SIMON, LORD LOVAT.
BEHEADED ON TOWER HILL.
No Fraser chief has achieved more notoriety than Simon, the fourteenth Lord Lovat. His enemies avenged themselves for the failure of their nefarious plots against him by supplying, at a cheap rate, the charcoal with which prejudiced historians have blackened his memory. But while his fate is still held up as a warning to evil doers, it has been proved, beyond peradventure, that his character has been much maligned, and that he appears rather as a man of inexhaustible resources, availing himself of whatever means lay nearest to his hand to extricate himself from enormous difficulties and to attain objects which, though of personal advantage to himself and Clan, were as honorable as they were just, and wholly in keeping with the customs of his day. His efforts to secure the chiefship and the honors of his house, and to extend the power of the Clan, were genuinely patriotic. His Lordship certainly was a man of learning and ability. He was an admirable letter writer, and passages in his correspondence show that he had wonderful facility in writing and a capital style.
The picture here given is from a mezzo-tint in possession of Mr. B. Homer Dixon, from a painting of Lord Lovat, by David Le Clerc, a Swiss who was in England in 1715 and 1716. The picture which is supposed to have been taken in 1715, when Lord Lovat was about forty-eight years old, is marked: "Le Clare, pinxt. J. Simon, fecit." Although armour had been disused before Lord Lovat's time, it was the fashion at that period for gentlemen to be painted in armour. The mezzo-tint is very rare.