, battles, and the centuries of memory wars that followed, and I invite you to discover the full tale there.
The man himself lived during one of the most divided periods in Scotland’s history. Born in 1648, in the same year King Charles I was executed, Graham came of age in a kingdom torn apart by covenant and crown. He studied at St Andrews, but like many young Scottish nobles, he sought adventure abroad, serving as a cavalry officer in the Low Countries. There he learned discipline, horsemanship, and the tactics that would later define his campaigns. When he returned to Scotland, the Restoration monarchy found in him a reliable officer, a man willing to enforce royal authority when others hesitated.
It was in the southwest of Scotland that his reputation first hardened. This was Covenanter country, where Presbyterians refused to accept the bishops restored by Charles II and later James VII. They held field meetings called conventicles, often armed for self-defense. To the government, these were seditious gatherings that challenged royal authority. To the faithful, they were the true worship of Christ, carried out against tyranny. Graham’s cavalry was tasked with suppressing them. He carried out his orders firmly, dispersing crowds, arresting ministers, and punishing those who defied the law. Stories of his severity multiplied, each encounter magnified in memory. He became the symbol of the “Killing Time,” that dark decade of persecution, and his enemies branded him forever as Bluidy Clavers.
Yet there was another side. Those who served with him admired his discipline and courage. He married Lady Jean Cochrane, granddaughter of a Covenanter earl, a union that showed his personal charm and complexity. His letters to her reveal tenderness and devotion, quite at odds with the image of a bloodthirsty tyrant. To the crown, he was invaluable: loyal, effective, and unwavering in his duty. James VII trusted him deeply, and in 1688 created him Viscount Dundee. By then, however, the monarchy itself was collapsing.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 brought William of Orange to the throne, and James fled into exile. Scotland’s Convention of Estates debated whether to follow England in offering the crown to William and Mary. Dundee stood almost alone in defying the tide. He declared that James was still king, that no parliament could depose him, and that loyalty could not be compromised. When the Convention turned hostile, he mounted his horse and rode out of Edinburgh in daring fashion, a plume in his hat, pistols at his side. It was a gesture that became legend, the moment when he transformed from statesman into insurgent.
In the Highlands, he raised the standard of James VII and rallied the clans. MacDonalds, Camerons, MacLeans, Stewarts—all gathered under his banner. They were poorly armed, many with broadswords and targes rather than muskets, but they were fierce and loyal. Dundee inspired them with words of honor and loyalty, invoking the memory of Montrose, another Graham who had once rallied the Highlands for the Stuarts. Against him marched Major-General Hugh Mackay, commander of William’s regular troops, drilled in Dutch fashion and armed with modern bayonets. The clash between them was inevitable.
It came on July 27, 1689, at the Pass of Killiecrankie. Dundee held his men on the slopes until evening, then unleashed the Highland charge at the perfect moment. The effect was devastating. Mackay’s disciplined lines crumbled under the sheer ferocity of the clans rushing downhill with broadswords raised. The Williamite army broke and fled, leaving the Jacobites masters of the field. It was one of the most dramatic victories in Scottish history. Yet even as the field was won, Dundee himself was mortally wounded by a musket ball. He asked if the field was theirs, and when told yes, he gave thanks to God and died.
His death robbed the Jacobite cause of its leader. The victory could not be followed up, and within weeks the rising faltered. At Dunkeld, Jacobites were beaten by the new Cameronian Regiment, and the clans drifted home. Without Dundee, the mosaic of the Highland army dissolved. His cause had triumphed in battle but failed in war.
From that moment on, his memory was fought over as fiercely as any battlefield. To Covenanters, he remained Bluidy Clavers, the persecutor of the faithful. Their sermons and histories portrayed him as a villain, cursed by God and remembered with bitterness. To Jacobites, he was Bonnie Dundee, the gallant cavalier whose plume led them to victory and whose death made him a martyr. They sang ballads in his honor, toasted his name, and invoked him as inspiration in later risings. In the nineteenth century, Sir Walter Scott immortalized him in his song “Bonnie Dundee,” ensuring that the romantic image would endure. Monuments rose at Killiecrankie and Old Blair, while his grave became a site of memory.
Yet the shadow of Bluidy Clavers never disappeared. In Presbyterian communities, his name remained one of hatred, bound to the suffering of the Killing Time. Even today, the dual images persist, side by side: villain and hero, persecutor and martyr. Historians have sought to reconcile them, noting that he was harsh but not unusually cruel by the standards of his time, loyal beyond question, courageous in battle, eloquent in word, and utterly devoted to his king. He was both feared and admired, both hated and loved.
So was he Bluidy Clavers or Bonnie Dundee? The answer is that he was both. He embodied the contradictions of Scotland in the seventeenth century, a land torn between crown and covenant, between loyalty and conscience. His enemies and admirers alike remembered him in ways that reflected their own struggles. That is why his name endures, not as a settled figure but as a paradox, a man who still divides Scotland more than three hundred years after his death.
If you want to explore the full story—his youth and education, his years of service abroad, his marriage, his rise to Viscount Dundee, the Glorious Revolution, the campaigns in the Highlands, Killiecrankie, his death, and the centuries of memory wars that followed—you can find it all in my new book Bluidy Clavers or Bonnie Dundee: The Life and Death of John Graham of Claverhouse, available soon on Amazon. It is a tale of loyalty and tragedy, of Scotland’s divided soul, and of a man whose plume still casts a shadow across history.
