other channel, the plot of the invasion became known to Lord Middleton.
Jealous of the family of Perth, his avowed enemies, Lord Middleton,
according to Lord Lovat, was enraged at the project, and determined to
ruin the projectors. It is very true that the antipathies between the
prevailing factions may have excited Lord Middleton's anger; but it is
evident, from his lordship's letters and memoranda, that his dislike had
a far deeper source--the profligacy of the agent Lovat; a profligacy
which had deterred, as it was afterwards found, many of the Highland
chiefs from lending their aid to the cause. Party fury, however, ran
high, and before the affair of the insurrection could be settled, Lord
Middleton, declaring that the last words of King James had made a
powerful impression on his mind, retired into the convent of
Benedictines at Paris, to be satisfied of some doubts, and to be
instructed in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. But this
temporary retirement rather revived than decreased the favour of the
Queen towards him. She trusted to his advice; and, as the statement
which Lord Lovat gave of the affairs of Scotland appeared too favourable
to the excluded family to be believed, Louis the Fourteenth counselled
the Court of St. Germains to send with Lord Lovat, or, as he is
invariably called in all contemporary documents, Simon Fraser, a person
who could be trusted to bring back a genuine account. Accordingly, James
Murray of Stanhope, the brother of Sir David Murray, was employed to
this effect. "He was," says Lord Lovat, "a spy of Lord Middleton's, his
sworn creature, and a man who had no other means of subsistence."[171]
From other accounts, however, Mr. Murray is shown to have been a man of
probity, although in great pecuniary difficulties, as many of the
younger members of old families were at that time.[172] Mr. James Murray
was sent forward into Scotland six weeks before Lord Lovat set out from
France; and the Court had the wisdom to send with the latter another
emissary in the person of Mr. John Murray, of Abercairney.
After these arrangements were completed, Lord Lovat received his
commission. He set out upon his expedition by way of Brussels, to
Calais. Not being furnished with passports, and having no other pass
than the orders of the Marquis De Torcy to the commandants of the
different forts upon the coast, he was obliged also, to wait for an
entire month, the arrival of an English packet for the exchange of
prisoners,--the captain of the vessel having been bribed to take him and
his companions on board as English prisoners of war, and to put them on
shore during the night, in his boat, near Dover.
Through the interest of Louis the Fourteenth, Lovat had received the
commission from King James of major-general, with power to raise and
command forces in his behalf:[173] and thus provided, he proceeded to
Scotland, where he was met by the Duke of Argyle, his friend, and
conducted by that nobleman to Edinburgh. Such was the simple statement
of Lovat's first steps on this occasion. According to his memorial,
which he afterwards presented to Queen Mary, he received assurances of
support from the Catholic gentry of Durham, who, "when he showed them
the King's picture, fell down on their knees and kissed it."[174] This
flattering statement appeared, however, to resemble the rest of the
memorial of his proceedings, and met with little or no credence even in
the quarter where it was most likely to be well received.
From the Duke of Queensbury, Lord Lovat received a pass to go into the
Highlands, which was procured under feigned names, both for him and his
two companions, from Lord Nottingham, then Secretary of State. After
this necessary preliminary, Lord Lovat made a tour among some of the
principal nobility in the Lowlands. He found them, even according to
his own statement, averse to take up arms without an express commission
from the King. But he remarks, writing always as he does in the third
person, "My Lord Lovat pursued his journey to the Highlands, where they
were overjoyed to see him, because they believed him dead, having been
fourteen months in France, without writing any word to his country. They
came from all quarters to see him. He showed them the King's
instructions, and the King of France's great promises. They were
ravished to see them, and prayed to God to have their King there, and
they should soon put him on the throne. My Lord Lovat told them that
they must first fight for him, and beat his enemies in the kingdom. They
answered him, that, if they got the assistance he promised them, they
would march in three days' advertisement, and beat all the King's
enemies in the kingdom."[175] This statement, though possibly not wholly
untrue, must be taken with more than the usual degree of allowance for
the exaggeration of a partisan. Many of the Highland noblemen and
chieftains were, indeed, well disposed to the cause of which Lord Lovat
was the unfortunate and unworthy representative; but all regretted that
their young King, as they styled him, should repose trust in so bad a
character, and in many instances refused to treat with Lovat. And,
indeed, the partial success which he attained might be ascribed to the
credit of his companion Captain John Murray, a gentleman of good family,
whose brother, Murray of Abercairney, was greatly respected in his
county.
The embryo of the two Rebellions may be distinctly traced in the plain
and modest memorial which Captain Murray also presented, on his return
from Scotland, at the Court of St. Germains. "The Earl and Countess of
Errol," he relates, "with their son Lord Hay, were the first to whom I
spoke of the affairs of the King of England." "Speaking at Edinburgh
with the King's friends, about his Majesty's affairs, in a more serious
way than I had done before, I found that these affairs had not been
mentioned among them a long time before, and that it was to them an
agreeable surprise to see some hopes that they were to be revived by my
negotiation."
The greatest families in Scotland were, indeed,[176] ready to come
forward upon condition of a certain assistance from France; and a scheme
seems even to have been suggested for the invasion of England, and to
have formed the main feature in one of those various plots which were as
often concerted, and as often defeated, in favour of the excluded
family.[177]
In France, these continual schemes, and the various changes in the
English Government, were regarded with the utmost contempt. "The
people," writes the Duke of Perth, Chancellor of Scotland, "are kept
from amusement, frameing conceits of government and religion, such as
our giddy people frame to themselves, and make themselves the scorn and
reproach of mankind, for all are now foes under the name of English,
and we are said to be so changeable and foolish, that nothing from our
parts seems strange. Beheading, dethroning, and banishing of kings,
being but children's play with us."[178]
But all the promise of this plan was defeated, as it is generally and
confidently asserted, by the character of Lord Lovat. A general distrust
prevailed, of his motives and of his authority, even in that very
country where he had once led on his clansmen to crimes for which they
had paid dearly in the humiliation and devastation of their clan. He was
indeed, prevented from lingering near the home of his youth, from the
decrees which had been issued against him, and the risk of discovery.
Disappointed in his efforts, unable to raise even fifty men of his own
clan, and resolved upon gaining influence and favour in some quarter or
another, he determined upon betraying the whole scheme, which has since
obtained in history the name of the Scottish Plot, to the Duke of
Queensbury.
It was on pretext of obtaining a passport for France, that Lord Lovat
now sought an interview with the Duke in London. He there discovered to
that able and influential minister, then Secretary of State for
Scotland, the entire details of the meditated insurrection, together
with the names of the principal Scottish nobility concerned in the
conspiracy. The Duke, it appears, perfectly appreciated the character
of his informant. He seems to have reflected, that from such materials
as those which composed the desperate and hardened character of Lovat,
the best instruments of party may be selected. He consented, it is
generally believed,--although historians differ greatly according to
their particular bias, as to the fact,--to furnish Lovat with a
passport, and to employ him as a spy in the French Court, in order to
prosecute his discoveries still farther.
When Lovat was afterwards charged with this act of treachery, he
declared, that he had told the Duke of Queensbury little more than what
had escaped through the folly or malice of the Jacobites; but
acknowledged that a mutual compact had passed between him and the Duke
of Queensbury.[179]
Somerville, in his history of the reign of Queen Anne, remarks, that it
is doubtful whether Fraser of Lovat had ever any intention of performing
effectual service to the Chevalier. "No sooner had he set foot in
England," adds the same historian, "than he formed the nefarious project
of counter-plotting his associate, and betraying the trust which he had
procured through the facility and precipitate confidence of the
Queen."[180]
The Duke of Queensbury immediately communicated the plot, disclosed by
Lovat, to Queen Anne. In the main points the conduct of that able and
influential Minister appears to have been tolerably free from blame
during the inquiry into the Scottish plot which was afterwards
instituted; but it is a proof of the horror and suspicion in which Lord
Lovat was held, that the Duke of Queensbury's negotiations with so
abandoned a tool for some time diminished the political sway which he
had heretofore possessed in Scotland.[181]
Lord Lovat returned to Paris, where he had the effrontery to hand in a
boasting memorial of his services, written with that particularity which
gives an air of extreme accuracy to any statement. In this art he was
generally accomplished, yet he seems on this occasion to have failed.
For some time he flourished; alternately, one day at Versailles--one day
at St. Germains; and, whilst an under-current of dislike and suspicion
marked his course, all, apparently, went on successfully with this great
dissembler. The Earl of Middleton, indeed, was undeceived.
"I doubt not," he writes to the Marquis De Torcy, "you will be as much
surprised at Lord Lovat's memorial as we have been; for although I never
had a good opinion of him, yet, I did not believe him fool enough to
accuse himself. He has not, in some places, been as careful as authors
of romance to preserve probability."
"If the King thinks proper to apprehend him," concludes Lord Middleton,
"it should be done without noise. His name should not be mentioned any
more, and at the same time his papers should be seized."[182] Such were
the preparations for the secret incarceration which it was then the
practice of the French Court to sanction.
Lord Lovat was not long in ignorance of the intrigues, as he calls them,
which were carried on to blast his reputation at the Court of St.
Germains. In other words, he perceived that the double game which he had
been playing was discovered, and discovered in time to prevent any new
or important trust being committed to his command. He fell ill, or
perhaps feigned illness, probably in order to account for his absence
from Court; and, although backed by the influence of the Earl of
Melfort, brother of the Duke of Perth, and by the Marquis De Torcy, he
found that he could never recover the confidence of the Queen Mother.
He took the usual plan adopted by servants who perceive that they are on
the eve of being discarded--he announced his determination to retire.
"My Lord," he wrote to Lord Middleton, "I am daily informed, that the
Queen has but a scurvy opinion of me, and that I did her Majesty bad
rather than good service by my journey. My Lord, I find that my enemies
have greater power with the Queen than I can have; and to please them,
and ease her Majesty, I am resolved to meddle no more with any affairs
till the King is of age."[183]
There seemed to have been little need of this voluntary surrender of his
employments; for, after undergoing an examination, in writing from the
Pope's Nuncio, and after several letters had passed between Lord
Middleton and himself, the altercation was peremptorily closed by a
_lettre de cachet_, and Lord Lovat was committed, according to some
statements, to the Bastille,--as others relate, to the Castle of
Angoulême.[184] Upon this occasion the hardihood of Lord Lovat's
character, which shone out so conspicuously at his death, was thus
exemplified.
"As they went along the Captain (by this name he was generally called
among his friends) discoursed the officer with the same freedom as if he
had been carrying him to some merry-meeting; and, on observing on his
men's coats a badge all full of points, with this device--_monstrorum
terror_,--'the terror of monsters,' he said wittily, pointing to the
men, 'Behold there the terror, and here the monster!' meaning himself.
'And if either of the Kings had a hundred thousand of such, they would
be fitter to fright their enemies than to hurt any one of them.' He took
occasion, also, to let his attendants know of what a great and noble
family he was, and how much blood had been spent in the cause of the
Monarchs by his ancestors."[185]
According to Lord Lovat's manifesto, he was at dinner at Bourges,
whither he had been sent on some pretext by the French Government, when
"a grand fat prevôt, accompanied by his lieutenant and twenty-four
archers, stole into the drawing-room, and seized Lord Lovat as if he
had been an assassin, demanding from him his sword in the King's name.
The villain of a prevôt," adds his Lordship, "was so obliging as to
attend Lord Lovat, with his archers, all the way to Angoulême. He had
the luck to procure a cursed little chaise, where Lord Lovat was in a
manner buried alive under the unwieldy bulk of this enormous porpoise."
This relation, so different from that given by Mr. Arbuthnot, weakens
the veracity of both accounts, and leads one to infer that the long
narrative by the reverend gentleman of Lord Lovat's adventures in the
Bastille were written upon hearsay.[186]
In the Castle of Angoulême Lord Lovat continued for three years; at
first, being treated with great severity: "thirty-five days in perfect
darkness, where every moment he expected death, and prepared to meet it
with becoming fortitude. He listened with eagerness and anxiety to every
noise, and, when his door screached upon its hinges, he believed that it
was the executioner come to put an end to his unfortunate days."
In this predicament, finding that the last punishment was delayed, he
"thought proper to address himself to a grim jailoress, who came every
day to throw him something to eat, in the same silent and cautious
manner in which you would feed a mad dog."[187] By the "clink of a louis
d'or," the prisoner managed to subdue the fidelity of this fair
jailoress; she supplied him with pens and paper, and he immediately
began a correspondence with his absent friends at the French Court.
After a time, the severity of Lord Lovat's imprisonment was mitigated.
The Castle of Angoulême was, in a manner, an open prison, having an
extensive park within its walls, with walks open to the inhabitants; and
here, through the influence of Monsieur De Torcy, Lord Lovat was
permitted to take exercise. His insinuating manners won upon the
inhabitants, and the prison of Angoulême became so agreeable to him,
that he was often heard to say, that "if there was a beautiful and
enchanting prison in the world, it was the Castle of Angoulême."
Meantime, the scheme of invasion was by no means relinquished on the
part of the Jacobites, although it had received a considerable check
from the treachery of its agents.
It is stated by some historians that scarcely had Lord Lovat quitted
England, than Sir John Maclean, his cousin-german, and Campbell, of
Glendarnel, disclosed the plot to Lord Athole and Lord Tarbat. These
noblemen instantly went to Queen Anne, and accused the Duke of
Queensbury of high treason, in carrying on a villanous plot with the
Court of St. Germains. Queensbury defended himself before the House of
Lords, and the accusation, which rested chiefly on the assertions of
Ferguson, the famous hatcher of plots, was declared false and
scandalous, and Ferguson was committed to Newgate. The reluctance of the
Duke of Queensbury to give up the correspondence, excited, however,
suspicions of his integrity; which, as Harley, Lord Oxford, expressed
it, could only be cleared up by Fraser, Lord Lovat;[188] but Lord Lovat
was not then to be found.
In all this singular and complicated affair, it is impossible to help
wondering at the folly and audacity which Lord Lovat had shown in
returning to France, conscious of having placed himself at the mercy of
ruthless politicians, and aware that in that country he could expect no
redress nor protection from law. But the original crime for which he had
been sent forth, an outlaw from his country, was the source of all his
subsequent mistakes and misfortunes. France was open to him; Scotland
was closed; and England was a scene of peril to one who trod on fragile
ice, beneath which a deep gulf yawned.
Lord Lovat had been two years in prison before any of his former
friends, for even he was not wholly devoid of partisans, interfered with
success in his behalf; and it was the good, old-fashioned feeling of
kindred that finally moved the Marquis De Frezelière, or Frezel, or
Frezeau de la Frezelière, to interest himself in the fate of his
despised, and perhaps forgotten, relative.
"The house of Frezelière, which ascends," says Lord Lovat, "in an
uninterrupted line, and without any unequal alliance, to the year 1030,
with its sixty-four quarterings in its armorial bearings, and all noble,
its titles of seven hundred years standing in the Abbey of Nôtre Dame de
Noyers in Touraine, and its many other circumstances of inherent
dignity," was, as we have seen, derived from the same blood with the
family of Frezel, or Fraser. In former, and more prosperous days, a
common and authentic Act of Recognition of this relationship had been
drawn up at Paris by the Marquis and his many illustrious kinsmen, the
three sons of the Marshal Luxembourg de Montmorenci; and executed, on
the other hand, by Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, and by his brother, and
several of their nearest kin.
The Marquis De Frezelière appears to have been a fine specimen of that
proud and valiant aristocracy, not even then wholly broken down in
France by the effeminacy of the times. He was haughty and determined,
"an eagle in the concerns of war," and of a spirit not to be subdued. By
his powerful intercession, checked only by the disgust which Mary of
Modena felt towards Lovat, he procured from the King of France
permission for his relative to repair to the waters of Bourbon for the
restoration of his health. This order was signed by Louis the
Fourteenth, and countersigned by the Marquis De Torcy, as "Colbert."
Four days afterwards, a second order was received by the authorities at
Angoulême, by which his Majesty commanded that Lord Lovat, after the
restoration of his health, should repair to his town of Saumur, until
further orders. "At the same time," says Lord Lovat, "he was permitted
to take with him the Chevalier De Frezel, his brother." These orders
were dated August the second and August the fourteenth, 1707.
The brother, whom Lord Lovat always designates as the Chevalier de
Fraser, had been placed with a Doctor of the Civil Law at Bourges, in
order to learn French, and the profession of a civilian. He had been
arrested at the same time with Lord Lovat; and was now, after a
temporary separation, permitted to share the pleasures of a removal to
Bourbon. According to Lord Lovat, a pension from the French Government
was settled upon this young man as long as he resided in France; and
Lord Lovat received also the ample income of four thousand francs, (one
hundred and sixty-six pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence,) from
the same quarter: nor was it in the power of his enemies at St. Germains
to induce Louis the Fourteenth to withdraw this allowance.[189]
The Marquis de Frezelière continued firm in his regard towards Lord
Lovat. On his road to Saumur, Lord Lovat was received and entertained at
the château of the Marquis with hospitality and kindness, and no
opportunity was omitted by which the Marquis could testify the sincerity
of his interest in the fate of his relative. Meantime daily reports were
circulated that the projected insurrection, far from being abandoned,
had been revived, and that the Chevalier was going to undertake the
conduct of the invasion in person. But that young Prince was still
inexorable to any petition in favour of Lovat, and was wisely resolved
not to let him participate in the operations. "Were he not already in
prison," he is stated by Lovat himself to have said, "I would make it my
first request to the King of France to throw him into one." This fixed
aversion was owing to the determined dislike of the Queen to abdicate,
as it was her resolution, if there were no other person to be employed,
never to make Lord Lovat an instrument of her affairs.
Lovat, therefore, now clearly perceived that, during the life of the
Queen and of Lord Middleton, he must look for nothing favourable from
the Court of St. Germains. That of Versailles, although, by his account,
decidedly friendly to his release, refused to support those whom the
Chevalier had renounced. He resolved, therefore, to make every exertion
to return to his own country, and to place himself once more at the head
of his clan, who, in spite of his crimes, in spite of his long absence
and imprisonment, had still refused to acknowledge any other chief. The
attempt was indeed desperate, but Lovat resolved to risk it, and to
escape, at all events, from France.
To the vengeance of the Athole family, Lord Lovat always imputed much of
the severity shown him by the Court at St. Germains: and it is probable
that the representations of that powerful house may have contributed to
the odium in which the character of Lord Lovat was universally held. His
own deeds were, however, sufficient to ensure him universal hatred. The
great source of surprise is, that this unscrupulous intriguer, this
unprincipled member of society, seems, at times, during the course of
his eventful life, to have met with friends, firm in their faith to him,
and to have enjoyed, in that respect, the privilege of virtue.
The young heiress of Lovat, Amelia Fraser, was now married to Alexander
Mackenzie, son of Lord Prestonhall; Mr. Mackenzie had adopted the title
of Fraserdale; and a son had been born of this marriage, who had been
named after his grandfather, Hugh. Fraserdale and his lady had taken
possession both of the title and estates of Lord Lovat, during his
absence; but, since the dignity and estates had always been enjoyed by
an heir-male, from the origin of the house of Fraser, these claimants to
the estate of the outlawed Lovat spread a report that the honours and
lands had, in old times, belonged to the Bissets, whose daughter and
only child had married a Fraser, from whom the estates had descended to
the heir of that line. A suit was instituted against Lord Lovat and, on
the ninth of March, 1703, Lord Prestonhall, the father of Fraserdale,
himself adjudged the Lordship and Barony of Lovat to Amelia Fraser. An
entail of the estates and honours upon the heirs of the marriage between
Amelia Fraser and Mackenzie of Fraserdale, was then executed, and the
former assumed the title of Lady Lovat, whilst her son was designated
the Master of Lovat.[190]