and the intelligence that his rival, Mackenzie of Fraserdale, had taken
up arms in favour of the Chevalier, decided his course.[202] On the
fifth of November he assembled all those of his clan who were still
faithful to him, and who had been warned of his approach by his friends.
He was received among them with exclamations of joy; and, hearing that a
body of Mackintoshes, a Jacobite clan, were marching to reinforce Sir
John Mackenzie, who commanded the castle at Inverness, he marched
forward with his adherents to intercept them, and to prevent their
joining what he then called "the rebel garrison."
The citadel of Inverness, built in 1657 by Oliver Cromwell, and called
Oliver's Fort, stood on the east bank of the river Ness, and was a
regular pentagon, with bastions, ramparts, and a moat; the standard of
the Protectorate, with the word "Emmanuel" inscribed upon it, had
formerly been displayed upon its ramparts. It was calculated to hold two
thousand men, and was washed on one side by the river. As a fortress it
had many inconveniencies; approaches to it were easy, and the town
afforded a quarter for an enemy's army. In 1662 it had been partly
dismantled by Charles the Second, because it was the relic of
usurpation, and constituted a check upon the adjacent Highlanders, who
were then considered loyal.[203] It is said by one who saw it after the
Restoration to have been a very superb work, and it was one of the
regular places for the deposition of arms at the time of the Rebellion
of 1715. Subsequently it was much augmented and enlarged, and bore,
until its destruction after the battle of Culloden, the name of Fort
George, an appellation now transferred to its modern successor on the
promontory of Ardesseil.
It was against this important fortress that Lord Lovat now marched with
as much zeal and intrepidity as if he had been fighting in the cause of
that family for whom his ancestors had suffered. He proceeded straight
to Inverness, and placing himself on the west side of the town
despatched a party of troops to prevent any supply of arms or provisions
from approaching the castle by the Firth. Forbes of Culloden lay to the
east, and the Grants, to the number of eight hundred, to the south side
of the town. Sir John Mackenzie finding himself thus invested on all
sides, took advantage of a spring tide that came up to the town and made
the river navigable, to escape with all his troops; and Lord Lovat
immediately gained possession of the citadel. The fame of this
inglorious triumph has, however, been divided between Lovat and Hugh
Rose of Kilravock,[204] whose brother, in pursuing the Jacobite guard to
the Tolbooth, was shot through the body. But whoever really deserved
the laurel, Lord Lovat profited largely by his dishonest exertions in a
cause which he began life by disliking, and ended by abjuring.
On the thirteenth of November Lord Lovat was joined by the Earl of
Sutherland; and, leaving a garrison in Inverness, the two noblemen
marched into the territory of the Earl of Seaforth, where they
intimidated the natives into submission. Lord Lovat also despatched a
friend to Perth, where the main portion of the Jacobite army lay, to
claim the submission of his clansmen, who were led by his rival,
Mackenzie of Fraserdale. They complied with his summons to the number of
four hundred, and Lovat, after entering Murray and Strathspey, and
exacting obedience to the King's troops in these districts, prepared to
attack Lord Seaforth, who was threatening to invest Inverness. But
Duncan Forbes, who was then serving with the army, restrained the ardour
of his neighbour, and hostilities were terminated in the North without
further bloodshed.[205]
Lord Lovat was quickly repaid for his exertions. From George the First
he received three letters of thanks, and an invitation to go to Court;
and in March, 1716, a remission of the sentence of death which had been
passed upon him, received the royal signature. He was appointed governor
of Inverness, with a free company of Highlanders. What, perhaps, still
more gratified his natural thirst for vengeance was the fate of his
rival, the husband of Amelia Lovat, Mackenzie of Fraserdale, who was
attainted of high treason, and whose life-interest in the lands and
barony of Lovat were forfeited and escheated to the Crown. To complete
the good fortune of Lovat, the King was graciously pleased, in June,
1716, to make him a present of the forfeited lands; and Lovat
immediately took possession of the estate, and entered his claim to the
honours and dignities which were appended to the lands.[206] It was now
that he added another motto to the arms of the Frasers, and struck out
the quarterings of the Bisset family, which had been made a plea for his
adversary. The ancient Frasers, or Frizells, had for their motto "_Je
suis prest_," to which this honour to their house now added the words,
"_Sine sanguine victor_," denoting that he had come peaceably to the
estate.[207]
He was now the undisputed Lord Lovat; hitherto he had borne, generally,
the convenient name of Captain Fraser, given to him in his military
capacity; and it appears, in spite of all his boastings, that he had
scarcely been called by any other title at the French Court than that of
Fraser of Beaufort. He had now an admirable opportunity of obliterating
the remembrance of his past life, and of conciliating good opinion by
the consistency and regulation of his present conduct. Notwithstanding
his crimes his clansmen turned towards him gladly; his neighbours were
willing to assist him in the support of his honours, and he enjoyed what
he had never before experienced, the confidence of his Sovereign.
Lord Lovat began his season of prosperity by litigations, which lasted
between twelve and fourteen years. His first aim was to set aside the
pretensions of Hugh Fraser, the son of Mackenzie of Fraserdale, who
claimed the title of Lord Lovat after his father's death; and also, by
virtue of settlements, asserted rights to the estate. The contest was
finally decided by the House of Lords in favour of Lord Lovat's enjoying
the honours and lands during his life, the fee remaining with
Fraserdale, who died in 1755.
Vexatious and expensive suits occupied the period between 1715 and 1732,
when they were brought to a final conclusion.
Lovat now assumed a state corresponding to his station, and suitable to
the turn of his mind for display. Not only the lands, heritages,
tenements, annual rents, &c., of the unfortunate Mackenzie of Fraserdale
were bestowed on him for his services in suppressing what in the deed of
gift was termed "the late unnatural rebellion in the north of Scotland;"
but also the "goods, jewels, gear, utensils and _domecills_, horses,
sheep, cattle, corn," and, in short, whatsoever had belonged to the
Mackenzies, together with five hundred pounds of money, which had fallen
into the King's hands. It was, indeed, some time before all this could
be accomplished, as the correspondence between Lord Lovat and his
friend Duncan Forbes sufficiently shows.
"Inverness, the 5th March, 1716.
"My Dearest General,[208]
"I send you the inclosed letter from the name of Macleod, which I
hope you will make good use of; for it's most certain, I keep'd the
M'Leods at home, which was considerable service done to the
Government. The Earle went off from Cullodin to Cromarty last night;
and tho' he got a kind letter from Marlbrugh, congratulating him on
his glorious actions, yet he was obliged to own to General Wightman,
that his Lordship would have got nothing done in the North without
my dear General and me. I wish he may do us the same justice at
Court: if not, I am sure, if I live, I will inform the King in
person of all that passed here since the Rebellion. The Earle's
creatures openly speak of the Duke of Argyle's being recalled. I
could not bear it. You know my too great vivacity on that head. I
was really sick with it, and could not sleep well since. I expect
impatiently a letter from you to determinal my going to London, or
my stay here, where I am very well with General Wightman, but always
much mortified to see myself the servant of all, without a post or
character. I go to-morrow to Castle Grant to take my leave of my
dear Alister Dow. Your brother is to follow and to go with Alister
to London this week. I find the Duke was gone before you could be at
London. I hope, my dear General, you will take a start to London to
serve his Grace, and do something for your poor old corporal; and,
if you suffer Glengarry, Frazerdale, or the Chisholm, to be
pardoned, I will never carry a musquet any more under your command,
though I should be obliged to go to Affrick. However, you know how
obedient I am to my General's orders. You forgot to give the order,
signed by you and the other depicts, to meddle with Frazerdale's
estate for the King's service. I intreat you send it me, for ---- is
afraid to meddle without authority. Adieu, mon aimable General; vous
savez que je vous aime tendrement; et que je suis mille fois plus à
vous qu'à moy-même pour la vie.
"LOVAT."
In another letter, he observes--"The King has been pleased, this very
day, to give me a gift of all Fraserdale's escheat." Still, however, one
thing was wanting; the rapacious Lovat had not obtained his former
enemy's plate; General Wightman had taken possession of it as from the
person with whom it was deposited; and he was celebrated for his
unwillingness to part with what he had gained. At last, however, the
greediness of Lovat was appeased if not satisfied by a present from
General Cadogan of the plate which he had taken, belonging to
Fraserdale; and by a compromise with General Wightman, Lovat paying the
General one-half of the value of the plate which was worth only one
hundred and fifty pounds. Thus were the remains of the unhappy Jacobites
parcelled out among these military plunderers.
During this year, the avocations of Lord Lovat's turbulent leisure were
pleasingly varied by the cares of a love suit. The young lady who was
persuaded to link her fate to his, was Margaret, the fourth daughter of
Ludovick Grant, of Grant; she is said to have been young and beautiful.
But several obstacles retarded for awhile her union with Lord Lovat. In
the first place, he was not wholly unmarried to the Dowager of Lovat,
who was still alive. The family of Athole had, it is true, annulled that
marriage, yet there were still legal doubts and difficulties in the way
of a fresh bond. Lord Lovat was now, however, according to his own
report to his "dearest General" at Culloden, in high favour with King
George and the Prince of Wales; and to them he broached the subject of
his marriage.
"I had a private audience of King George this day; and I can tell you,
dear General, that no man ever spoke freer language to his Majesty or to
the Prince than I did." "They still behave to me like kind brothers; and
I spoke to them both of my marriage, they approve of it mightily, and my
Lord Islay brother of the Duke [of Argyle], is to make the proposition
to the King; and, so that I believe it will do, with that agreement that
my two great friends wish and desire it."[209]
He could, however, do nothing except in a sinister manner; nor was
there ever one motive which sprang from a right source. Again he thus
addresses Duncan Forbes:--
"I spoke to the Duke and my Lord Islay about my marriage, and told them
that one of my greatest motifs to that design, was to secure them the
joint interest of the North." This must have been a pleasing
consideration for the young lady, but that which follows is scarcely
less promising and agreeable.
"They [the Duke and Lord Islay] are both to speak of it to the King; but
Islay desired me to write to you, to know if there would be any fear of
a poursuit of adherence from that other person [the Dowager Lady Lovat],
which is a chimirical business, and tender fear for me in my dear Islay.
But when I told him that the lady denyed, before the Justice Court, that
I had anything to do with her, and that the pretended marriage is
declared nul (which Islay says should be done by the Commissarys only),
yet, when I told him that the witnesses were all dead who were at the
pretended marriage, he was satisfyed that they could make nothing of it,
though they would endeavour it."[210]
This letter, which shows in too clear colours how unscrupulous even men
of reputed honour, such as Lord Islay, were on some points in those
days, seems to have removed all obstacles; and, during the following
year (1717), Lord Lovat was united to Margaret Grant. Her father was the
head of a numerous and powerful clan, and this marriage tended greatly
to increase the influence of Lord Lovat among the Highlanders. Two
children, a son and a daughter, were the result of this union.
Prosperity once more shone upon the chieftain of the Frasers; and he now
restored to his home, Castle Downie, all the baronial state which must
so well have accorded with that ancient structure. The famous Sergeant
Macleod, in his Memoirs, gives a graphic account of his reception at
Castle Downie by Lord Lovat, where the old soldier repaired to seek a
commission in the celebrated Highland company, afterwards called the
Highland Watch.[211]
"At three o'clock," says the biographer of Macleod,[212] "on a summer's
morning, he set out on foot from Edinburgh; and about the same hour, on
the second day thereafter, he stood on the green of Castle Downie, Lord
Lovat's residence, about five or six miles beyond Inverness; having
performed in forty-eight hours a journey of a hundred miles and upwards,
and the greater part of it through a mountainous country. His sustenance
on this march was bread and cheese, with an onion, all which he carried
in his pocket, and a dram of whiskey at each of the three great stages
on the road,--and at Falkland, the half-way house between Edinburgh, by
the way of Kinghorn and Perth. He never went to bed during the whole of
this journey; though he slept once or twice for an hour or two together,
in the open air, on the road side.
"By the time he arrived at Lord Lovat's park the sun had risen upwards
of an hour, and shone pleasantly, according to the remark of our hero,
well pleased to find himself in this spot, on the walls of Castle
Downie, and those of the ancient abbey of Beaulieu in the near
neighbourhood. Between the hours of five and six Lord Lovat appeared
walking about in his hall, in a morning dress, and at the same time a
servant flung open the great folding doors, and all the outer doors and
windows of the house. It is about this time that many of the great
families of the present day go to bed.
"As Macleod walked up and down on the lawn before the house, he was soon
observed by Lord Lovat who immediately went out, and, bowing to the
Sergeant with great courtesy, invited him to come in. Lovat was a
fine-looking tall man, and had something very insinuating in his manners
and address. He lived in the fullness of hospitality, being more
solicitous, according to the genius of the feudal times, to retain and
multiply adherents than to accumulate wealth by the improvement of his
estate. As scarcely any fortune, and certainly not _his_ fortune, was
adequate to the extent of his views, he was obliged to regulate his
unbounded hospitality by rules of prudent economy. As his spacious hall
was crowded by kindred visitors, neighbours, vassals, and tenants of
all ranks, the table, that extended from one end of it nearly to the
other, was covered at different places with different kinds of meat and
drink--though of each kind there was always great abundance. At the head
of the table the lords and lairds pledged his Lordship in claret, and
sometimes champagne; the tacksmen, or demiwassals, drank port or
whiskey-punch; tenants, or common husbandmen, refreshed themselves with
strong beer; and below the utmost extent of the table, at the door, and
sometimes without the door of the hall, you might see a multitude of
Frasers, without shoes or bonnets, regaling themselves with bread and
onions, with a little cheese, perhaps, and small beer. Yet amidst the
whole of the aristocratic inequality, Lord Lovat had the address to keep
all his guests in perfectly good humour. 'Cousin,' he would say to such
and such a tacksman or demiwassal, 'I told my pantry lads to hand you
some claret, but they tell me you like port or punch best.' In like
manner to the beer drinkers he would say, 'Gentlemen, there is what you
please at your service; but I send you ale because I understand you like
ale.' Everybody was thus well pleased; and none were so ill bred as to
gainsay what had been reported to his Lordship.
"This introduction was followed by still further condescension on the
part of Lord Lovat. He looked at the veteran who had served in Lord
Orkney's regiment, under Marlborough, at Ramilies and Malplaquet, with
approbation.
"'I know,' said his Lordship, 'without your telling me, that you have
come to enlist in the Highland Watch; for a thousand men like you I
would give an estate.' Donald Macleod then, at Lovat's request, related
his history and pedigree,--that subject which most delights the heart of
a Highlander. Lord Lovat clasped him in his arms, and kissed him, and
then led him into an adjoining bedchamber, where Lady Lovat then lay, to
whom he introduced the Sergeant. Lady Lovat raised herself in her bed,
called for a bottle of brandy, and drank prosperity to Lord Lovat, to
the Highland Watch, and to Donald Macleod. 'It is superfluous to say,'
adds the Sergeant, 'that in this toast the lady was pledged by the
gentlemen.'"
In contradiction to this attractive account of Lord Lovat's splendour
and hospitality we must quote a very different description, given by the
astronomer Ferguson. Lord Lovat's abode, according to his account,
boasted, indeed, a numerous feudal retinue within its walls, but
presented little or no comfort. It was a rude tower with only four
apartments in it, and none of these spacious. Lord Lovat's own room
served at once as his place for constant residence, his room for
receiving company, and his bedchamber. Lady Lovat's bedchamber was
allotted to her for all these purposes also. The domestics and a herd of
retainers were lodged in the four lower rooms of the tower, a quantity
of straw constituting their bed-furniture. Sometimes above four hundred
persons were thus huddled together here; the power which their savage
and ungrateful chieftain exercised over them was despotic; and Ferguson
himself had occasionally the pleasurable sight of some half dozen of
them hung up by the heels for hours, on a few trees near the house.[213]
The pretended loyalty of the chief to the exiled family constituted a
strong bond of union between Lovat and his followers; and having them
once under his command, "that indefinable magic by which he all his life
swayed those who neither loved nor esteemed him," to borrow Mrs. Grant's
expression, caused them afterwards to follow his desperate fortunes. "He
resembled, in this respect," says the same admirable writer, "David when
in the cave of Adullam, for every one that was discontented, and every
one that was in debt, literally resorted to him." Lovat, once settled in
the abode of his ancestors, did all that he could do to efface the
memory of the past, and to redeem the good opinion of his neighbours.
One thing he alone left undone,--he did not amend his life. Crafty,
vindictive, gross, tyrannical, few men ever continued long such a career
with impunity.
He was long distrusted by the good of both parties; by the one he was
regarded as a spy of Government, by the other as one whose Jacobite
loyalty was only a pretext to win the affections of the honest and
simple Highlanders. Yet, at last, he succeeded in obtaining influence,
partly by his real talents, partly by his artifices and knowledge of
character. "When one considers," observes Mrs. Grant, "that his
appearance was disgusting and repulsive, his manners, except when he had
some deep part to play, grossly familiar, and meanly cajoling, and that
he was not only stained with crimes, but well known to possess no one
amiable quality but fortitude, which he certainly displayed in the last
extremity, his influence over others is to be regarded as inexplicable."
Although the most valuable possessions of his family were on the Aird,
the chief centre of his popularity was in Stratheric, a wild hilly
district between Inverness and Fort Augustus. There he was beloved by
the common people, who looked upon him as a patriot, and there he made
it his chief study to secure their affections, often going unlooked for
to spend the day and night with his tenants there, and banishing
reserve, he indulged in a peculiar strain of jocularity perfectly suited
to his audience. His conversation, composed of ludicrous fancies and
blandishments, was often intermingled with sound practical advice and
displays of good sense. The following curious account of his table
deportment, and ordinary mode of living, is from the pen of Mrs. Grant
of Laggan, who was well acquainted with those who had personally known
Lord Lovat.