Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume II.

by Mrs. A. T. Thomson

LORD LOVAT TO MR. CARSTAIRS,

"London, June 20th, 1701.

"Dear Sir,

"I reckon myself very unhappy that my friends here do so much neglect me; and I believe my last journey to England has done me a vast prejudice; for if I had been at home, I would have got something done in my Lord Evelin's business, and would have got money before now, that might serve me to go a volunteer with the King, or maintain me anywhere; but my friend at home must have worse thoughts now of my affairs than ever, having staid so long here, and got nothing done. However, I now resolve to go to Scotland, not being able to subsist longer here. I have sent the inclosed note, that, according to your kind promise, I may have the little money which will carry me home, and it shall be precisely paid before two months; and I must say, it is one of the greatest favours ever was done me, not having any other door open, if you were not so generous as to assist me, which I shall alwise gratefully remember, and continue with all sincerity, Dear Sir, Your faithful and obliged servant,

Lovat."

The death of William the Third revived the hopes of the Jacobite party; and to that centre of attraction the ruined and the restless, the aspiring and the profligate, alike turned their regards. Never was so great a variety of character, and so great a diversity of motives displayed in any cause, as in the various attempts which were made to secure the restoration of the Stuarts. On some natures those opinions, those schemes, which were generally known under the name of Jacobitism, acted as an incentive to self-sacrifice—and to a constancy worthy of better fortune. In other minds the poison of faction worked irremediable mischief: many who began with great and generous resolves, sank into intrigue, and ended in infidelity to the cause which that had espoused. But Lord Lovat came under neither of these classes; he knew not the existence of a generous emotion; he was consistent in the undeviating selfishness and baseness of his career.

If he had a sincere predilection, he was disposed to the interest of King James. Hereditary tendencies scarcely ever lose their hold upon the mind entirely: notions on politics are formed at a much earlier age than is generally supposed. The family of Fraser had been, as we have seen, from ages immemorial employed in defence of the Stuart Kings; and early prepossessions were imbibed by the unworthy descendant of a brave race, before his passions had interfered to warp the generous sentiment of loyalty. As he grew up, Lord Lovat learned to accommodate himself to any party; and it was justly observed by Lord Middleton, one of the favourite courtiers at St. Germains, that though he boasted so much of his adherence to his Sovereign, he had never served any sovereign but King William, in whose army he had commanded a regiment.[165]

The period was now, however, approaching, when he whose moral atmosphere was, like his native climate, the tempest and the whirlwind, might hope to glean some benefit from the impending storm which threatened the peace of the British empire.

On the sixth of September, 1701, James the Second of England expired at St. Germains. This event was favourable to those of the Jacobite party who wished to bring forward the interests of the young Prince of Wales. James had long been infirm, and had laid aside all schemes of worldly elevation. He had passed his time between the diversion of hunting and the duties of religion. His widowed Queen retained, on the contrary, an ardent desire to see her son restored to the throne of England. She implanted that wish in his own breast; she nourished it by the society of those whom she placed around him; and she passed her time in constantly forming new schemes for the promotion of that restoration to which her sanguine anticipations were continually directed.

The death of James was succeeded by two events: one, the avowed determination of Louis the Fourteenth to take the exiled family of Stuart under his protection, and the consequent proclamation of the young Prince of Wales as King of England; the other, the bill for the attainder of the pretended Prince of Wales, in the English Parliament, with an additional clause of attainder against the Queen, Mary of Modena, together with an oath of abjuration of the "Pretender." The debates which impeded the progress of this measure, plainly prove how deeply engrafted in the hearts of many of the higher classes were those rights which they were thus enforced to abjure.[166]

This was one of the last acts of William. His death, in 1702, revived the spirits of the Jacobites, for the partiality of Anne to her brother, the young Prince, was generally understood; and it appears, from the letters which have been published in later days to have been of a far more real and sisterly character than has generally been supposed. The death of the young Duke of Gloucester appeared, naturally, to make way for the restoration of the Stuart family; and there is no doubt but that Anne earnestly desired it; and that on one occasion, when her brother's life was in danger from illness, her anxiety was considerable on his account.

It is, therefore, no matter of reproach to the Jacobites, as an infatuation, although it has frequently been so represented, that they cherished those schemes which were ultimately so unfortunate, but which, had it not been that "popery appeared more dreadful in England than even the prospect of slavery and temporal oppression," would doubtless have been successful without the disastrous scenes which marked the struggle to bring them to bear.

Lord Lovat was at this time no insignificant instrument in the hands of the Jacobite party. When he found that the sentence of outlawry was not reversed; when he perceived that he must no longer hope for the peaceable enjoyment of the Lovat inheritance, his whole soul turned to the restoration of King James; and, after his death, to that of the young Prince of Wales. Yet he seems, in the course of the extraordinary affairs in which the Queen, Mary of Modena, was rash enough to employ him, to have one eye fixed upon St. James's, another upon St. Germains, and to have been perfectly uncertain as to which power he should eventually dedicate his boasted influence and talents.

Lord Lovat may be regarded as the first promoter of the Insurrection of 1715 in Scotland. Whether his exertions proceeded from a real endeavour to promote the cause of the Jacobites, or whether they were, as it has been supposed, the result of a political scheme of the Duke of Queensbury's, it is difficult to determine, and immaterial to decide; because his perfidy in disclosing the whole to that nobleman has been clearly discovered. It seems, however, more than probable, that he could not go on in the straightforward path; and that he was in the employ of the Duke of Queensbury from the first, has been confidently stated.[167]

Early in 1702, Lord Lovat went to France, and pretending to have authority from some of the Highland clans and Scottish nobility, offered the services of his countrymen to the Court of St. Germains. This offer was made shortly before the death of James the Second, and a proposal was made in the name of the Scottish Jacobites to raise an army of twelve thousand men, if the King of France would consent to land five thousand men at Dundee, and five hundred at Fort William. His proposals were listened to, but his integrity was suspected.[168]

According to his own account, Lord Lovat, being in full possession of his family honours, upon the death of King William, immediately proclaimed the Prince of Wales in his own province, and acting, as he declares, in accordance with the advice of his friend, the Duke of Argyle, repaired to France, "in order to do the best that he could in that country."[169]

He immediately, to pursue his own statement, engaged the Earl Lord Marischal, the Earl of Errol, Lord Constable of Scotland, in the cause; and then, passing through England and Holland, in order to go to France through Flanders, he arrived in Paris with this commission about the month of September.

Sir John Maclean, cousin-german of Lord Lovat, had resided ten years at the Court of St. Germains, and to his guidance Lovat confided himself. By Maclean, Lovat was introduced to the Duke of Perth, as he was called, who had been Chancellor of Scotland when James the Second abdicated, and whose influence was now divided at the Court of St. Germains, by the Earl of Middleton. For never was faction more virulent than in the Court of the exiled Monarch, and during the minority of his son. The Duke of Perth represented Lord Middleton as a "faithless traitor, a pensionary of the English Parliament, to give intelligence of all that passes at the Court of St. Germains." It was therefore agreed that this scheme of the invasion should be carried on unknown to that nobleman, and to this secrecy the Queen, it is said, gave her consent. She hailed the prospect of an insurrection in Scotland with joy, and declared twenty times to Lord Lovat that she had sent her jewels to Paris to be sold, in order to send the twenty thousand crowns,[170] which Lord Lovat represented would be necessary to equip the Highland forces. Hitherto the Court of St. Germains had been contented merely to keep up a correspondence with their friends, retaining them in their principles, though without any expectation of immediate assistance. The offer of Lord Lovat was the first step towards more active exertions in the cause of the Stuarts. It is in this sense that he may almost be considered as the father of the Rebellion of 1715. He first excited those ardent spirits to unanimity and to action; and the project of restoration, which only languished whilst Anne lived, was never afterwards abandoned until after the year 1746.

Either through the indiscretion of Queen Mary of Modena, or through some other channel, the plot of the invasion became known to Lord Middleton. Jealous of the family of Perth, his avowed enemies, Lord Middleton, according to Lord Lovat, was enraged at the project, and determined to ruin the projectors. It is very true that the antipathies between the prevailing factions may have excited Lord Middleton's anger; but it is evident, from his lordship's letters and memoranda, that his dislike had a far deeper source—the profligacy of the agent Lovat; a profligacy which had deterred, as it was afterwards found, many of the Highland chiefs from lending their aid to the cause. Party fury, however, ran high, and before the affair of the insurrection could be settled, Lord Middleton, declaring that the last words of King James had made a powerful impression on his mind, retired into the convent of Benedictines at Paris, to be satisfied of some doubts, and to be instructed in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. But this temporary retirement rather revived than decreased the favour of the Queen towards him. She trusted to his advice; and, as the statement which Lord Lovat gave of the affairs of Scotland appeared too favourable to the excluded family to be believed, Louis the Fourteenth counselled the Court of St. Germains to send with Lord Lovat, or, as he is invariably called in all contemporary documents, Simon Fraser, a person who could be trusted to bring back a genuine account. Accordingly, James Murray of Stanhope, the brother of Sir David Murray, was employed to this effect. "He was," says Lord Lovat, "a spy of Lord Middleton's, his sworn creature, and a man who had no other means of subsistence."[171] From other accounts, however, Mr. Murray is shown to have been a man of probity, although in great pecuniary difficulties, as many of the younger members of old families were at that time.[172] Mr. James Murray was sent forward into Scotland six weeks before Lord Lovat set out from France; and the Court had the wisdom to send with the latter another emissary in the person of Mr. John Murray, of Abercairney.

After these arrangements were completed, Lord Lovat received his commission. He set out upon his expedition by way of Brussels, to Calais. Not being furnished with passports, and having no other pass than the orders of the Marquis De Torcy to the commandants of the different forts upon the coast, he was obliged also, to wait for an entire month, the arrival of an English packet for the exchange of prisoners,—the captain of the vessel having been bribed to take him and his companions on board as English prisoners of war, and to put them on shore during the night, in his boat, near Dover.

Through the interest of Louis the Fourteenth, Lovat had received the commission from King James of major-general, with power to raise and command forces in his behalf:[173] and thus provided, he proceeded to Scotland, where he was met by the Duke of Argyle, his friend, and conducted by that nobleman to Edinburgh. Such was the simple statement of Lovat's first steps on this occasion. According to his memorial, which he afterwards presented to Queen Mary, he received assurances of support from the Catholic gentry of Durham, who, "when he showed them the King's picture, fell down on their knees and kissed it."[174] This flattering statement appeared, however, to resemble the rest of the memorial of his proceedings, and met with little or no credence even in the quarter where it was most likely to be well received.

From the Duke of Queensbury, Lord Lovat received a pass to go into the Highlands, which was procured under feigned names, both for him and his two companions, from Lord Nottingham, then Secretary of State. After this necessary preliminary, Lord Lovat made a tour among some of the principal nobility in the Lowlands. He found them, even according to his own statement, averse to take up arms without an express commission from the King. But he remarks, writing always as he does in the third person, "My Lord Lovat pursued his journey to the Highlands, where they were overjoyed to see him, because they believed him dead, having been fourteen months in France, without writing any word to his country. They came from all quarters to see him. He showed them the King's instructions, and the King of France's great promises. They were ravished to see them, and prayed to God to have their King there, and they should soon put him on the throne. My Lord Lovat told them that they must first fight for him, and beat his enemies in the kingdom. They answered him, that, if they got the assistance he promised them, they would march in three days' advertisement, and beat all the King's enemies in the kingdom."[175] This statement, though possibly not wholly untrue, must be taken with more than the usual degree of allowance for the exaggeration of a partisan. Many of the Highland noblemen and chieftains were, indeed, well disposed to the cause of which Lord Lovat was the unfortunate and unworthy representative; but all regretted that their young King, as they styled him, should repose trust in so bad a character, and in many instances refused to treat with Lovat. And, indeed, the partial success which he attained might be ascribed to the credit of his companion Captain John Murray, a gentleman of good family, whose brother, Murray of Abercairney, was greatly respected in his county.

The embryo of the two Rebellions may be distinctly traced in the plain and modest memorial which Captain Murray also presented, on his return from Scotland, at the Court of St. Germains. "The Earl and Countess of Errol," he relates, "with their son Lord Hay, were the first to whom I spoke of the affairs of the King of England." "Speaking at Edinburgh with the King's friends, about his Majesty's affairs, in a more serious way than I had done before, I found that these affairs had not been mentioned among them a long time before, and that it was to them an agreeable surprise to see some hopes that they were to be revived by my negotiation."

The greatest families in Scotland were, indeed,[176] ready to come forward upon condition of a certain assistance from France; and a scheme seems even to have been suggested for the invasion of England, and to have formed the main feature in one of those various plots which were as often concerted, and as often defeated, in favour of the excluded family.[177]

In France, these continual schemes, and the various changes in the English Government, were regarded with the utmost contempt. "The people," writes the Duke of Perth, Chancellor of Scotland, "are kept from amusement, frameing conceits of government and religion, such as our giddy people frame to themselves, and make themselves the scorn and reproach of mankind, for all are now foes under the name of English, and we are said to be so changeable and foolish, that nothing from our parts seems strange. Beheading, dethroning, and banishing of kings, being but children's play with us."[178]

But all the promise of this plan was defeated, as it is generally and confidently asserted, by the character of Lord Lovat. A general distrust prevailed, of his motives and of his authority, even in that very country where he had once led on his clansmen to crimes for which they had paid dearly in the humiliation and devastation of their clan. He was indeed, prevented from lingering near the home of his youth, from the decrees which had been issued against him, and the risk of discovery. Disappointed in his efforts, unable to raise even fifty men of his own clan, and resolved upon gaining influence and favour in some quarter or another, he determined upon betraying the whole scheme, which has since obtained in history the name of the Scottish Plot, to the Duke of Queensbury.

It was on pretext of obtaining a passport for France, that Lord Lovat now sought an interview with the Duke in London. He there discovered to that able and influential minister, then Secretary of State for Scotland, the entire details of the meditated insurrection, together with the names of the principal Scottish nobility concerned in the conspiracy. The Duke, it appears, perfectly appreciated the character of his informant. He seems to have reflected, that from such materials as those which composed the desperate and hardened character of Lovat, the best instruments of party may be selected. He consented, it is generally believed,—although historians differ greatly according to their particular bias, as to the fact,—to furnish Lovat with a passport, and to employ him as a spy in the French Court, in order to prosecute his discoveries still farther.

When Lovat was afterwards charged with this act of treachery, he declared, that he had told the Duke of Queensbury little more than what had escaped through the folly or malice of the Jacobites; but acknowledged that a mutual compact had passed between him and the Duke of Queensbury.[179]

Somerville, in his history of the reign of Queen Anne, remarks, that it is doubtful whether Fraser of Lovat had ever any intention of performing effectual service to the Chevalier. "No sooner had he set foot in England," adds the same historian, "than he formed the nefarious project of counter-plotting his associate, and betraying the trust which he had procured through the facility and precipitate confidence of the Queen."[180]

The Duke of Queensbury immediately communicated the plot, disclosed by Lovat, to Queen Anne. In the main points the conduct of that able and influential Minister appears to have been tolerably free from blame during the inquiry into the Scottish plot which was afterwards instituted; but it is a proof of the horror and suspicion in which Lord Lovat was held, that the Duke of Queensbury's negotiations with so abandoned a tool for some time diminished the political sway which he had heretofore possessed in Scotland.[181]

Lord Lovat returned to Paris, where he had the effrontery to hand in a boasting memorial of his services, written with that particularity which gives an air of extreme accuracy to any statement. In this art he was generally accomplished, yet he seems on this occasion to have failed. For some time he flourished; alternately, one day at Versailles—one day at St. Germains; and, whilst an under-current of dislike and suspicion marked his course, all, apparently, went on successfully with this great dissembler. The Earl of Middleton, indeed, was undeceived.

"I doubt not," he writes to the Marquis De Torcy, "you will be as much surprised at Lord Lovat's memorial as we have been; for although I never had a good opinion of him, yet, I did not believe him fool enough to accuse himself. He has not, in some places, been as careful as authors of romance to preserve probability."

"If the King thinks proper to apprehend him," concludes Lord Middleton, "it should be done without noise. His name should not be mentioned any more, and at the same time his papers should be seized."[182] Such were the preparations for the secret incarceration which it was then the practice of the French Court to sanction.

Lord Lovat was not long in ignorance of the intrigues, as he calls them, which were carried on to blast his reputation at the Court of St. Germains. In other words, he perceived that the double game which he had been playing was discovered, and discovered in time to prevent any new or important trust being committed to his command. He fell ill, or perhaps feigned illness, probably in order to account for his absence from Court; and, although backed by the influence of the Earl of Melfort, brother of the Duke of Perth, and by the Marquis De Torcy, he found that he could never recover the confidence of the Queen Mother.

He took the usual plan adopted by servants who perceive that they are on the eve of being discarded—he announced his determination to retire. "My Lord," he wrote to Lord Middleton, "I am daily informed, that the Queen has but a scurvy opinion of me, and that I did her Majesty bad rather than good service by my journey. My Lord, I find that my enemies have greater power with the Queen than I can have; and to please them, and ease her Majesty, I am resolved to meddle no more with any affairs till the King is of age."[183]

There seemed to have been little need of this voluntary surrender of his employments; for, after undergoing an examination, in writing from the Pope's Nuncio, and after several letters had passed between Lord Middleton and himself, the altercation was peremptorily closed by a lettre de cachet, and Lord Lovat was committed, according to some statements, to the Bastille,—as others relate, to the Castle of Angoulême.[184] Upon this occasion the hardihood of Lord Lovat's character, which shone out so conspicuously at his death, was thus exemplified.

"As they went along the Captain (by this name he was generally called among his friends) discoursed the officer with the same freedom as if he had been carrying him to some merry-meeting; and, on observing on his men's coats a badge all full of points, with this device—monstrorum terror,—'the terror of monsters,' he said wittily, pointing to the men, 'Behold there the terror, and here the monster!' meaning himself. 'And if either of the Kings had a hundred thousand of such, they would be fitter to fright their enemies than to hurt any one of them.' He took occasion, also, to let his attendants know of what a great and noble family he was, and how much blood had been spent in the cause of the Monarchs by his ancestors."[185]

According to Lord Lovat's manifesto, he was at dinner at Bourges, whither he had been sent on some pretext by the French Government, when "a grand fat prevôt, accompanied by his lieutenant and twenty-four archers, stole into the drawing-room, and seized Lord Lovat as if he had been an assassin, demanding from him his sword in the King's name. The villain of a prevôt," adds his Lordship, "was so obliging as to attend Lord Lovat, with his archers, all the way to Angoulême. He had the luck to procure a cursed little chaise, where Lord Lovat was in a manner buried alive under the unwieldy bulk of this enormous porpoise." This relation, so different from that given by Mr. Arbuthnot, weakens the veracity of both accounts, and leads one to infer that the long narrative by the reverend gentleman of Lord Lovat's adventures in the Bastille were written upon hearsay.[186]

In the Castle of Angoulême Lord Lovat continued for three years; at first, being treated with great severity: "thirty-five days in perfect darkness, where every moment he expected death, and prepared to meet it with becoming fortitude. He listened with eagerness and anxiety to every noise, and, when his door screached upon its hinges, he believed that it was the executioner come to put an end to his unfortunate days."

In this predicament, finding that the last punishment was delayed, he "thought proper to address himself to a grim jailoress, who came every day to throw him something to eat, in the same silent and cautious manner in which you would feed a mad dog."[187] By the "clink of a louis d'or," the prisoner managed to subdue the fidelity of this fair jailoress; she supplied him with pens and paper, and he immediately began a correspondence with his absent friends at the French Court.

After a time, the severity of Lord Lovat's imprisonment was mitigated. The Castle of Angoulême was, in a manner, an open prison, having an extensive park within its walls, with walks open to the inhabitants; and here, through the influence of Monsieur De Torcy, Lord Lovat was permitted to take exercise. His insinuating manners won upon the inhabitants, and the prison of Angoulême became so agreeable to him, that he was often heard to say, that "if there was a beautiful and enchanting prison in the world, it was the Castle of Angoulême."

Meantime, the scheme of invasion was by no means relinquished on the part of the Jacobites, although it had received a considerable check from the treachery of its agents.

It is stated by some historians that scarcely had Lord Lovat quitted England, than Sir John Maclean, his cousin-german, and Campbell, of Glendarnel, disclosed the plot to Lord Athole and Lord Tarbat. These noblemen instantly went to Queen Anne, and accused the Duke of Queensbury of high treason, in carrying on a villanous plot with the Court of St. Germains. Queensbury defended himself before the House of Lords, and the accusation, which rested chiefly on the assertions of Ferguson, the famous hatcher of plots, was declared false and scandalous, and Ferguson was committed to Newgate. The reluctance of the Duke of Queensbury to give up the correspondence, excited, however, suspicions of his integrity; which, as Harley, Lord Oxford, expressed it, could only be cleared up by Fraser, Lord Lovat;[188] but Lord Lovat was not then to be found.

In all this singular and complicated affair, it is impossible to help wondering at the folly and audacity which Lord Lovat had shown in returning to France, conscious of having placed himself at the mercy of ruthless politicians, and aware that in that country he could expect no redress nor protection from law. But the original crime for which he had been sent forth, an outlaw from his country, was the source of all his subsequent mistakes and misfortunes. France was open to him; Scotland was closed; and England was a scene of peril to one who trod on fragile ice, beneath which a deep gulf yawned.

Lord Lovat had been two years in prison before any of his former friends, for even he was not wholly devoid of partisans, interfered with success in his behalf; and it was the good, old-fashioned feeling of kindred that finally moved the Marquis De Frezelière, or Frezel, or Frezeau de la Frezelière, to interest himself in the fate of his despised, and perhaps forgotten, relative.

"The house of Frezelière, which ascends," says Lord Lovat, "in an uninterrupted line, and without any unequal alliance, to the year 1030, with its sixty-four quarterings in its armorial bearings, and all noble, its titles of seven hundred years standing in the Abbey of Nôtre Dame de Noyers in Touraine, and its many other circumstances of inherent dignity," was, as we have seen, derived from the same blood with the family of Frezel, or Fraser. In former, and more prosperous days, a common and authentic Act of Recognition of this relationship had been drawn up at Paris by the Marquis and his many illustrious kinsmen, the three sons of the Marshal Luxembourg de Montmorenci; and executed, on the other hand, by Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, and by his brother, and several of their nearest kin.

The Marquis De Frezelière appears to have been a fine specimen of that proud and valiant aristocracy, not even then wholly broken down in France by the effeminacy of the times. He was haughty and determined, "an eagle in the concerns of war," and of a spirit not to be subdued. By his powerful intercession, checked only by the disgust which Mary of Modena felt towards Lovat, he procured from the King of France permission for his relative to repair to the waters of Bourbon for the restoration of his health. This order was signed by Louis the Fourteenth, and countersigned by the Marquis De Torcy, as "Colbert." Four days afterwards, a second order was received by the authorities at Angoulême, by which his Majesty commanded that Lord Lovat, after the restoration of his health, should repair to his town of Saumur, until further orders. "At the same time," says Lord Lovat, "he was permitted to take with him the Chevalier De Frezel, his brother." These orders were dated August the second and August the fourteenth, 1707.

The brother, whom Lord Lovat always designates as the Chevalier de Fraser, had been placed with a Doctor of the Civil Law at Bourges, in order to learn French, and the profession of a civilian. He had been arrested at the same time with Lord Lovat; and was now, after a temporary separation, permitted to share the pleasures of a removal to Bourbon. According to Lord Lovat, a pension from the French Government was settled upon this young man as long as he resided in France; and Lord Lovat received also the ample income of four thousand francs, (one hundred and sixty-six pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence,) from the same quarter: nor was it in the power of his enemies at St. Germains to induce Louis the Fourteenth to withdraw this allowance.[189]

The Marquis de Frezelière continued firm in his regard towards Lord Lovat. On his road to Saumur, Lord Lovat was received and entertained at the château of the Marquis with hospitality and kindness, and no opportunity was omitted by which the Marquis could testify the sincerity of his interest in the fate of his relative. Meantime daily reports were circulated that the projected insurrection, far from being abandoned, had been revived, and that the Chevalier was going to undertake the conduct of the invasion in person. But that young Prince was still inexorable to any petition in favour of Lovat, and was wisely resolved not to let him participate in the operations. "Were he not already in prison," he is stated by Lovat himself to have said, "I would make it my first request to the King of France to throw him into one." This fixed aversion was owing to the determined dislike of the Queen to abdicate, as it was her resolution, if there were no other person to be employed, never to make Lord Lovat an instrument of her affairs.

Lovat, therefore, now clearly perceived that, during the life of the Queen and of Lord Middleton, he must look for nothing favourable from the Court of St. Germains. That of Versailles, although, by his account, decidedly friendly to his release, refused to support those whom the Chevalier had renounced. He resolved, therefore, to make every exertion to return to his own country, and to place himself once more at the head of his clan, who, in spite of his crimes, in spite of his long absence and imprisonment, had still refused to acknowledge any other chief. The attempt was indeed desperate, but Lovat resolved to risk it, and to escape, at all events, from France.

To the vengeance of the Athole family, Lord Lovat always imputed much of the severity shown him by the Court at St. Germains: and it is probable that the representations of that powerful house may have contributed to the odium in which the character of Lord Lovat was universally held. His own deeds were, however, sufficient to ensure him universal hatred. The great source of surprise is, that this unscrupulous intriguer, this unprincipled member of society, seems, at times, during the course of his eventful life, to have met with friends, firm in their faith to him, and to have enjoyed, in that respect, the privilege of virtue.

The young heiress of Lovat, Amelia Fraser, was now married to Alexander Mackenzie, son of Lord Prestonhall; Mr. Mackenzie had adopted the title of Fraserdale; and a son had been born of this marriage, who had been named after his grandfather, Hugh. Fraserdale and his lady had taken possession both of the title and estates of Lord Lovat, during his absence; but, since the dignity and estates had always been enjoyed by an heir-male, from the origin of the house of Fraser, these claimants to the estate of the outlawed Lovat spread a report that the honours and lands had, in old times, belonged to the Bissets, whose daughter and only child had married a Fraser, from whom the estates had descended to the heir of that line. A suit was instituted against Lord Lovat and, on the ninth of March, 1703, Lord Prestonhall, the father of Fraserdale, himself adjudged the Lordship and Barony of Lovat to Amelia Fraser. An entail of the estates and honours upon the heirs of the marriage between Amelia Fraser and Mackenzie of Fraserdale, was then executed, and the former assumed the title of Lady Lovat, whilst her son was designated the Master of Lovat.[190]

Lord Prestonhall seems to have acted with the same unscrupulous spirit which characterizes most of the business transactions of those who intermeddled with the forfeited or disputed estates. It was his aim, as the Memorial for the Lovat case, subsequently tried, sets forth, to extirpate the clan of the Frasers, and to raise that of the Mackenzies upon its ruins. "Accordingly," says Mr. Anderson, in his curious and elaborate account of the house of Fraser, "he framed a deed, with the sly contrivance of sinking the Frasers into the Mackenzies, by encouraging the former to change their names, and providing, as a condition of the estate, that should they return to, and reassume their ancient name of Fraser, they should forfeit their right."[191]

The arms of Mackenzie, Macleod of Lewis, and Bisset, were to be quartered with those of Fraser, in this deed, which bore the signature of Robert Mackenzie, and was dated the twenty-third of February, 1706.

This decision, and the deed which followed it, appeared to complete the misfortunes of the disgraced and banished Lord Lovat. But, in fact, the act of injustice and rapacity, so repugnant to the spirit of the Highlanders,—this attempt to force upon the heirs of Fraser a foreign name, and thus to lower the dignity of the clan, was the most auspicious event that could happen to the wretched outlaw. What was his exact condition, or what were his circumstances, during the seven years of his imprisonment, three of which were passed under strict, though not harsh control, in the Castle of Angoulême, and four, apparently on his parole, in the Fortress of Saumur, it is not easy to describe. The cause of the obscurity of his fate at this time, is not that too little, but that too much, has been stated relative to his movements.

It is always an inconvenience when one cannot take a man's own story in evidence. According to Lord Lovat's own account, these weary years were spent in visits to different members of the nobility. The charming Countess de la Roche succeeded the Marquis de la Frezelière as his friend and patroness, after the death of the Marquis in 1711, an event which, according to Lord Lovat's statement, brought him nearly to the grave from grief. The Countess was a woman of a masculine understanding, and of admirable talents, bold, insinuating, and ambitious. Her education in the household of the great Condé, and her long attendance upon the Princess de Conti, the hero's daughter, had qualified her for those arduous and delicate intrigues, without which no woman of intellect at that period in France might think herself sufficiently distinguished.

The appointment of the Duke of Hamilton as ambassador at the Court of Louis, rendered such a friend as Madame de la Roche, who was also distantly related to him, very essential for the prosecution of Lord Lovat's present schemes, which were, to obtain his release, and to procure employment in any enterprise concerted by the Jacobites against England.

Fate, however, relieved Lord Lovat from one apprehension. The Duke of Hamilton was killed in a duel by Lord Mohun, in Hyde Park; and this fresh source of danger was thus annihilated. The kindness which the famous Colbert, Marquis de Torcy, had shown to Lord Lovat, and the promise which he had given to that nobleman, not to break his parole, and to return to England, seems to have been the only check to a long-cherished project on the part of Lord Lovat to escape to London, and to risk all that law might there inflict. It is uncertain in what manner, during the tedious interval between intrigues and intrigues, he solaced his leisure. It has been stated by one of his biographers that he actually joined a society of Jesuits,—by another, that he took priest's orders, and acted as parochial priest at St. Omers. Of course, in compiling a defence of his life, the wary man of the world omitted such particulars as would, at any rate, betray inconsistency, and beget suspicion. His object in becoming a Jesuit, is said to have been to hear confessions and to discover intrigues. With respect to the report of his having entered the order of Jesuits, it is justly alleged in answer, that no Jesuit is permitted to hear confessions until he has been fifteen years a member of the society, or, at least, in priest's orders.[192]

The rumour of his having become an ecclesiastic, in any way, no doubt originated in Lord Lovat's joke on a subsequent occasion, when "he declared that had he wished it, and had remained in priest's orders, which he did not deny having assumed for some purpose, he might have become Pope in time."[193]

Whilst Lord Lovat, contrary to the advice of Madame la Roche, was deliberating whether he should not leave France, he was surprised, in the summer of 1714, by a visit from one of the principal gentlemen of his clan, Fraser of Castle Lader, son of Malcolm Fraser, of Culdelthel, a very considerable branch of the family of Lovat. This gentleman brought Lord Lovat a strong remonstrance from all his clan at his absence—an entreaty to him to return—a recommendation that he would join himself in an alliance with the Duke of Argyle, who was disposed to aid him; he added affectionate greetings from some of the principal gentry of his neighbourhood, and, among others, from John Forbes, of Culloden. This important ally was the father of the justly celebrated Duncan Forbes, afterwards Lord President. These messages decided Lord Lovat. After some indecision he left Saumur, and being allowed by his parole to travel to any place in France, he went on the twelfth of August, 1714, to Rouen, under pretence of paying a visit there. From Rouen he proceeded to Dieppe, but finding no vessel there, he travelled along the coast of Normandy, and from thence to Boulogne. From that port he sailed in a small smack, in a rough sea, during the night, and landed at Dover, November the eleventh, 1714.

He met his kinsman, Alexander Fraser, on the quay at Dover, and with him proceeded to London. His former friend, the Duke of Argyle, was now dead; but alliances, as well as antipathies, are hereditary in Scotland, and John, Duke of Argyle, was well disposed to assist one whose family had been anciently connected with his own. Besides, the state of public affairs was now totally changed since Lord Lovat had left England, and it was incumbent upon the Government to avail themselves of any tool which they might require for certain ends and undertakings.

Queen Anne was now dead,—the last of the Stuart dynasty in this kingdom. Whatever were her failings and her weaknesses as a woman, she has left behind her the character of having loved her people; and she was endeared to them by her purely English birth, her homely virtue of economy, and her domestic unpretending qualities. Her reign had been one of mercy; no subject had suffered for treason during her rule: she had few relations with foreign powers; and when, in her opening speech to the Parliament, she expressed that her heart was "wholly English," she spoke her real sentiments, and described, in that simple touch the true character of her mind.

She was succeeded by a German Prince, who immediately showered marks of his royal favour upon the Whigs; whilst the Tories, who formed so large a party in the kingdom, were alienated from the Government by the manifest aversion to them which George the First rather aimed to evince than laboured to conceal.

The Jacobites differed in some measure from the Tories, inasmuch as the latter were generally well affected to the accession of the Hanoverian family, until disgusted by the choice of the new administration. Dissensions quickly rose to their height; and when the Government was attacked in the House of Commons by Sir William Wyndham, the unusual sounds, "the Tower! the Tower!" were heard once more amid the inflamed assembly.

The spirit of disaffection quickly spread throughout England; the very life-guards were compelled by an angry populace, when celebrating the anniversary of the Restoration of the Stuarts, to join in the cry of "High Church and Ormond!" Lord Bolingbroke had withdrawn to France—treasonable papers were discovered and intercepted on their way from Jacobite emissaries to Dr. Swift, tumults were raised in the city of London and in Westminster, and were punished with a severity to which the metropolis had been unaccustomed since the reign of James the Second. All these manifestations had their origin in one common source,—the deeply concerted schemes which were now nearly brought into maturity at the Court of St. Germains.

The following extract of a letter dated from Luneville, and taken from the Macpherson Papers, shows what was meditated abroad; it is in Schrader's hand.