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]
Lord Salton dispatched an answer, saying, that he would meet the Master
of Lovat at the appointed time, as his "good friend and servant." But
the bearer of that message distrusted the reply, and informed the Master
that he believed it was Fraser of Salton's intention to set out and to
pass through Inverness early in the morning, in order to escape the
interview. Measures were taken accordingly, by the Master of Lovat. At a
very early hour he was seen passing over the bridge of Inverness,
attended by six gentlemen, as he himself relates, and two servants,
completely armed. This is the Master's statement; but on his subsequent
trial, it appeared that the fiery cross and the coronach had been sent
throughout all the country; that a body of four or five hundred men in
arms were in attendance, and that they had met in the house of one of
the clansmen, Fraser of Strichen, where the Master took their oaths of
fidelity, and where they swore on their dirks to be faithful to him in
his enterprise.[142] "The inhabitants of Inverness," says Lord Lovat,
"observing their alert and spirited appearance, lifted up their hands to
heaven, and prayed God to prosper their enterprise." These simple and
deluded people, doubtless, but partially understood the nature of that
undertaking which they thus called on Heaven to bless.
The Master of Lovat and his party had not proceeded more than four or
five miles from Inverness, than they observed a large party of "runners
issuing out of the wood of Bonshrive, which is crossed by the high
road." "It is a custom," adds Lord Lovat, "in the north of Scotland,
for almost every gentleman to have a servant in livery, who runs before
his horse, and who is always at his stirrup when he wishes to mount or
to alight; and however swift any horse may be, a good runner is always
able to match him."
The gentlemen who attended the Master of Lovat, were soon able to
perceive that Lord Salton was one of the leaders of the party who was
quitting the Wood of Bonshrive, and emerging into the high road; and
that his Lordship was accompanied by Lord Mungo Murray, a younger son of
the Marquis of Athole, and, as the Master of Lovat intimates, an early
friend of his own. The account which Lord Lovat's narrative henceforth
presents, of that which ensued, is so totally at variance with the
evidence on his trial, that it must be disregarded and rejected as
unworthy of credit, as well as the boast with which he concludes it, of
having generously saved the lives of Lord Salton, and of his own
kinsman, Lord Mungo. It appeared afterwards, that his followers had
orders to seize them, dead or alive.
These two young noblemen were, it seems, almost instantly overpowered by
numbers, notwithstanding the attendance of the "runners," on whom Lord
Lovat so much insists. Lord Mungo was taken prisoner by the Master
himself. They were then deprived of their horses, and being mounted on
poneys, were conducted to Fanellan, guards surrounding them, with their
muskets loaded, and dirks drawn, to a house belonging to Lord Lovat,
where they were kept in close confinement, guarded by a hundred
clansmen. Gibbets were erected under the windows of the house, to
intimidate the prisoners; and at the end of a week they were marched off
to Castle Downie,--the Master of Lovat going there in warlike array,
with a pair of colours and a body of five hundred men. From Castle
Downie, Lord Salton and Lord Mungo were led away into the islands and
mountains, and were treated with great indignity.
These adversaries being thus disposed of, the Master of Lovat invested
the castle of Downie with an armed force, and soon took possession of a
fortress, tenanted only by a defenceless woman, the Dowager Lady Lovat.
But that lady was a Murray; one of a resolute family, and descended on
her mother's side from a Stanley. She was the grand-daughter of
Charlotte de la Tremouille, who defended Latham House against the
Parliamentary forces in 1644. Notwithstanding that armed men were placed
in the different apartments of the castle, she was undaunted. Attempts
were made by the Master of Lovat to compel her to sign certain deeds,
securing to him that certainty of the right to the estates, for which he
was ready to plunge in the deepest of crimes. She was firm--she refused
to subscribe her name. Her refusal was the signal, or the incentive, for
the completion of another plot, of a last resource,--a compulsory
marriage between the Master of Lovat and herself.
The awful and almost incredible details of that last act of infuriated
villany, prove Lady Lovat to have been a woman of strong resolution,
and of a deep sensibility. The ceremony of marriage was pronounced by
Robert Monro, Minister of Abertaaffe. The unhappy Lady Lovat's
resistance and prayers were heard in the very court-yard below, although
the sound of bagpipes were intended to drown her screams. Morning found
the poor wretched being, to make use of one of the expressions used by
an eye-witness, "out of her judgment; she spoke none, but gave the
deponent a broad stare." For several days reason was not restored to
her, until, greeted by one of her friends with the epithet "Madam," she
answered, "Call me not Madam, but the most miserable wretch alive." The
scene of this act of diabolical wickedness[143] is razed to the ground:
Castle Downie was burned by the royal troops, in the presence of him who
had committed such crimes within its walls, and of three hundred of his
clansmen, shortly after the battle of Culloden.
It appears from a letter written by Thomas Lovat, the father of the
Master, to the Duke of Argyle, that he and his son were shortly
"impeached for a convocation," and for making prisoners of Lord Salton
and Lord Mungo Murray, for which they were charged before him, were
fined, discharged their fines, and "gave security to keep the
peace."[144] So lightly was that gross invasion of the liberty that
threatened the lives of others at first treated! "We have many
advertisements," adds Thomas Lovat, "that Athole is coming here in
person, with all the armed men he is able to make, to compel us to duty,
and that without delay. If he come, so we are resolved to defend
ourselves; the laws of God, of nature, and the laws of all nations, not
only allowing, but obliging all men, _vim vi repellere_. And I should
wish from my heart, if it were consistent with divine and human laws,
that the estates of Athole and Lovat were laid as a prize, depending on
the result of a fair day betwixt him and me."[145] It was, perhaps, an
endeavour to avert the impending ruin and devastation that followed,
that the Master of Lovat gave their liberty to Lord Saltoun and Lord
Mungo Murray, although not until he had threatened them both with
hanging for interfering with his inheritance, and compelling Lord
Saltoun to promise that he would, on arriving at Inverness, send a
formal obligation for eight thousand pounds, never more to concern
himself with the affairs of the Lovat estate, and that neither he nor
the Marquis of Athole would ever prosecute either Lord Lovat or his son,
or their clan in general, for the disgrace they had received in having
been made prisoners, for any of the transactions of this affair.[146]
But it was evident that, in spite of this concession, the vengeance of
the Marquis of Athole never slept; and that he was resolved to wreak it
upon the head of the wretch who had for ever blasted the happiness of
his sister.
The Master of Lovat was shortly aware that it would no longer be
prudent to remain with his victim in the castle of Downie. His wife, as
it was then his pleasure to call her, remained in a condition of the
deepest despair. She would neither eat nor drink whilst she was in his
power; and her health appears to have suffered greatly from distress and
fear. In the dead of night she was summoned to leave Castle Downie, to
be removed to a more remote and a wilder region, where the unhappy
creature might naturally expect, from the desperate character of her
pretended husband, no mitigation of her sorrows. Since rumours were
daily increasing of the approach of Lord Athole's troops, the clan of
Fraser was again, when Lady Lovat was conveyed from the scene of her
anguish, called forth to assist their leader, and the wail of the
coronach was again heard in that dismal and portentous night: for
portentous it was. This crime, the first signal offence of Simon Fraser,
stamped his destiny. Its effects followed him through life: it entailed
others: it was the commencement of a catalogue of iniquities almost
unprecedented in the career of one man's existence.
Crushed, broken-spirited, afraid of returning to her kindred, whose high
fame she seems to have thought would be sullied by her misfortunes, Lady
Lovat was conducted by Fraser to the Island of Aigas. They stole thither
on horseback, attended by a single servant, and arriving at the
sea-shore, they there took a boat, and were carried to the obscure
island which Fraser had chosen for his retreat. Thomas Fraser of
Beaufort, the father of Simon, thus writes to the Duke of Argyle
respecting this singular and revolting union.
"We have gained a considerable advantage by my eldest son's being
married to the Dowager of Lovat; and if it please God they live together
some years, our circumstances will be very good. Our enemies are so
galled at it, that there is nothing malice or cruelty can invent but
they design and practice against us; so that we are forced to take to
the hills, and keep spies at all parts; by which, among many other
difficulties, the greatest is this,--that my daughter-in-law, being a
tender creature, fatigue and fear of bloodshed may put an end to her,
which would make our condition worse than ever."[147]
And now there took place, in the mind of Lady Lovat, one of those
singular revulsions which experience teaches us to explain rather than
induces us to believe as neither impossible nor uncommon. Lady Lovat, it
is said upon the grave authority of a reverend biographer, became
attached to the bonds which held her. "Here," says Mr. Arbuthnot, in his
Life of Lord Lovat,[148] "he continued a month or six weeks, and by this
time the captain had found means to work himself so effectually into the
good graces of the lady, that, as he reported, 'she doated on him, and
was always unhappy at his absence.'" However true or however false this
representation may be, the marriage service was again, as it was said,
solemnized, at the suggestion of the Master of Lovat, and with the free
consent of Lady Lovat.[149] On the twenty-sixth of October, 1697, we
find Simon Fraser writing in the following terms to the Laird of
Culloden. The answer is not given in the Culloden Papers, but it not
improbably contained a recommendation to repeat the marriage
ceremonials:--
"Beaufort, the 26th of Oct., 1797.
"Dear Sir,
"Thir Lords att Inverness, with the rest of my implacable enemies,
does so confound my wife, that she is uneasy till she see them. I am
afraid that they are so madd with this disapointment, that they will
propose something to her that is dangerous, her brother having such
power with her; so that really, till things be perfectly
accommodatt, I do nott desire they should see her, and I know not
how to manage her. So I hope you will send all the advice you can to
your oblidged humble servant,
SIM. FRASER."
"I hope you will excuse me for not going your lenth, since I have
such a hard task at home."
FROM SIMON FRASER TO THE LAIRD OF CULLODEN.
"Nov. 23rd, 1697.
"Sir,
"I pray you receive the inclosed acompt of my business, and see if
your own conscience, in sight of God, doth not convince you that it
is literally true. I hade sent it to you upon Saturday last, but you
were not at home; however, I sent it that day to the Laird of
Calder, who, I hope, will not sitt down on me, but transmitt it to
my best friends; and I beseech you, Sir, for God's sak, that you do
the like. I know the Chancellour is a just man, notwithstanding his
friendship to my Lord Tilliberdine. I forgive you for betraying of
me; but neither you, nor I, nor I hope God himself, will forgive him
that deceived you, and caused you to do it. I am very hopeful in my
dear wife's constancey, if they do not put her to death. Now I ad no
more, but leaves myself to your discretion; and reste, Sir, your
faithful friend and servant,
SIM. FRASER."
Lady Lovat lived to hear her husband deny that he had ever sought her in
marriage, and to see him married to two different wives; and he scrupled
not to represent the unfortunate Lady Lovat as the last possible object
of his regard--as a "widow, old enough to be his mother, dwarfish in her
person, and deformed in her shape."[150] This, as far as related to
disparity of years, was untrue; the Dowager was only four years older
than the Master of Lovat.
Meantime justice had not slumbered; and one morning, a charge "against
Captain Simon Fraser, of Beaufort, and many others, persons mostly of
the clan Fraser, for high treason, in forming unlawful associations,
collecting an armed force, occupying and fortifying houses and
garrisons, &c.," was left by the herald, pursuant to an old Scottish
custom, in a cloven stick which was deposited at the river side,
opposite to the Isle of Aigas.[151] Of this no notice was taken by
Simon, except to renew his addresses to his clan, and to hasten, as far
as he could from his secluded retreat, a systematic resistance to the
Marquis of Athole, and even to the royal troops, whose approach was
expected. But his fears were aroused. Again he sought to avert the
coming danger by concession; and he determined, in the first instance,
on restoring Lady Lovat to her friends.
It is stated by Mr. Arbuthnot, but still on the authority of the Master
of Lovat, that Lady Lovat had now become reluctant to return to her
relations. Nor is it improbable that this statement is true, without
referring that reluctance to any affection for the wretch with whom her
fate was linked. She complied, nevertheless, with the proposal of the
Master; and leaving the Island of Aigas, she proceeded first to Castle
Downie, and afterwards to Dunkeld, where, according to Arbuthnot, she
was obliged by her brother, the Marquis, to join in a prosecution
against her husband, for a crime which she had forgiven. According to a
letter from the Duke of Argyle, addressed to the Rev. Mr. Carstares,
chaplain to King William, she fully exculpated the Master from the
charges made against him on her account.[152] This exculpation was
doubtless given when the unhappy woman was under the influence of that
subtle and powerful mind, which lent its aid to its guilty schemes.
Simon Fraser himself, as we have seen, in writing to Duncan Forbes,
declared--"I am very hopeful in my dear wife's constancy, if they do not
put her to death." This might be only a part of his usual acting,--a
trait of that dissimulation which was the moral taint of his character;
or it may have been true that the humiliated being whom he called his
wife had really learned to cherish one who seemed born to be distrusted,
hated, and shunned.
The return of Lady Lovat to her family was of no avail in mitigating the
indignation of the Marquis of Athole. By his influence with the Privy
Council, who were, it is said, completely under his control, he procured
an order from King William for the march of troops against the clan of
Fraser, with instructions, according to Simon Fraser, to overrun the
country, to burn, kill, and to destroy the whole clan, without
exception; and, without issuing a citation to Thomas Fraser of Beaufort,
or to his son, to appear--without examining a single witness--a printed
sentence was published against all the Frasers, men and women and
children, and their adherents. Even the sanctuary of churches was not to
be respected: "in a word," says Lord Lovat's Manifesto, "history, sacred
or profane, cannot produce an order so pregnant with such unexampled
cruelty as this sentence, which is carefully preserved in the house of
Lovat, to the eternal confusion and infamy of those who signed it."[153]
The Government which sanctioned the massacre of Glencoe was perfectly
capable of issuing a proclamation which confounded the innocent with the
guilty, and punished before trial.
The Master of Lovat assembled his clan. That simple and faithful people,
trusting in the worth and honour of their leader, swore that they would
never desert him, that they would leave their wives, their children, and
all that they most valued, to live and die with him. An organized
resistance was planned; and the Master of Lovat intreated his father, as
he himself expressed it, with tears, "to retire into the country of his
kinsmen, the Macleods of Rye." The proposal was accepted, and Thomas of
Beaufort, for he never assumed the disputed title of Lord Lovat, took
refuge among that powerful and friendly clan.
The prosecution against the Master of Lovat was, in the mean time,
commenced in the Court of Justiciary; "the only case," so it has been
called, "since the Revolution, in which a person was tried in absence,
before the Court of Justiciary, a proof led, a jury inclosed, a verdict
returned, and sentence pronounced; forfeiting life, estate, honours,
fame, and posterity."[154] None of the parties who were summoned,
appeared. The jury returned a verdict finding the indictment proved, and
the Court adjudged Captain Fraser and the other persons accused, to be
executed as traitors; "their name, fame, memory, and honours, to be
extinct, and their arms to be riven forth and deleted out of the books
of arms; so that their posterity may never have place, nor be able
hereafter to bruite or enjoy any honours, offices, titles, or dignities;
and to have forfeited all their lands, heritages, and possessions
whatsoever."[155]
After this sentence, a severer one than that usually passed in such
cases, the Master of Lovat, for the period of four years, led a life of
skirmishes, escapes, and hardships of every description. He retired into
the remote Highlands, then almost impenetrable; and, followed by a small
band of his clansmen, he wandered from mountain to mountain, resolved
never to submit, nor yield himself up to justice. Since his father's
estates were forfeited, and he could draw no means of subsistence from
them, he was often obliged to the charity of the hospitable Highlanders
for some of their coarse fare; and when that resource failed, or when he
had lived too long on the bounty of a neighbourhood, he and his
companions made nightly incursions into the Lowlands, and, carrying off
cattle and provisions, retreated again to their caverns, there to
satisfy hunger with the fruits of their incursions.[156]