For a time, this scheme seemed to prosper. The young lady, Amelia Fraser, was not averse to receive the Master of Lovat as her suitor; and the intermediate party, Fraser, of Tenechiel, who acted as interpreter to the wishes of the Master, actually succeeded in persuading the young creature to elope with him, and to fix the very day of her marriage with the Master, to whom Fraser promised to conduct her. But either she repented of this clandestine step, or Fraser of Tenechiel, dreading the power of the Athole family, drew back; for he reconducted her back to her mother at Castle Downie, even after her assurance had been given that she would marry her cousin.[134]
The circumstances of this elopement are obscurely stated by Lord Lovat in his account of the affair; and he does not refer to the treachery or remorse of his emissary Fraser of Tenechiel, nor does he dwell upon a disappointment which must have gratified his mortal enemies of the house of Athole. Yet it appears, from the long and early intimacy to which he alludes as having subsisted between himself and the Dowager Lady Lovat, that he may have had many opportunities of gaining the regard of the young daughter of that lady,—an idea which accounts, in some measure, for her readiness to engage in the scheme of the elopement. At all events, he expresses his rage and contempt, and makes no secret of his determined revenge on those who had, as he conceived, frustrated his project.
The young lady was at first placed under the protection of her mother at Castle Downie, the chief residence of the clan Fraser; but there it was not thought prudent to allow her to abide, and she was therefore carried, under an escort, to Dunkeld, the house of her uncle, the Marquis of Athole. And here another match was very soon provided for her, and again her consent was gained, and again the preliminaries of marriage were arranged for this passive individual. The nobleman whom her relations now proposed to her was William, afterwards eleventh Lord Salton, also a Fraser, whose father was a man of great wealth and influence, although referred to by the Master of Lovat as the "representative of an unconsiderable branch of the Frasers who had settled in the lowlands of the county of Aberdeen."[135] This match was suggested to the Athole family by one Robert Fraser "an apostate wretch," as the Master of Lovat calls him, a kinsman, and an advocate; and he advised the Marquis of Athole, not only to marry the young lady to the heir of Lord Salton, but also, by various schemes and manœuvres, to get Lord Salton declared head of the clan of Frasers. This plot was soon divulged; disappointment, rage, revenge were raised to the height in the breast of the Master of Lovat. His pride was as prominent a feature in this bold and vindictive man, as his duplicity. Throughout life, he could, it is true, bend for a purpose, as low as his designs required him to bend; but the fierce exclusiveness of a Highland chieftain never died away, but rankled in his heart to the last.
It must be admitted that he had just cause of irritation against the Murrays, first for disputing the claim of his father to the Lovat title and estates, a claim indisputably just; nor was their project for constituting Lord Salton the head of the clan Fraser, either a wise or an equitable scheme. It was heard with loud indignation in that part of the country where the original stock of this time-honoured race were, until their name was stained by the crimes of Simon Fraser, held in love and reverence. It was heard by the Master of Lovat perhaps with less expression of his feelings than by his followers; but the meditated affront was avenged, and avenged by a scheme which none but a demon could have devised. It was avenged; but it brought ruin on the head of the avenger.
Perhaps in no other country, at the same period, could the wrongs of an individual have been visited upon an aggressor with the same dispatch and ruthless determination as in the Highlands. Until the year 1748, when the spirit of clanship was broken, never to be restored, those "hereditary monarchies founded on custom, and allowed by general consent rather than established by laws,"[136] existed in their full vigour. The military ranks of the clans was fixed and continual during the rare intervals of local quiet, and every head of a family was captain of his own tribe.[137] The spirit of rivalry between the clans kept up a taste for hostility, and converted rapine into a service of honour. Revenge was considered as a duty, and superstition aided the dictates of a fiery and impetuous spirit. A people naturally humane, naturally forbearing, had thus, by the habits of ages immemorial, become remorseless plunderers and resolute avengers. When any affront was offered to a chieftain, the clan was instantly summoned. They came from their straths and their secluded valleys, wherein there was little intercourse with society in general to tame their native pride, or to weaken the predominant emotion of their hearts,—their pride in their chieftain. They came fearlessly, trusting, not only in the barriers which Nature had given them in their rocks and fastnesses, but in the unanimity of their purpose. Each clan had its stated place of meeting, and when it was summoned upon any emergency, the fiery cross, one end burning, the other wrapt in a piece of linen stained with blood, was sent among the aroused clansmen, traversing those wild moors, and penetrating into the secluded glens of those sublime regions. It was sent, by two messengers, throughout the country, and passed from hand to hand, these messengers shouting, as they went, the war-cry of the clan, which was echoed from rock to rock. And then arose the cry of the coronach, that wail, appropriate to the dead, but uttered also by women, as the fiery cross roused them from their peaceful occupations, and hurried from them their sons and their husbands.
Never was the fiery cross borne throughout the beautiful country of Invernessshire, never was the wail of the coronach heard on a more ignoble occasion, than on the summons of the Master of Lovat, in the September of the year 1698. After some fruitless negotiation, it is true, with Lord Salton, and after availing himself of the power of his father, as chieftain, to imprison Robert Fraser, and several other disaffected clansmen whom that person had seduced from their allegiance, the Master of Lovat prepared for action. The traitors to his cause had escaped death by flight, but the clan were otherwise perfectly faithful to their chieftain. Fear, as well as love, had a part in their allegiance; yet it has been conjectured that the hereditary devotion of the Highlanders must, originally, have had its origin in gratitude for services and for bounty, which it was the interest of every chieftain to bestow.
The Master of Lovat, or, as he was called by his people, the chieftain, first assembled his people at their accustomed place, to the number of sixty and seventy, and bade them be in readiness when called upon. He thanked them for their prompt attendance, and then dismissed them. During the next month, however, he was met, coming from Inverness, by Lord Salton and Lord Mungo Murray, who were returning from Castle Downie. Such was the preparation for the disgraceful scenes which quickly followed. As soon as the Master of Lovat and his father were informed of the flight of their treacherous clansmen, they wrote a letter to Lord Salton, and conjured him, in the name of the clan, to remain at home, and not to disturb their repose nor to interfere with the interests of their chief; and they assured him, that though a Fraser, he should, if he entered their country, pay for that act of audacity by his head. Such is Lord Lovat's account: it is not borne out by the statements of others; yet since the affair must have been generally discussed among the clan, it is probable, that he would not have given this version of it without foundation. Lord Salton, according to the same statement, at first received this letter in good part; and wrote to Lord Lovat and to the Master, giving his word that he would only interfere to make peace; and that, for this reason, he would proceed to the seat of the Dowager Lady Lovat, at Beaufort.[138] Upon afterwards discovering that this courtesy was a mere feint, and that this new claimant to the honours of chief was in close correspondence with the Murrays, who were with him and the Dowager at Beaufort, the Master of Lovat wrote to his father, who was at Sthratheric, to meet him at Lovat, which was only three miles' distance from Beaufort, whilst he should himself proceed to the same place by way of Inverness, where he trusted that Lord Salton would grant him an interview for the purpose of explaining their mutual differences.[139]
No sooner had the Master arrived at Inverness, than he found, as he declares, so much reason to distrust the assurances of Lord Salton, that he wrote him a letter, sent, as he says, "with all diligence by a gentleman of his train, to adhere to his word passed to his father and himself, and to meet him the next day at two in the afternoon, three miles from Beaufort, either like a friend, or with sword and pistol, as he pleased."[140]
Such is the account transmitted by Lord Lovat, and intended to give the air of an "affair of honour" to a desperate and lawless attack upon Fraser of Salton, and on those friends who supported his pretensions to the hand of the heiress of Lovat.
The real facts of the case were, that Fraser of Salton was to pass through Inverness on his way to Dunkeld, where the espousals between him and the heiress of Lovat were to be celebrated. Whether Simon Fraser purposed merely to prevent the accomplishment of this marriage, or whether he had fully matured another scheme:—whether he was incited by disappointment to rush into unpremeditated deeds of violence, or whether his design had been fostered in the recesses of his own dark mind, cannot be fully ascertained. In some measure his revenge was gratified. He was enabled, by the events which followed, to delay the marriage of Fraser of Salton, and to retard the nuptials,—which, indeed, never took place. "This wild enterprise," observes Arnot, in his Collection of Criminal Trials in Scotland, "was to be accomplished by such deeds, that the stern contriver of the principal action is less shocking than the abject submission of his accomplices."[141]