Chapter 19

Whilst Lord Lovat, contrary to the advice of Madame la Roche, was deliberating whether he should not leave France, he was surprised, in the summer of 1714, by a visit from one of the principal gentlemen of his clan, Fraser of Castle Lader, son of Malcolm Fraser, of Culdelthel, a very considerable branch of the family of Lovat. This gentleman brought Lord Lovat a strong remonstrance from all his clan at his absence--an entreaty to him to return--a recommendation that he would join himself in an alliance with the Duke of Argyle, who was disposed to aid him; he added affectionate greetings from some of the principal gentry of his neighbourhood, and, among others, from John Forbes, of Culloden. This important ally was the father of the justly celebrated Duncan Forbes, afterwards Lord President. These messages decided Lord Lovat. After some indecision he left Saumur, and being allowed by his parole to travel to any place in France, he went on the twelfth of August, 1714, to Rouen, under pretence of paying a visit there. From Rouen he proceeded to Dieppe, but finding no vessel there, he travelled along the coast of Normandy, and from thence to Boulogne. From that port he sailed in a small smack, in a rough sea, during the night, and landed at Dover, November the eleventh, 1714.

He met his kinsman, Alexander Fraser, on the quay at Dover, and with him proceeded to London. His former friend, the Duke of Argyle, was now dead; but alliances, as well as antipathies, are hereditary in Scotland, and John, Duke of Argyle, was well disposed to assist one whose family had been anciently connected with his own. Besides, the state of public affairs was now totally changed since Lord Lovat had left England, and it was incumbent upon the Government to avail themselves of any tool which they might require for certain ends and undertakings.

Queen Anne was now dead,--the last of the Stuart dynasty in this kingdom. Whatever were her failings and her weaknesses as a woman, she has left behind her the character of having loved her people; and she was endeared to them by her purely English birth, her homely virtue of economy, and her domestic unpretending qualities. Her reign had been one of mercy; no subject had suffered for treason during her rule: she had few relations with foreign powers; and when, in her opening speech to the Parliament, she expressed that her heart was "wholly English," she spoke her real sentiments, and described, in that simple touch the true character of her mind.

She was succeeded by a German Prince, who immediately showered marks of his royal favour upon the Whigs; whilst the Tories, who formed so large a party in the kingdom, were alienated from the Government by the manifest aversion to them which George the First rather aimed to evince than laboured to conceal.

The Jacobites differed in some measure from the Tories, inasmuch as the latter were generally well affected to the accession of the Hanoverian family, until disgusted by the choice of the new administration. Dissensions quickly rose to their height; and when the Government was attacked in the House of Commons by Sir William Wyndham, the unusual sounds, "the Tower! the Tower!" were heard once more amid the inflamed assembly.

The spirit of disaffection quickly spread throughout England; the very life-guards were compelled by an angry populace, when celebrating the anniversary of the Restoration of the Stuarts, to join in the cry of "High Church and Ormond!" Lord Bolingbroke had withdrawn to France--treasonable papers were discovered and intercepted on their way from Jacobite emissaries to Dr. Swift, tumults were raised in the city of London and in Westminster, and were punished with a severity to which the metropolis had been unaccustomed since the reign of James the Second. All these manifestations had their origin in one common source,--the deeply concerted schemes which were now nearly brought into maturity at the Court of St. Germains.

The following extract of a letter dated from Luneville, and taken from the Macpherson Papers, shows what was meditated abroad; it is in Schrader's hand.

(Translation.)

"Luneville, June 5th, 1714.

"It is likely the Chevalier St. George is preparing for some great design, which is kept very private. It was believed he would drink the waters of Plombière for three weeks, as is customary, and that he would come afterwards to pass fifteen days at Luneville; but he changed his measures; he did not continue to drink the waters, which he drank only for ten days, and came back to Luneville on Saturday last. He sets out to-morrow very early for Bar. Lord Galmoy went before him, and set out this morning. Lord Talmo, who came lately from France, is with him, and some say that the Duke of Berwick is incognito in this neighbourhood.

"The Chevalier appears pensive,--that, indeed, is his ordinary humour. Mr. Floyd, who has been these five days at the Court of his Royal Highness, told a mistress he has there, that when he leaves her now, he will take his leave of her perhaps for the last time:--in short, it is certain that everything here seems sufficiently to announce preparations for a journey. It is said, likewise, in private, that the Chevalier has had letters that the Queen is very ill. I have done everything I could to discover something of his designs. I supped last night with several of his attendants, thinking to learn something; but they avoid to explain themselves. They only say that the Chevalier did not find himself the better for drinking the waters; that he would now go to repose himself for some time at Bar, until he goes, the beginning of next month, to the Prince De Vandemont's, at Commercie, where their Royal Highnesses will come likewise. They say they do not know yet if they will remain in this country or not; that they will follow the destiny of the Chevalier, and that it is not known yet what it shall be."[194]

When Lord Lovat thus precipitately threw himself once more on the mercy of his country, he could not have been ignorant that the cabals which had long been carried on against the Hanoverian succession, were now shortly to break out in open rebellion; and it was, without doubt, in the hope of profiting in some measure during the confusion of the coming troubles, that he had hastened, at the risk of his life, to England.

He entrusted the secret of his arrival immediately to the Duke of Argyle, whom he met in London. That nobleman, one of the few disinterested men whose virtues might almost obtain the name of patriotism in those days, saw the danger which Lord Lovat would incur if he returned to Scotland. Sentence of death had been passed upon him; it might be acted upon by an adverse judge at any moment. He besought Lovat to remain in England until a remission of that sentence could be obtained; and for this purpose addresses to the Court for mercy were circulated for signature throughout the northern counties of Scotland.[195] To further the success of this scheme, Lord Lovat had recourse to his neighbour and early friend, John Forbes, laird of Culloden, whose after-services in the royal cause, and whose strict alliance of friendship with the Duke of Argyle, secured to him a considerable influence in that part of Scotland in which he resided.

"Much honoured and dear Sir,"--thus wrote Lord Lovat to the Laird,--"The real friendship that I know you have for my person and family makes me take the freedom to assure you of my kind service, and to entreat you to join with my other friends between Sky and Nesse, to sign the addresse which the Court requires, in order to give me my remission. Your cousin James, who has generously exposed himself to bring me out of chains, will inform you of all steps and circumstances of my affairs since he saw me. I wish, dear Sir, from my heart, you were here; I am confident you would speak to the Duke of Argyle and to the Earl of Isla, to let them know their own interest, and their reiterated promises to do for me. Perhaps they may have, sooner than they expect, a most serious occasion for my service. But it is needless to preach now that doctrine to them; they think themselves in ane infallible security; I wish they may not be mistaken. However, I think it's the interest of all who love this Government, betwixt Sky and Nesse, to see me at the head of my clan, ready to join them; so that I believe none of them will refuse to sign ane adresse to make me a Scotsman. I am perswaded, dear Sir, that you will be of good example to them on that head. But secrecy, above all, must be keept; without which all may go wrong. I hope you will be stirring for the Parliament, for I will not be reconciled to you if you let Prestonall outvote you. Brigadier Grant, to whom I am infinitely obliged, has written to Foyers to give you his vote, and he is ane ungrat villian if he refuses him. [If] I was at home, the little pitiful barons of the Aird durst not refuse you. But I am hopefull that the news of my going to Brittain will hinder Prestonall to go north; for I may come to meet him when he lest thinks of me. I am very impatient to see you, and to assure you most sincerely how much I am, with love and respect, Right Honourable, your most obedient and most humble servant,

"LOVAT."

"The 24th of Nov. 1714."

The nature of the address to which this letter refers was not only an appeal to the King in behalf of Lord Lovat, but also an engagement, on the part of his friends, to answer for the loyalty of Lord Lovat, in any sum required. It is remarkable that when James Fraser, the kinsman of Lovat, arrived in the county of Inverness, and declared the purpose of his journey, the lairds who were well-affected to the nobility, joined in giving their subscriptions; and the Earl of Sutherland, the Lord Strathallan, and the nobility of the counties of Ross and Sutherland, signed them also. The Duke of Montrose, however, boldly opposed them, and described Lord Lovat as a man unworthy of the King's confidence.[196]

A year, however, had elapsed, whilst Lovat was hanging about the Court, before the address was brought to London by Lord Isla, brother of the Duke of Argyle, and afterwards Archibald, Duke of Argyle. The address was presented on Sunday, the twenty-fourth of July, 1715. "The Earl of Orkney," says Lord Lovat, "who was the lord in waiting, held out his hand to receive them from the King, according to custom. The King, however, drew them back, folded them up, and, as if he had been pre-advised of their contents, put them into his pocket."[197] And with this sentence, denoting that the crisis of his affairs was at hand, end the memoirs which Lord Lovat either wrote or dictated to others, of the early portion of his life.

Meantime, the Earl of Stair, the English ambassador at Paris, had discovered the embryo scheme of invasion, and had communicated it to the British Court, although, unhappily for both parties, not in sufficient time to damp the hopes of the unfortunate Jacobites. On the sixth of September, 1715, the Earl of Mar set up his standard at Braemar. Consistent with the usual fatality attending every attempt of the Stuarts, this event was preceded only five days by the death of Louis the Fourteenth--the only real friend of the excluded family; but the Jacobites had now proceeded too far to recede.[198]

Lord Lovat resolved, however, to profit in the general disasters. His influence among his clansmen was obvious: whether for good or, in some instances, for evil, there is much to admire in the resolute adherence of those faithful mountaineers, who had resisted the assumption of a stranger, and invited back to their hills the long-absent and ruined chief, whom they regarded as their own.

Lord Lovat now found means to represent to the English Government, that if he could have a passport to go into the Highlands, he might be instrumental in quelling the rebellion. The Ministry, in their perplexities, availed themselves of his aid, and a pass was granted to him, under the name of Captain Brown.

He once more set out for his own country, and reached Edinburgh in safety, attended only by his kinsman, Major Fraser. From Edinburgh he resolved to proceed in a ship--when he could procure one, for the country was all in commotion. Meantime he took up his abode, still maintaining his disguise, in the Grass Market.

His real name was soon discovered, and information was given to the Lord Justice Clerk, who granted a warrant for his apprehension, as a person "outlawed and intercommuned;" and to prevent any difficulty in apprehending the prisoner, a party of the town guard was ordered to escort the peace officers to the lodgings of Lord Lovat.

The officer who had the command of the town guard happened, however, to be acquainted with Lovat, and he interposed his aid on this occasion. He listened to the account which Lovat gave of the business which had brought him to Edinburgh. The Provost was next gained over to the opinion, that it would be wrong to oppose any obstruction to one who had his Majesty's passport: he ordered Lord Lovat to be set at liberty; and in order to give some colour of justice to this act, he declared that the information must have been wrong, it being laid against Captain Fraser,--whereas, the person taken appeared to be Captain Brown.

Lovat was once more in safety: he changed his lodgings, however; and, as soon as possible, set sail for Inverness. Again danger, in another form, retarded his arrival among his clan. A storm arose, the ship was obliged to put into the nearest harbour, and Lord Lovat was driven into Fraserburgh, which happened to be within a few miles of the abode of his old enemy and rival Lord Saltoun.

Mr. Forbes, one of the Culloden family, was now fortunately for Lord Lovat, with him on his Majesty's service. After some consultation together, he and Lovat decided to make themselves known to Mr. Baillie, town-clerk of Fraserburgh: they did so, were kindly received, and provided with horses to convey them to Culloden House, the seat of the future Lord President of Scotland, Duncan Forbes. Here they arrived in November, after incurring great risks from the Jacobite troops, who were patroling in parties over the country.[199]

Culloden House, famed in history, was inhabited by a race whose views, conduct, and personal character present a singular contrast, with those of Lord Lovat, or with those of other adventurers in political life. The head of the family was, at the period of the first insurrection, John Forbes, a worthy representative of an honourable, consistent, and spirited family. The younger brother of John Forbes was the celebrated Duncan Forbes, a man whose toleration of Lord Lovat, not to say countenance of that compound of violence and duplicity, seems to be the only incomprehensible portion of his lofty and beautiful character.

"Duncan Forbes was born," observes a modern writer, "of parents who transmitted their estate to his elder brother, and to all their children an hereditary aversion to the house of Stuart, which they appear to have resisted from the very commencement of the civil wars, and upon the true grounds on which that resistance ought to have been made."[200] By a singular fortune the hereditary estates of Culloden and Ferintosh had been ravaged, the year after the Revolution, by the soldiers of Buchan and Cannon, on account of the Jacobite principles of the owners. A liberal compensation was made in the form of a perpetual grant of a liberty to distil into spirits the grain of the Barony of Ferintosh,--a name which has become almost as famous as that of Culloden. It was the subsequent fate of Culloden to witness on its Moors the total destruction of that cause which its owners had so long resisted and deprecated.

Duncan Forbes, who, during a course of many years, was bound by an inexplicable alliance with Lovat, was at this period about thirty years of age. He had already attained the highest reputation for eloquence, assiduity, and learning at the Scottish bar, and during his frequent opportunities for display before the House of Lords. But it was his personal character, during a period of vacillating principles, and almost of disturbed national reason, which obtained that singular and benignant influence over his fellow-countrymen for which the life of Duncan Forbes is far more remarkable, far more admirable, than for the exercise of his brilliant and varied talents. He had "raised himself," observes the same discriminating commentator on his life and correspondence, "to the high station which he afterwards held by the unassisted excellence of a noble character, by the force of which he had previously won and adorned all the subordinate gradations of office."[201] He adorned this unenvied and unsullied pinnacle of fame by virtues of which the record is ennobling to the mind. "He is," observes another writer, "in every situation, so full of honour, of gentleness, of kindness, and intrepidity, that we doubt if there be any one public man in this part of the empire, or of the age that is gone, whose qualities ought to be so strongly recommended to the contemplation of all those who wish to serve their country."

It was in such society as this that Lord Lovat, by a rare fortune, was brought, after his long and disgraceful exile. It was to such a home of virtue, of intelligence, of the purest and best affections, that he was introduced after a long course of contamination in the lowest scenes of French corruption, which had succeeded an equally demoralising initiation into the less graceful vices of the Court of George the First. The inestimable privilege came too late in one sense. Lord Lovat had gained nothing but wariness by the lapse of years; but the benefit to his worldly condition was considerable.

From this time until a few years before the insurrection of 1745, Lord Lovat may be regarded as a jealous partisan of the house of Hanover. No doubt, a general survey of the state of society in Scotland would, independent of his own personal views, have satisfied him that in such a course was the only chance of permanent safety. The wretchedness of the state of things at that period, can scarcely be adequately comprehended by those who live in times when liberty of opinion is universally an understood condition of civilized intercourse.

It is difficult for any person who lives now to carry himself back, by reading or conversation, into the prospects or feelings of the people of Scotland about a hundred years ago. The religious persecutions of the Stuarts had given a darker hue to the old austerity of their Calvinism. The expectation of change constantly held out by that family divided the nation into two parties, differing on a point which necessarily made each of them rebels in the eyes of the other; and thus the whole kingdom was racked by jealousies, heart-burnings, and suspicions. The removal, by the Union, of all the patronage and show of royalty, spread a gloom and discontent, not only over the lower, but over the higher ranks. The commencement of a strict system of general taxation was new, while the miserable poverty of the country rendered it unproductive and unpopular. The great families still lorded it over their dependants, and exercised legal jurisdiction within their own domains; by which the general police of the kingdom was crippled, and the grossest legal oppression practised. The remedy adopted for all these evils, which was to abate nothing and to enforce everything under the direction of English counsels or of English men, completed the national wretchedness, and infused its bitterest ingredient into the brim full cup.

The events of the year 1715 present but a feeble exemplification of the truth of this description compared with the annals of 1745, for the first Rebellion was, happily, soon closed.

Lord Lovat did not hesitate long on which side he should enlist himself; 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]