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The
life of the last of those misguided men whose heads were set up on Temple
Bar as s rebels, nearly a century and a half ago, can hardly fail to be of
interest to my readers, even though it should turn out that that life is
not one of the heroic type of martyrs, but that of a clever, cunning
man of the world, and, indeed, approaching to that of knave.
At one time, to use the
words of the late historio-grapher of Scotland, 'he was a mountain
brigand, hunted from cave to cave, at another a laced courtier, welcomed
by the first circles in Europe; in summer a powerful baron, with nearly
half a kingdom at his back, in winter a prisoner, and dragged
ignominiously to the block on Tower Hill: by turns a soldier; a statesman,
a Highland chief, a judge administering the law of the land; uniting the
loyal Presbyterian Whig with the Catholic Jacobite,
and supporting both characters with equal
success.'
Lord Lovat was a strange and eccentric
character, and one whom it is worth while to study. His high talents-I had
almost written genius-his versatility, his great influence over others,
make him out as one who towered above his fellow-men, though his personal
history is a record of fraud and force, which would have been impossible
to read in any but a most unsettled time-indeed, a period of civil strife.
His biography has been written at length by several hands, from which the
following notice is largely abridged. To the contents of these
biographies, which are rare in the extreme, I am able to add one little
bit of romance, namely, that there is reason to believe that, though he
lived and died as Lord Lovat, he had no real right or claim to the title
of Lord Lovatat all, but only to that of the Hon. Simon Fraser.*
He was
born about the year 1676, and is described as 'the
second son of Thomas Fraser, fourth son of Hugh, Lord of Lovat: and it is
worthy of note that no attempt is made by any of
his biographers to show what became of his elder brother. All that we
learn about Simon's childhood and youth is, that he was educated at King's
College, Aberdeen, that he distinguished himself in the acquirement of
Latin and French, and that lies tone of writing and
speaking was that of a scholar. He was taken from college to hold a
company in the regiment raised in the service of William and Mary, by Lord
Murray, son of the Marquis of Athole.
His cousin, Lord Lovat,
it appears, had married a daughter of the Lord of Athole, and her brother
naturally desired that the young lord should assist in the recruiting.
Simon, who had no toleration for any treachery
that was not o his own devising, speaks of this proceeding against the
exiled sovereign as 'an infamon commission,' furthered by one who,
'not daring to attack the Frasers in an open and
decisive manner, endeavored to tarnish their reputationn
by ruining that of their chief.' The
object of sending for Simon was to inform him
that a captain's commission in the regiment was
at his service if he would give
his influence to persuade
the clan to become recruits. 'But Simon's
virtue,' we are told, 'was incorruptible-he
rejected the bait with scorn.' He informed the
head of his house how that 'he
had for ever lost his honor and his loyalty, and that possibly ho would
one day lose his estates in consequence of the infamous steps he had
taken; that, for himself, he was so far from consenting to accept a
commission in the regiment of that traitor, Lord Murray, that he would
immediately go home to his clan, and prevent any one
man from enlisting in it.' Simon, however, at last accepted the
commission; and thus, although his honor revolted against taking arms in
support of King William, it was clear that 'he
had no objection to entering his service, with
the intention of betraying his trust and doing the work of the enemy.' In
connection with thus period of his life there is extant a curious legal
document, in the form of a bond, by which a
fencing-master engages, during all the days of his life, to teach
Simon his art; and the price for this slavery is
eight pounds.
At the age of twenty
the young lord went to London with his brother-in-law, Murray, to
presented at king William's court at Kensington. Shortly after his
return from town occurred the death of the eleventh Lord Lovat, and Thomas
Fraser of Beaufort immediately assumed the title of Lord Lovat. Simon-his
elder brother Alexander being, as it was asserted,
no longer in the land of the living
took, according to the Scottish custom of a baron's eldest son, the
title of 'The Master of Lovat' The above
succession to the peerage, however, did not pass unchallenged, and it
stood a chance of becoming one of the causes célàbres
of the time-one of those cases where
legal principles and practices
are torn up by the roots, that every fiber may be anatomized. In
the meantime a series of stirring incidents prevented this matter from
coming under the calm arbitration of the law. The chief of these was his
attempted abduction of the young sister of the late lord, who had a better
claim than himself to the Fraser estates.
In the 'Memoirs'
of the Fraser family, it is stated that the
heiress was destined for a member of the Athole family, by a 'project of
that greyheaded tyrant, the Marquis of Athole, and of the Earl of
Tullibardine, his eldest son, the true heir to his avarice and his other
amiable qualities, to possess themselves of the
estate of Lovat, and to enrich their family, which was hitherto rich only
in hungry lords.'It was thought a dangerous project to force one who was
not a Fraser on the clan; and Lord Saltoun-the
head of a branch of the Fraser family in
Aberdeenshire, with whom a sort of treaty had been concluded-was supposed
to be a fitting instrument for counteracting the using influence of Simon.
Baffled in his schemes
with the heiress, Simon, for some reason or other not altogether
explainable, seized on the widow of the late
Lord Lovat, a lady of the Athole family, and
compelled her to marry him. To accomplish this
act, Simon and his clan rose in arms, ostensibly for the purpose of
attacking Lord Saltoun's party; the real motive, however, was
apparently the seizure of Doune Castle,
where the dowager lady resided, as a close
prisoner, and of forcing her into a marriage
with him. In the indictment brought
against Thomas Fraser, the father, and Simon,
the son, for this outrage, the particulars of
the transaction are thus narrated.
'Not only the said
Thomas and Simon Eraser and their said
accomplices refused to lay down arms and desist
from their violence when commanded and charged by the sheriff of
Inverness, but, going on in their villainous
barbarities, they kept the said lady dowager in
the most miserable captivity, and, when nothing
that she could propose or promise world satisfy
them, the said Captain Simon Fraser takes up the
most mad and villainous resolution that ever was
heard of; for all in a sudden he and his said
accomplices make the lady close prisoner in her
chamber under his armed guards, and then come
upon her with the said Mr. Robert Munro, minister at Abertraff,*
and three or four ruffians, in the night-time, about two or three of the
morning, of the month of October last, or one or other days of the said
month of October last, and, having dragged out her maids, Agues
McBryar and - Fraser,
he proposes to the lady that she should marry
him, and when she fell in lamenting and crying, the great pipe was blown
up to drown her cries, and the wicked villains ordered the minister to
proceed.'
As this deed was not
only a crime, but an offence against a powerful family, Simon could
protect himself from punishment only by open force, and thus he kept up a
petty rebellion in the Highlands for some years. On the accession of Queen
Anne, his opponents becoming all-powerful, he fled to France, where the
nature of his offence, and the immorality and violence of his whole life
and character, were no obstaclee to his being
received into the favor and confidence of the 'devout' court of St. Germains. He undertook to excite a fresh insurrection in the mountains of
Scotland, and to asassemble twelve thousand
Highlanders for the Prince of Wales if the courts
of France would only contribute a few regular troops, some officers arms
ammunition, and money. Louis XIV entered
into this project, although be had no great
confidence in Fraser's sincerity, and finally
resolved that the outlaw should first return to
Scotland, with two persons upon whom His Majesty
might rely, and who were instructed to examine
the Highlands, and sound the clans themselves.
But Fraser no sooner
reached Scotland with these two individuals than he privately revealed the
whole plot to the Duke of Queensberry,
undertaking to snake him acquainted with the whole correspondence between
the Scottish Jacobites and the courts of St. Germain and Versailles. On it
being discovered that he had hoaxed the Duke of Queensberry and other
statesmen, and was playing a deep game of treachery of his own, he once
more made good his safety by escaping to the Continent.
He had already been
outlawed for his outrages, and another Fraser enjoyed his estates by the
letter of the law; but still he was not quite
forgotten nor forsaken by his clan. And when, some years later, the holder
of the estates had joined the insurrection, Simon found it to his interest
to side with the Government. His clan at once left the insurgents, and he
was by law once more duly installed in the full possession of his large
estates.
Of the innumerable
intrigues in which he was engaged dining the remainder of his trickylife;
how, in 1745, he tried to play
a double game by sending his clan, under the command of his son, to
fight for the Pretender, while he himself, deeply plotting for that cause,
sided with the Royalists; of these things I need say nothing, as they are
matters of history.
Finding at last that a
price was set upon his head, ho attempted to save his life by concealment
in the wildest part of tire Western Highlands;
but he was run to earth, and arrested at Moray, and taken to Fort William,
whence he was conveyed to London by easy stages.* He
was naturally the special object of vengeance of the Government,
and, after a trial by his peers in Westminster Hall, was found guilty of
treason, and executed on Tower Hill in April, 1747
Whether the Dowager
Lady Lovat, after the forced marriage above referred to, became reconciled
or not to her fate, was afterwards to Simon Fraser a matter of
indifference. 'He treated the forced ceremony as
a youthful frolic,' writes Mr. J. Hill Burton in his history of Lord Leval,
'and the victim of it lived to see him twice married, and rising to the
pinnacle of fortune as one who could over-ride
the laws of both God and man. Her days, however, seem not to have been
shortened by her hardships, for she lived till the year 1743, but died,
unluckily, just too soon to see the signal downfall of her oppressor:
*This was written shortly
before the question of the Lovat title was brought before the House of
Lords in 1884 by a kinsman whose claim, though it wore an appearance of
truth, was dismissed somewhat summarily on being sifted by a Committee of
the House of Lords.
* one of the parties indicated.
* In the last of these stages he slept at the
White Hart Inn at St. Albans, inhere he accidentally met Hogarth; and his
portrait by that artist, ill-favored as it represents
him, preserves at once his
features, and the memory of that event.
Chapters From the Family Chests, 1887
Chapters From the Family Chest |
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