VICTORIA.
eorge Selwyn excused himself for going to see Simon Fraser Lord Lovat lose his head at the block, by going to see it sewn on again. That last head sacrificed wore a title which was the first restored by Her Majesty after her accession. Old Lovat’s son, whom his father forced into rebellion, and whom that exemplary parent would have hanged, if he could have saved his own life by it, became a distinguished General in the British service. General Fraser and his half-brother Archibald died, without surviving heirs. Old Lovat was the thirteenth lord, leaving a title under attainder. As early as 1825, Sir Thomas Fraser of Lovat and Strichen claimed the ancient barony as a son of the sixth lord, who died in 1557. Their Lordships at Westminster had made no progress towards making the claimant a Baron, when Her Majesty ascended the throne. The Queen settled the claim at once by creating Sir Thomas Fraser, Baron Lovat in the United Kingdom. The new Lord Lovat, however, still coveted the older and therefore grander dignity. He persisted in asserting his right to possess the Scottish title, in spite of the attainder which smote the lord who was beheaded on Tower Hill. After twenty years’ consideration, the Peers at Westminster were advised that the assertion was a correct one; and, in 1857, they acceded to his demand. That was exactly three hundred years after the death of the sixth lord, through whom the claimant asserted his right to the title.
OLD JACOBITE TITLES.
In a way something similar was another restoration of a Jacobite title effected in London. Of all the lords who were tried for their lives (1716 and 1746 included), there was not one who bore himself so gallantly as the son of the illustrious House of Seton, the Earl of Wintoun. All the Jacobite peers who pleaded guilty, petitioned for mercy, and returned to a treasonable outspokenness, when they failed to obtain forgiveness for an avowed crime. Even brave Balmerino cried peccavi! and got nothing by it. But noble Wintoun pleaded that he was not guilty in fighting on what he considered the just side; when he was condemned to death he refused to beg for his life; and he showed his contempt for the Act of Grace, by anticipating it in an act of his own,—escaping from the Tower to the continent. He was the fifth earl, and his attainder barred the way to any heir of his own. But, in 1840, the fifteenth Earl of Eglinton proved his descent from a preceding earl, of whom he was forthwith served heir male general, and a new dignity was added to the roll of Lord Eglinton’s titles.
MORE RESTORATIONS.
In the following year, the Committee of Privileges went to the work of restoration of Jacobite forfeitures with unusual alacrity. On their advice, an Act of Parliament was passed which declared that Mr. William Constable Maxwell, of Nithsdale and Everingham, and all the other descendants of William Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale and Lord Herries, were restored in blood. There the Act left them. As far as they were of the blood of Winifred Herbert, noble daughter of the House of Pembroke, the ill-requited wife of the puling peer whom she rescued from death, their blood was free from all taint, in spite of any Act. Mr. Maxwell could not claim the earldom, but the way was open for him to the barony once held by the unworthy earl, and in 1850, he was the acknowledged Lord Herries.
Three years later, Her Majesty despatched a ‘special command and recommendation’ to Parliament, which was speedily obeyed. It was to the effect that the Parliament should restore George Drummond to the forfeited Jacobite titles of Earl of Perth and Viscount Melfort the dignities of Lord Drummond of Stobhall, Lord Drummond of Montifex, and Lord Drummond of Bickerton, Castlemaine, and Galstoun, and to the exercise of the hereditary offices of Thane of Lennox and Steward of Strathearn. The peer who in 1824 advised Lord Liverpool to be sure he had got hold of the right Mr. Drummond, when recommending one for restoration to the peerage, had some reason for the course taken by him. However, in this case, where there are so many Drummonds, Parliament could hardly have been mistaken. That body having fulfilled the Queen’s ‘command and recommendation,’ Her Majesty gave her assent; and then, as if the better to identify the Drummond who was restored to so many titles, record was gravely made that ‘born in 1807, he was baptised at St. Marylebone Church,’ Hogarth’s church, of course.
In 1855 the act of attainder which had struck the Earl of Southesk (Lord Carnegie) for the share he took in the little affair (which intended a good deal) in 1718, was quietly reversed, at Westminster, where it had been originally passed.
THE CROMARTIE TITLE.