blood-thirsty Cumberland was eager in pursuit. Parties of soldiers were
sent out in search of Lovat, and he soon found that it was no longer
safe to remain in the vicinity of Beaufort. He fled, in the first
instance, to Cawdor Castle. In this famous structure, with its
iron-grated doors, its ancient tapestry hanging over secret passages and
obscure approaches, he took refuge. In one of its towers, in a small low
chamber beneath the roof, the wretched old man concealed himself for
some months. When he was at last obliged to quit it, he descended by
means of a rope from his chamber.
He had still lost neither resolution nor energy. On the fourth of May,
fifteen of the Jacobite chieftains, Lord Lovat among the number, met in
the Island of Mortlaig, to concert measures for raising a body of men
to resist the victorious troops. On this occasion Lord Lovat declared
that they need not be uneasy, since he had no doubt but that they should
be able to collect eight or ten thousand men to fight the Elector of
Hanover's troops. Cameron of Lochiel, Murray of Broughton, and several
other leaders of distinction were present; Lord Lovat was attended by
many of his own clan, who were armed with dirks, swords, and pistols,
and marked by wearing sprays of yew in their bonnets. But the conference
broke up without any important result. The leaders embraced each other,
drank to Prince Charles's health, and separated. On this occasion Lord
Lovat headed that party among the Jacobites who still looked for aid
from France, and abjured the notion of surrendering to the
conqueror.[249] Still hunted, to use his own expression, "like a fox,"
through the main land, Lovat now got off in a boat to the Island of
Morar, where he thought himself secure from his enemies; but it was
decreed that his iniquitous life should not close in peaceful obscurity.
It was not long before he heard that a party of the King's troops had
arrived in pursuit of him, and a detachment of the garrison of Fort
William, on board the Terror and Furnace sloops, was also despatched, to
make descents on different parts of the island. Lovat retreated into the
woods; Captain Mellon, who commanded the detachment searched every town,
village, and house; but not finding the fugitive, he resolved to
traverse the woods, planting parties at the openings to intercept an
escape. In the course of his researches he passed a very old tree,
which, from some slits in its trunk, he and his men perceived to be
hollow. One of the soldiers, peeping into the aperture, thought he saw a
man's leg; upon which he summoned his captain, who, on investigating
farther, found on one side a large opening, in which stood a pair of
legs, the rest of the figure being hidden within the hollow of the tree.
This was, however, quickly discovered to be Lord Lovat, for whom this
party had then been three days in search. He was wrapped in blankets, to
protect his aged limbs from the cold.
Thus discovered, Lovat was forced to surrender, but his spirit rose with
the occasion: he told Captain Mellon that "he had best take care of him;
for if he did not, he should make him answer for his conduct before a
set of gentlemen the very sight of whom would make him tremble." He was
taken, in the first instance, to Fort William, where he was treated with
humanity, in obedience to the express orders of the Duke of Cumberland.
From this prison Lovat wrote a letter to the Duke, reminding his Royal
Highness of the services which he had performed in 1715, and of the
favour shown him by George the First. "I often carried your Royal
Highness," pursues the unhappy old man, "in my arms, in the palaces of
Kensington and of Hampton Court, to hold you up to your royal
grandfather, that he might embrace you, for he was very fond of you and
the young princesses." He then represented to the Duke that if mercy
were shown him, and he "might have the honour to kiss the Duke's hand,
he might do more service to the King and Government than destroying a
hundred such old and very infirm men like me, (past seventy, without the
least use of my hands, legs, or knees,) can be of advantage in any shape
to the Government."
He was conveyed soon after this letter, which is dated June the
twenty-second, 1746, to Fort Augustus. He had requested that a litter
might be prepared for him, for he was not able either to stand, walk, or
ride. On the fifteenth of July he was removed, under a strong guard, to
Stirling, where a party of Lord Mark Ker's dragoons received him. After
a few days rest he passed through Edinburgh for the last time; thence to
Berwick, and on the twenty-fifth he began his last journey under the
escort of sixty dragoons commanded by Major Gardner. His journey to
London was divided into twenty stages, and he was to travel one stage a
day. It was, indeed, of importance to the Government that he should
reach London alive, since many disclosures were expected from Lovat. On
reaching Newcastle three days afterwards he appeared to be in a very
feeble state, and walked from his coach to his lodgings supported by two
of the dragoons. As he travelled along in a sort of cage, or
horse-litter, the acclamations and hisses of the populace everywhere
assailed him; but his spirits were unbroken, and he talked confidently
of his return.
But as he drew near London this security diminished. He happened to
reach London a few days before the unhappy Jacobite noblemen were
beheaded on Tower Hill. On his way to the Tower he passed the scaffold
which was erected for their execution. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I suppose it
will not be long before I shall make my exit there."
He was received in the Tower by the Lieutenant-Governor, who conducted
him to the apartment prepared for his reception. Here, reclining in an
elbow chair, he is said to have broken out into reflections upon his
eventful and singular career. He uttered many moral sentiments, and
expressed himself, as many other men have done on similar occasions,
perfectly satisfied with his own intentions. Such was the self-deception
of this extraordinary man.[250]
In this prison Lovat remained during five months without being brought
to trial. But the delay was of infinite importance; it prepared him to
quit, with what may be almost termed heroism, a life which he had
employed in iniquity. Without remembering this interval, during which
ample time for preparation had been afforded, the hardihood which could
sport with the most solemn of all subjects, would shock rather than
astonish. In consideration of the conduct of many of our state prisoners
on the scaffold, we must recollect how familiarized they had previously
become with death, in those gloomy chambers whence they could see many a
fellow sufferer issue, to shed his blood on the same scaffold which
would soon be re-erected for themselves.
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."
Lord Lovat was reconducted to the Tower--that prison on entering which
he had boasted, that if he were not old and infirm they would have found
it difficult to have kept him there. The people told him they had kept
those who were much younger. "Yes," he answered, "but they had not
broken so many gaols as I have."
He now met his approaching fate with a composure that it is difficult
not to admire, even in Lovat. And yet reflection may perhaps suggest
that the insensibility to the fear of death--an emotion incident to
conscientious minds--bespeaks, in one whose responsibilities had been so
grossly abused, an insensibility springing from utter depravity. Let us,
however, give to the wretched man every possible allowance. He wrote, in
terms of affection, a letter full of religious sentiments to his son,
after his own condemnation. When the warrant came down for his
execution, he exclaimed, "God's will be done!" With the courtesy that
had charmed and had betrayed others all his life, he took the gentleman
who brought the warrant by the hand, thanked him, drank his health, and
assured him that he would not then change places with any prince in
Christendom. He appears, indeed, to have had no misgivings, or he
affected to have none, as to his eternal prospects. When the Lieutenant
of the fortress in the Tower asked him how he did? "Do?" was his reply;
"why I am about doing very well, for I am going to a place where hardly
any majors, and very few lieutenant-generals go."
Some friends still remained warmly attached to this singular man. Mr.
William Fraser, his cousin, advanced a large sum of money to General
Williamson, to provide for his wants; and, after acting as his
solicitor, attended him to the last. But Lord Lovat felt deeply the
circumstance of his having been convicted by his own servants: "It is
shocking," he observed, "to human nature. I believe that they will carry
about with them a sting that will accompany them to their grave; yet I
wish them no evil."
He prayed daily, and fervently; and expressed unbounded confidence in
the Divine mercy. "So, my dear child," he thus wrote to his son, "do not
be in the least concerned for me; for I bless God I have strong reasons
to hope that when it is God's will to call me out of this world, it will
be by his mercy, and the suffering of my Saviour, Jesus Christ, to enjoy
everlasting happiness in the other world. I wish this may be yours."
After he had penned this remarkable letter, he asked a gentleman who was
in his room how he liked the letter? The reply was, "I like it very
well; it is a very good letter." "I think," answered Lord Lovat, "it is
a Christian letter."[255]
In this last extremity of his singular fortunes, the wife, whom he had
so cruelly treated, forgetful of every thing but her Christian duty,
wrote to him, and offered to repair immediately to London, and to go to
him in the Tower, if he desired it. But Lord Lovat returned an answer,
in which, for the first time, he adopted the language of conjugal
kindness to Lady Lovat, and refused the generous proposal, worthy of the
disinterestedness of woman's nature. He declared that he could not take
advantage of it, after all that had occurred.[256]
Meantime, an application was made in favour of Lovat by a Mr. Painter,
of St. John's College, Oxford, in the form of three letters, one of
which was addressed to the King, another to Lord Chesterfield, a third
to Henry Pelham. The courage of the intercession can scarcely be
appreciated in the present day; in that melancholy period, the slightest
word uttered in behalf of the Insurgents, brought on the interceder the
imputation of secret Jacobitism, a suspicion which even President Forbes
incurred. The petitions for mercy were worded fearlessly; "In a word,"
thus concludes that which was addressed to the King, "bid Lovat live;
punish the vile traytor with life; but let me die; let me bow down my
head to the block, and receive without fear the friendly blow, which, I
verily believe, will only separate the soul from its body and miseries
together."[257] In his letter to Lord Chesterfield the Oxonian repeats
his offer of undergoing the punishment instead of the decrepid old man:
"This I will be bold to say," he adds: "I will not disgrace your
patronage by want of intrepidity in the hour of death, and that all the
devils in Milton, with all the ghastly ghosts of Scotsmen that fell at
Culloden, if they could be conjured there, should never move me to say,
coming upon the scaffold, 'Sir, this is terrible.'"[258] To Mr. Pelham
he declared, that "the post that he wanted was not of the same nature
with other Court preferments, for which there is generally a great
number of competitors, but may be enjoyed without a rival."
The observations which Lord Lovat made upon this well-meant but absurd
proposal, show his natural shrewdness, or his disbelief in all that is
good and generous. "This," he exclaimed, on being told of these
remarkable letters, "is an extraordinary man indeed. I should like to
know what countryman he is, and whether the thing is fact. Perhaps it
may be only some _finesse_ in politics, to cast an odium on some
particular person. In short, Sir, I'm afraid the poor gentleman is weary
of living in this wicked world; in that case, the obligation is altered,
because a part of the benefit is intended for himself."
In his last days, Lovat avowed himself a Roman Catholic; but his known
duplicity caused even this profession of faith to be distrusted. It is
probable that like many men who have seen much of the world, and have
mingled with those of different persuasions, Lord Lovat attached but
little importance to different modes of faith. He was as unscrupulous in
his religious professions as in all other respects. Early in his career,
he thought it expedient to obtain the favour of the Pope's nuncio at
Paris by conforming to the Romish faith. He declared to the Duke of
Argyle and to Lord Leven that he could not get the Court of St. Germains
to listen to his projects until he had declared himself a papist. One
can scarcely term this venal conversion[259] an adoption of the
principles of any church. The outward symbols of his pretended
persuasion had, however, become dear to him, from habit: he carried
about his person a silver crucifix, which he often kissed. "Observe," he
said, "this crucifix! Did you ever see a better? How strongly the
passions are marked, how fine the expression is! We keep pictures of our
best friends, of our parents, and others, but why should we not keep a
picture of Him who has done more than all the world for us?" When asked,
"Of what particular sort of Catholic are you? A Jesuit?" He answered to
the nobleman who inquired, (and whose name was not known,) "No, no, my
Lord, I am a Jansenist;" he then avowed his intimacy with that body of
men, and assured the nobleman, that in _his_ sense of being a Roman
Catholic, he "was as far from being one as his Lordship, or as any other
nobleman in the House."
"This is my faith," he observed on another occasion, after affirming
that he had studied controversy for three years, and then turned Roman
Catholic; "but I have charity for all mankind, and I believe every
honest man bids fair for Heaven, let his persuasion be what it may; for
the mercies of the Almighty are great, and his ways past finding out."
The allusion to his funeral had something touching, coming from the old
Highland chieftain. Almost the solitary good trait in Lovat's character
was the fondness for his Highland home--a pride in his clan--a yearning
to the last for the mountains, the straths, the burns, now ravaged by
the despoiler, and red with the blood of the Frasers. "Bury me," he
said, "in my own tomb in the church of Kirk Hill; in former days, I had
made a codicil to my will, that all the pipers from John O'Groat's house
to Edinburgh should be invited to play at my funeral: that may not be
now--but still I am sure there will be some good old Highland women to
sing a coronach at my funeral; and there will be a crying and clapping
of hands--for I am one of the greatest of the Highland chieftains." The
circumstance which gave him the most uneasiness was the bill then
depending for destroying the ancient privileges and jurisdiction of the
Highland chiefs. "For my part," he exclaimed, when referring to the
measure, "I die a martyr to my country."
He became much attached to one of his warders, and the usual influence
which he seems to have possessed over every being with whom he came into
collision, attracted the regards of this man to him. "Go with me to the
scaffold," said Lovat--"and leave me not till you see this head cut off
the body. Tell my son, the Master of Lovat, with what tenderness I have
parted from you." "Do you think," he exclaimed, on the man's expressing
some sympathy with his approaching fate, "I am afraid of an axe? 'Tis a
debt we all owe, and what we must all pay; and do you not think it
better to go off so, than to linger with a fever, gout, or consumption?
Though my constitution is so good, I might have lived twenty years
longer had I not been brought hither."
During the week which elapsed between the warrant for his being brought
down to the Tower, and his death, although, says a gentleman who
attended him to the scaffold, "he had a great share of memory and
understanding, and an awful idea of religion and a future state, I never
could observe, in his gesture or speech, the least symptom of fear, or
indeed any symptoms of uneasiness."[260] "I die," was his own
expression, "as a Christian, and a Highland chieftain should do,--that
is, not in my bed." Throughout the whole of that solemn interval, the
certainty of his fate never dulled the remarkable vivacity of his
conversation, nor the gay courtesy of his manners. No man ever died less
consistently with his life. "It is impossible,"--such is the admission
of a writer who detests his crimes,--"not to admire the fearlessness
even of this monster in his last moments. But, in another view, it is
somewhat difficult to resist a laugh of scorn at his impudent project of
atoning for all the vices of a long and odious career, by going off with
a fine sentiment on his lips."[261]
On Thursday, the ninth of April, and the day appointed for his death,
Lord Lovat awoke about three in the morning, and then called for a glass
of wine and water, as was his custom. He took the greatest pains that
every outward arrangement should bear the marks of composure and
decency,--a care which may certainly incline one to fancy, that the
heroism of his last moments may have had effect, in part, for its aim,
and that, as Talleyrand said of Mirabeau, "he dramatized his death."
But, it must be remembered, that in those days, it was the custom and
the aim of the state prisoners to go to the scaffold gallantly; and thus
virtuous men and true penitents walked to their doom attired with the
precision of coxcombs. Lord Lovat, who had smoked his pipe merrily
during his imprisonment with those about him, and had heard the last
apprisal of his fate without emotion, was angry, when within a few hours
of death and judgment, that his wig was not so much powdered as usual.
"If he had had a suit of velvet embroidered, he would wear it," he said,
"on that occasion." He then conversed with his barber, whose father was
a Muggletonian, about the nature of the soul, adding with a smile, "I
hope to be in Heaven at one o'clock, or I should not be so merry now."
But, with all this loquacity, and display of what was, perhaps, in part,
the insensibility of extreme age, the "behaviour that was said to have
had neither dignity nor gravity"[262] in it at the trial, had lost the
buffoonish character which characterized it in the House of Lords.