During his imprisonment, Lovat had the affliction of hearing that his estates, after being plundered of everything and destroyed by fire, were given by the Duke of Cumberland to James Fraser of Cullen Castle.[251] He was therefore left without a shilling of revenue during his confinement, and was thus treated as a convicted prisoner. In this situation he was reduced to the utmost distress, and indebted solely to the bounty of a kinsman, administered through Governor Williamson, for subsistence. At length, early in the year 1747, upon preferring a petition to the House of Lords, these grievances were in a great measure redressed. Yet the unhappy prisoner had sustained many hardships. Among others the legal plunder of his strong box, containing the sum of seven hundred pounds, and of many valuables.[252]
After much deliberation on the part of the Crown lawyers, Lord Lovat was impeached of high treason. "We learn," says Mr. Anderson, "from Lord Mansfield's speech in the Sutherland cause, that much deliberation was necessary. It was foreseen that his Lordship would have recourse to art. If he was tried as a commoner he might claim to be a peer; if tried as a peer he might claim to be a commoner. Everything was fully considered; the true solid ground upon which he was tried as a peer, was the presumption in favour of the heirs male."[253]
On Monday, the ninth of March, the proceedings were commenced against Lord Lovat; and a renewal took place of that scene which Horace Walpole declared to be "most solemn and fine;—a coronation is a puppet-show, and all the splendour of it idle; but this sight at once feasted the eyes, and engaged all one's passions."
Lord Lovat was now dragged forth to play the last scene of his eventful life. His size had by this time become enormous, so that when he had first entered the Tower it was jestingly said that the doors must be enlarged to receive him. He could neither walk nor ride, as he was almost helpless; he was deaf, purblind, eighty years of age, ignorant of English law, and it was therefore not a matter of surprise that the high-born tribes, who thronged to his trial, were disappointed in the brilliancy of his parts, and in the readiness of his wit. "I see little of parts in him," observes Walpole, "nor attribute much to that cunning for which he is so famous; it might catch wild Highlanders." Singular, indeed, must have been the contrast between Lord Lovat and the polished assembly around him: the Lord High Steward, Hardwicke, comely, and endowed with a fine voice, but "curiously searching for occasions to bow to the Minister, Henry Pelham," and asking at all hands what he was to do. The rude Highland clansmen, vassals of Lord Lovat's, but witnesses against him; above all, the blot and scourge of the Jacobite cause, Murray of Broughton, who was the chief witness against the prisoner, must have formed an assembly of differing characters not often to be seen, and never to be forgotten.
The trial lasted five days; it affords, as has been well remarked, a history of the whole of the Rebellion of 1745. Robert Chevis of Muirtown, a near neighbour of Lovat's, but, as the counsel for the Crown observed, a man of very different principles, gave testimony against the prisoner. At the end of the third day, Lord Lovat, pleading that he had been up at four o'clock in the morning, "to attend their Lordships," and declaring that he would rather "die on the road than not pay them that respect," prayed a respite of a day, which was granted. It appeared, indeed, doubtful in what form death would seize him first, and whether disease and age might not cheat the scaffold of its victim.
Lord Lovat spoke long in his defence, but without producing any revulsion in his favour. Throughout the whole of the proceedings he appears not to have dreaded the rigour of the law; when the defence was closed, and the Lord High Steward was about to put the question, guilty or not guilty, to the House, the Lieutenant of the Tower was ordered by the Lord Steward to take the prisoner from the bar, but not back to the Tower.
"If your Lordships," said Lovat, "would send me to the Highlands, I would not go to the Tower any more." He was pronounced guilty by the unanimous votes of one hundred and seventeen Lords present. He was then informed of his sentence, and remanded to his prison. On the following day, March the nineteenth, he was brought up to receive sentence. On that occasion, in reply to the question "why judgment of death should not be passed upon him," he made a long and, considering his fatigues and infirmities, an extraordinary speech, giving the Lords "millions of thanks for being so good in their patience and attendance," and drawing a parallel between the two different men of the name of Murray, who had figured in the trial. The one was Murray of Broughton; the other, Murray afterwards Lord Mansfield. He then went into the history of his life; or, at least, into such passages of it as were proper for the public ear. He was interrupted by the Lord High Steward, whose conduct to the unhappy State prisoner is said to have been peevish and overbearing.
Judgment of death was then pronounced upon him, and the barbarous sentence which had been passed upon the Earl of Wintoun was pronounced; "to be hanged by the neck, but not till you are dead," &c. The prisoner then spoke again; hoping by this reiterated reference to his services, to obtain a mitigation of the sentence; but he spoke to those who heard, without compassion, the petitions for mercy which fell from an aged, tottering, and miserable old man. Well has it been said, "Whatever his character or his crimes might be, the humanity of the British Government incurred a deep reproach, from the execution of an old man on the very verge of the grave."[254]
At last, the Lord High Steward put the final question; "Would you offer anything further?"
"Nothing," was the reply, "but to thank your Lordships for your goodness to me. God bless you all; I bid you an everlasting farewell. We shall not meet all again in the same place,—I am sure of that."