His real name was soon discovered, and information was given to the Lord Justice Clerk, who granted a warrant for his apprehension, as a person "outlawed and intercommuned;" and to prevent any difficulty in apprehending the prisoner, a party of the town guard was ordered to escort the peace officers to the lodgings of Lord Lovat.
The officer who had the command of the town guard happened, however, to be acquainted with Lovat, and he interposed his aid on this occasion. He listened to the account which Lovat gave of the business which had brought him to Edinburgh. The Provost was next gained over to the opinion, that it would be wrong to oppose any obstruction to one who had his Majesty's passport: he ordered Lord Lovat to be set at liberty; and in order to give some colour of justice to this act, he declared that the information must have been wrong, it being laid against Captain Fraser,—whereas, the person taken appeared to be Captain Brown.
Lovat was once more in safety: he changed his lodgings, however; and, as soon as possible, set sail for Inverness. Again danger, in another form, retarded his arrival among his clan. A storm arose, the ship was obliged to put into the nearest harbour, and Lord Lovat was driven into Fraserburgh, which happened to be within a few miles of the abode of his old enemy and rival Lord Saltoun.
Mr. Forbes, one of the Culloden family, was now fortunately for Lord Lovat, with him on his Majesty's service. After some consultation together, he and Lovat decided to make themselves known to Mr. Baillie, town-clerk of Fraserburgh: they did so, were kindly received, and provided with horses to convey them to Culloden House, the seat of the future Lord President of Scotland, Duncan Forbes. Here they arrived in November, after incurring great risks from the Jacobite troops, who were patroling in parties over the country.[199]
Culloden House, famed in history, was inhabited by a race whose views, conduct, and personal character present a singular contrast, with those of Lord Lovat, or with those of other adventurers in political life. The head of the family was, at the period of the first insurrection, John Forbes, a worthy representative of an honourable, consistent, and spirited family. The younger brother of John Forbes was the celebrated Duncan Forbes, a man whose toleration of Lord Lovat, not to say countenance of that compound of violence and duplicity, seems to be the only incomprehensible portion of his lofty and beautiful character.
"Duncan Forbes was born," observes a modern writer, "of parents who transmitted their estate to his elder brother, and to all their children an hereditary aversion to the house of Stuart, which they appear to have resisted from the very commencement of the civil wars, and upon the true grounds on which that resistance ought to have been made."[200] By a singular fortune the hereditary estates of Culloden and Ferintosh had been ravaged, the year after the Revolution, by the soldiers of Buchan and Cannon, on account of the Jacobite principles of the owners. A liberal compensation was made in the form of a perpetual grant of a liberty to distil into spirits the grain of the Barony of Ferintosh,—a name which has become almost as famous as that of Culloden. It was the subsequent fate of Culloden to witness on its Moors the total destruction of that cause which its owners had so long resisted and deprecated.
Duncan Forbes, who, during a course of many years, was bound by an inexplicable alliance with Lovat, was at this period about thirty years of age. He had already attained the highest reputation for eloquence, assiduity, and learning at the Scottish bar, and during his frequent opportunities for display before the House of Lords. But it was his personal character, during a period of vacillating principles, and almost of disturbed national reason, which obtained that singular and benignant influence over his fellow-countrymen for which the life of Duncan Forbes is far more remarkable, far more admirable, than for the exercise of his brilliant and varied talents. He had "raised himself," observes the same discriminating commentator on his life and correspondence, "to the high station which he afterwards held by the unassisted excellence of a noble character, by the force of which he had previously won and adorned all the subordinate gradations of office."[201] He adorned this unenvied and unsullied pinnacle of fame by virtues of which the record is ennobling to the mind. "He is," observes another writer, "in every situation, so full of honour, of gentleness, of kindness, and intrepidity, that we doubt if there be any one public man in this part of the empire, or of the age that is gone, whose qualities ought to be so strongly recommended to the contemplation of all those who wish to serve their country."
It was in such society as this that Lord Lovat, by a rare fortune, was brought, after his long and disgraceful exile. It was to such a home of virtue, of intelligence, of the purest and best affections, that he was introduced after a long course of contamination in the lowest scenes of French corruption, which had succeeded an equally demoralising initiation into the less graceful vices of the Court of George the First. The inestimable privilege came too late in one sense. Lord Lovat had gained nothing but wariness by the lapse of years; but the benefit to his worldly condition was considerable.
From this time until a few years before the insurrection of 1745, Lord Lovat may be regarded as a jealous partisan of the house of Hanover. No doubt, a general survey of the state of society in Scotland would, independent of his own personal views, have satisfied him that in such a course was the only chance of permanent safety. The wretchedness of the state of things at that period, can scarcely be adequately comprehended by those who live in times when liberty of opinion is universally an understood condition of civilized intercourse.
It is difficult for any person who lives now to carry himself back, by reading or conversation, into the prospects or feelings of the people of Scotland about a hundred years ago. The religious persecutions of the Stuarts had given a darker hue to the old austerity of their Calvinism. The expectation of change constantly held out by that family divided the nation into two parties, differing on a point which necessarily made each of them rebels in the eyes of the other; and thus the whole kingdom was racked by jealousies, heart-burnings, and suspicions. The removal, by the Union, of all the patronage and show of royalty, spread a gloom and discontent, not only over the lower, but over the higher ranks. The commencement of a strict system of general taxation was new, while the miserable poverty of the country rendered it unproductive and unpopular. The great families still lorded it over their dependants, and exercised legal jurisdiction within their own domains; by which the general police of the kingdom was crippled, and the grossest legal oppression practised. The remedy adopted for all these evils, which was to abate nothing and to enforce everything under the direction of English counsels or of English men, completed the national wretchedness, and infused its bitterest ingredient into the brim full cup.