Lovat arrived at the Tower on the 15th of August 1746, and according to the account given in the Gentleman’s Magazine for that month, came “in an open Landau driven by six horses, guarded by a party of Liguier’s Horse, and accompany’d in the Landau by an officer—as he passed through the streets he seemed very unconcerned, but coming on the hill, he turn’d his eyes towards the scaffold erecting for beholding the execution of the lords, and lifting up his hands, said, ‘A few days, and it will be my awful fate!’”
The whole aspect of Tower Hill, with the exception of the appearance of the old fortress and its outer walls, has been entirely changed since Lovat saw it with the huge scaffoldings being erected for the spectators of his companions’ executions—and for his own a few months later. The house into which they were led to await their death no longer exists. It occupied the north-east corner of Catherine’s Court, and was formerly the Transport Office. From a raised platform, which was flush with the scaffold, the Jacobite lords walked from the house, which stood immediately opposite to the spot where so many remarkable men have perished by the axe of the headsman. During the last few years the actual site of the scaffold has been marked by a tablet in the garden that now surrounds the place of execution, where the axe had done its work from the time of Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, the son of the Duke of Clarence, to that of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat. With the latter ended the long list of State executions on Tower Hill, which, during five centuries, had stained its soil with some of the noblest blood in the country.
On the 18th of December, Lovat was taken from the Tower to the House of Lords, where the articles of his impeachment were read to him. The best account of the trial is undoubtedly that contained in one of the many letters written by Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann. Writing on the 20th of March 1747, Walpole says: “I have been living at old Lovat’s trial, and was willing to have it over before I talked to you about it. It lasted seven days; the evidence was as strong as possible; and after all he had denounced he made no defence. The Solicitor-General (Sir William Murray), who was one of the managers of the House of Commons, shone extremely. The Attorney-General (Sir Dudley Ryder), who is a much greater lawyer, is cold and tedious. The old creature’s behaviour has been foolish, and at last indecent.
Execution of the Rebel Lords 1746
“When he came to the Tower, he told them that if he were not so old and infirm, they would find it difficult to keep him there. They told him they had kept much younger. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but they were inexperienced; they had not broke so many gaols as I have.’ At his own home he used to say, that for thirty years of his life he never saw a gallows but it made his neck ache. His last act was to shift his treason upon his eldest son, whom he forced into the rebellion. He told Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, ‘We will hang my eldest son, and then my second shall marry your niece.’ He has a sort of ready humour at repartee, not very well adapted to his situation. One day that Williamson complained that he could not sleep, he was so haunted with rats, he replied: ‘What do you say, that you are so haunted with Ratcliffes?’ The first day, as he was brought to his trial, a woman looked into the coach, and said: ‘You ugly old dog, don’t you think you will have that frightful head cut off?’ He replied: ‘You ugly old ——, I believe I shall!’ At his trial he affected great weakness and infirmities, but often broke out into passions; particularly at the first witness, who was his vassal. He asked him how he dared to come thither; the man replied, to satisfy his conscience. The two last days he behaved ridiculously, joking, and making everybody laugh, even at the sentence. He said to Lord Ilchester, who sat near the bar: ‘Je meurs pour ma patrie, et ne m’en soucie guère.’ When he withdrew, he said: ‘Adieu, my Lords, we shall never meet again in the same place!’ He says he will be hanged, for his neck is so short and bearded that he should be struck in the shambles. I did not think it possible to feel so little as I did at so melancholy a spectacle, but tyranny and villany, wound up by buffoonery, took off all edge of concern.”
Thursday, April 9th, was the day fixed for Lovat’s execution, and shortly before he arrived on Tower Hill one of the scaffoldings built for the spectators of his execution, and which held nearly a thousand people, suddenly collapsed, eight or ten persons being killed outright, whilst many others had broken legs and arms. Whatever may be thought of the action of the Hanoverian Court in beheading the rebellious Jacobite lords, there is no doubt that a richly-deserved punishment was meted out to Lovat. Forty years before, at the last session of the Scottish Parliament, previous to the union of the two countries, Lord Belhaven had declared in a memorable speech, that Captain Fraser, as Lord Lovat then was, “deserved, if practicable, to have been hanged five several times, in five different places, and upon five different accounts at least, as having been a traitor to the Court of St James’s, a traitor to the Court of St Germains, a traitor to the Court of Versailles, and a traitor to his own country of Scotland; that he deserved to be hanged as a condemned criminal, outlaw, and fugitive, for his treatment of the widow of the late Lord Lovat’s sister. Nay, so hardened was Captain Fraser, that he erected a gallows, and threatened to hang thereon the lady’s brother, and some other gentlemen of quality who accompanied him, in going to rescue her out of that criminal’s cruel hands.” This was in 1706, and to judge by all accounts of Lovat’s career in the next forty years, he deserved to be hanged yet five times more, “if practicable.”
The north west prospect of the Tower of LONDON
at the time of Execution of the rebel Lords, in 1746–7
with a particular View of the falling of a Scaffold, whereby above fifty lost their lives and were disabled at the Execution of Lord Lovat.
Lovat waked about three o’clock on the morning of his execution, and was heard to “pray with genuine emotion.” He was very cheerful, and having ordered his wig to be sent to the barber, “that he might have time to comb it out genteely, he sat down to a breakfast of minced veal,” ordering coffee and chocolate for his friends, whose health he drank in wine and water. When the Sheriff of London came to demand his body, he responded to the call with alacrity, saying, “I am ready”; and on his way downstairs accepted General Williamson’s invitation to rest in the Lieutenant’s room, and asked him in French if he could “take leave of his lady, and thank her for her civilities. But the General told his lordship in the same language that she was too much affected with his lordship’s misfortunes to bear the shock of seeing him, and therefore hoped his lordship would excuse her.” From the Lieutenant’s house, Lord Lovat was conveyed in the Governor’s coach to the Outer Gate, where he was delivered over to the Sheriffs, who took him in another coach to the house which had already served as the last resting-place of Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock on the way to the scaffold. Here a room had been got ready for him, hung with black cloth and with sconces. At first his friends were denied admittance, but upon Lord Lovat applying to the Sheriffs, leave was granted. During the time of waiting Lovat thanked the Sheriffs for “their favours,” and desired that his clothes might be given up to his friends with his body, also asking that his head might be received in a white cloth, and put into the coffin. This was promised, as well as that the holding up of the head at the corner of the scaffold should be dispensed with. Lord Lovat was assisted up the steps of the scaffold by two warders, and looking round on the great multitude of people, exclaimed, “God save us! why should there be such a bustle about taking off an old grey head, that cannot go up three steps without three bodies to support it.” Then seeing that one of his friends looked very unhappy, he slapped him on the shoulder, saying: “Cheer up thy heart, man, I am not afraid, why should you?” Like old Lord Balmerino, he felt the edge of the axe, and examined his coffin, upon which was inscribed: “Simon Fraser Dominus de Lovat, Decollat April 9, 1747. Ætat Suae 80.” After repeating some lines from Horace and Ovid, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine, “he called his solicitor and agent in Scotland, Mr Wm. Fraser, and presented him with his gold-headed cane, and said: ‘I deliver you this cane in token of my sense of your faithful services, and of my committing to you all the power I leave upon earth,’ and then embraced him. He also called for Mr James Fraser, and said, ‘My dear James, I am going to Heaven, but you must continue to crawl a little longer in this evil world.’ And taking leave of both, he deliver’d his hat, wig, and clothes to Mr William Fraser, and desired him to see that the executioner did not touch them; he ordered his cap to be put on, and unloosing his neckcloth and the collar of his shirt, he kneeled down at the block, and pulled the cloth which was to receive his head close to him. But being placed too near the block, the executioner desired him to remove a little farther back, which, with the warders’ assistance, was immediately done; and his neck being properly placed, he told the executioner he would say a short prayer, and then give the signal by dropping his handkerchief. In this position he remained about half a minute, and then, throwing his handkerchief upon the floor, the executioner at one blow severed his head from his body, which was received in the cloth, and together with his body put into the coffin, and carried in the hearse back to the Tower, where it remained until four o’clock, and was then taken away by an undertaker, in order to be sent to Scotland, and deposited in his own tomb in the church of Kirkhill; but leave not being given, as was expected, it was again brought back to the Tower, and interred near the bodies of the other lords. Lord Lovat, in a codicil to his will, had ordered that all the pipers from John o’ Groats to Edinburgh were to play before his corpse, for which they were to have a handsome allowance, and though he did not expect this wish to be complied with, yet he said that he hoped that the good old women of his country would sing a ‘coronach’ before him.” The legend that Lovat’s ghost, in a monk’s dress, appeared during a tempest with its head under its arm, probably had its origin in this desire of his to have a great Scottish wake at his funeral, and also to his once having worn the dress of a Jesuit priest in one of his adventures at St Omer; of this there is a curious contemporary print.