Chapter 21

SIMON LORD FRASER OF LOVAT, HIS SON.

Who, likewise, having undergone many and great vicissitudes of good and bad fortune, through the malice of his enemies, he, in the end, at the head of his clan, forced his way to his paternal inheritance with his sword in his hand, and relieved his kindred and followers from oppression and slavery; and both at home and in foreign countries, by his eminent actions in the war and the state, he has acquired great honours and reputation.

Hic tegit ossa lapis Simonis fortis in armis, Restituit pressum nam genus ille suum: Hoc marmor posuit cari genitoris honori, In genus afflictum par erat ejus amor.

Sir Robert Munro, who was killed at the battle of Falkirk, being on a visit to Lord Lovat, went with his host to see this monument. "Simon," said the brave and free-spoken Scotsman, "how the devil came you to put up such boasting romantic stuff?" "The monument and inscription," replied Lovat, "are chiefly for the Frasers, who must believe whatever I require, their chief, of them, and then posterity will think it as true as the Gospel." Yet he did not scruple, when it suited his purpose, to designate his clansmen, the lairds around him, as "the little pitiful barons of the Aird;"--this was, however, when writing to his friends of opposite politics to the Frasers, generally to Duncan Forbes.

The devotion of his unfortunate adherents can hardly be conceived in the present day. In the early part of his career, before his rapacity, his licentiousness, and falsehood were fully known, one may imagine a fearless and ardent young leader, of known bravery, engaging the passions even of the most wary among his followers in his personal quarrels: but it is wonderful how, when the character of the man stood revealed before them, any could be found to lend their aid to deeds which had not the colour of justice, nor even the pretence of a generous ardour, to recommend them to the brave. But Lovat was not the only melancholy instance in which that extraordinary feature in the Highland character, loyalty to a chieftain, was employed in aiding the darkest treachery, and in deeds of violence and cruelty.

For many years, Lovat revelled in the indulgence of the fiercest passions; but he paid in time the usual penalty of guilt. His name came to be a bye-word. Every act of violence, done in the darkness of night,--the oppressions of the helpless, the corruption of the innocent,--every plot which was based upon the lowest principles, were attributed to him. His vengeance was such, that while the public knew the hand that dealt out destruction, they dared not to name the man. The hated word was whispered by the hearth; it was muttered with curses in the hovel; but the voice which breathed it was hushed when the band of numerous retainers, swift to execute the will of the feudal tyrant, was remembered. His power, thus tremblingly acknowledged, was fearful; his wrath, never was appeased except by the ruin of those who had offended him. With all this, the manners of Lord Lovat were courteous, and, for the times, polished; whilst beneath that superficial varnish lay the coarsest thoughts, the most degrading tastes. His address must have been consummate; and to that charm of manner may be ascribed the wonderful ascendancy which he acquired even over the respectable part of the community.

Something of his ready humour was displayed soon after Lord Lovat's restoration to his title, in his rencontre with his early friend, Lord Mungo Murray, in the streets of Edinburgh. Lord Mungo had sworn to avenge the wrongs and insults inflicted by Lord Lovat on himself and Lord Saltoun, whenever he had an opportunity. Seeing Lord Lovat approaching, he drew his sword and made towards him as fast as he could. Lord Lovat, being near-sighted, did not perceive him, but was apprised of his danger by a friend who was walking with him; upon which his Lordship also drew, and prepared for his defence. Lord Mungo, seeing this, thought proper to decline the engagement, and wheeled round in order to retire. The people crowded about the parties, and somewhat impeded Lord Mungo's retreat; upon which Lord Lovat called out to the people, "Pray, gentlemen, make room for Lord Mungo Murray," Lord Mungo slank away, and the affair ended without bloodshed.

An affair with the profligate Duke of Wharton, was very near ending more fatally. Lord Lovat, during the year 1724, happening to be in London, mingled there in the fashionable society for which his long residence in France had, in some measure, qualified him. In the course of his different amusements, he encountered one evening, at the Haymarket, the beautiful Doña Eleanora Sperria, a Spanish lady who had visited England under the character of the Ambassador's niece. His attentions to this lady, and his admiration of her attractions, were observed by the jealous eye of the Duke of Wharton, who immediately sent him a challenge. Lord Lovat accepted it, replying, that "none of the family of Lovat were ever cowards," and appointing to meet the Duke with sword and pistol. The encounter took place in Hyde-park. They first fired at each other, and then had recourse to the usual weapon, the sword. Lovat was unlucky enough to fall over the stump of a tree, and was disarmed by Wharton, who gave him his life, and what was in those days perhaps even still more generous, never boasted of the affair until some years afterwards.

Lovat lived, however, chiefly in Scotland. Four children were born to writhe under his sway; the eldest, Simon, the Master of Lovat, gentle, sincere, of promising abilities, and upright in conduct, suffered early and late from the jealousy of his father, who could not comprehend his mild virtues. This unfortunate young man was treated with the utmost harshness by Lord Lovat, who kept him in slavish subjection to his own imperious will, and treated him as if he had been the offspring of some low-born dependant, instead of his heir. Still, those who were well-wishers to the Lovat family, built their hopes upon the virtues of the young Master of Lovat, and they were not deceived. Although forced by his father to quit the University of St. Andrews, where he was studying in 1745, and to enter into the Rebellion, he retrieved that early act by a subsequent respectability of life, and by long and faithful services.

But there was another victim still more to be pitied, and over whose destiny the vices of Lord Lovat exercised a still more fatal sway than on those of his son. The story of Primrose Campbell is, perhaps, the saddest among this catalogue of crimes and calamities.

She was the daughter of John Campbell, of Mamore, and the sister of John Duke of Argyle, the friend and patron of Duncan Forbes; and she had been, by Lovat's introduction, for some time a companion of his first wife.[215] Lord Lovat, about the year 1732, became a widower. He then cast his eyes upon the ill-fated Miss Campbell, and sought her in marriage. The match was of great importance to him, on account of the family connection; and Lord Lovat had reason to believe, that whatever the young lady might think of it, her friends were not opposed to the union. She was staying with her sister, Lady Roseberry, when Lovat proffered his odious addresses. She to whom they were addressed, knew him well: for she entertained the utmost abhorrence of her suitor, and repeatedly rejected his proposals. At last, he gained her consent to the union which he sought, by the following stratagem. Miss Campbell, while residing still with her sister in the country, received a letter, written apparently by her mother, and, beseeching her immediate attendance at a particular house in Edinburgh, in which she lay at the point of death. The young lady instantly set out, and reached the appointed place: here, instead of beholding her mother, she was received by the hated and dreaded Lovat.[216] She was constrained to listen to his proffers of marriage; but she still firmly refused her assent. Upon this, Lord Lovat told the unhappy creature that the house to which she had been brought was one in which no respectable woman ought ever to enter;--and he threatened to blast her character upon her continued refusal to become his wife. Distracted, intimidated by a confinement of several days, the young lady finally consented. She was married to the tyrant, who conveyed her to one of his castles in the North, probably to Downie, the scene of his previous crimes. Here she was secluded in a lonely tower, and treated with the utmost barbarity, probably because she could neither conceal nor conquer her disgust to the husband of her forced acceptance. Yet outward appearances were preserved: a lady, the intimate friend of her youth, was advised to visit, as if by accident, the unhappy Lady Lovat, in order to ascertain the truth of the reports which prevailed of Lord Lovat's cruelty. The visitor was received by Lovat with extravagant expressions of welcome, and many assurances of the pleasure which it would afford Lady Lovat to see her. His Lordship then retired, and hastening to his wife, who was secluded without even tolerable clothes, and almost in a state of starvation, placed a costly dress before her, and desired her to attire herself, and to appear before her friend. His commands were obeyed; he watched his prisoner and her visitor so closely, that no information could be conveyed of the unhappiness of the one, or of the intentions of the other.[217] This outrageous treatment, which Lord Lovat is reported, also, to have exercised over his first wife, went on for some time. Lady Lovat was daily locked up in a room by herself, a scanty supply of food being sent her, which she was obliged to devour in silence. The monotony of her hapless solitude was only broken by rare visits from his Lordship. Under these circumstances, she bore a son, who was named Archibald Campbell Fraser, and who eventually succeeded to the title. In after years, when he frowned at any contradiction that she gave him, Lady Lovat used to exclaim, "Oh, boy! Dinna look that gate--ye look so like your father." These words spoke volumes.

The character of the lady whose best years were thus blighted by cruelty, and who was condemned through a long life to bear the name of her infamous husband, was one peculiarly Scotch. Homely in her habits, and possessing little refinement of manner, she had the kindest heart, the most generous and self-denying nature that ever gladdened a house, or bore up a woman's weakness under oppression. The eldest son of Lord Lovat, Simon, was a sickly child. His father, who was very anxious to have him to his house, placed him under Lady Lovat's charge; and, whenever he went to the Highlands, left her with this pleasing intimation, "that if he found either of the boys dead on his return, he would shoot her through the head." Partly through fear, and partly from the goodness and rectitude of her mind, Lady Lovat devoted her attentions so entirely to the care of the delicate and motherless boy, that she saved his life, and won his filial reverence and affection by her attention. He loved her as a real parent. The skill in nursing and in the practical part of medicine thus acquired, was never lost; and Lady Lovat was noted ever after, among those who knew her, as the "old lady of the faculty."

Family archives, it is said, reveal a tissue of almost unprecedented acts of cruelty towards this excellent lady. They were borne with the same spirit that in all her life guided her conduct,--a strict dependance upon Providence. She regarded her calamities as trials, or tests, sent from Heaven, and received them with meek submission. In after years, during the peaceful decline of her honoured life, when a house near her residence in Blackfriars Wynd, Edinburgh, took fire, she sat calmly knitting a stocking, and watching, occasionally, the progress of the flames. The magistrates and ministers came, in vain, to entreat her to leave her house in a sedan; she refused, saying, that if her hour was come, it was in vain for her to think of eluding her fate: if it were not come, she was safe where she was. At length she permitted the people around her to fling wet blankets over the house, by which it was protected from the sparks.

She seems, however, to have made considerable exertions to rid herself from an unholy bond with her husband. Like many other Scottish ladies of quality, in those days, her education had been limited; and it was not until late in life that she acquired the art of writing, which she then learned by herself without a master. She never attained the more difficult process of spelling accurately.

She now, however, contrived to make herself understood by her friends in this her dire distress: and to acquaint them with her situation and injuries, by rolling a letter up in a clue of yarn, and dropping it out of her window to a confidential person below. Her family then interfered, and the wretched lady was released, by a legal separation, from her miseries. She retired to the house of her sister, and eventually to Edinburgh. When, in after times, her grand nephews and nieces crowded around her, she would talk to them of these days of sorrow. "Listen, bairns," she was known to observe, "the events of my life would make a good novel; but they have been of sae strange a nature, that I'm sure naebody wad believe them."[218]

But domestic tyranny was a sphere of far too limited a scope for Lord Lovat: his main object was to make himself absolute over that territory of which he was the feudal chieftain; to bear down everything before him, either by the arts of cunning, or through intimidation. Some instances, singular, as giving some insight into the state of society in the Highlands at that period, have been recorded.[219] Very few years after the restitution of his family honours had elapsed, before he happened to have some misunderstanding with one of the Dowager Lady Lovat's agents, a Mr. Robertson, whom her Ladyship had appointed as receiver of her rents. One night, during the year 1719, a number of persons, armed and disguised, were seen in the dead of night, very busy among Mr. Robertson's barns and outhouses. That night, the whole of his stacks of corn and hay were set on fire and entirely consumed. Lord Lovat was suspected of being the instigator of this destruction; yet such was the dread of his power, that Mr. Robertson chose rather to submit to the loss in silence than to prosecute, or even to name, the destroyer.

A worse outrage was perpetrated against Fraser of Phopachy, a gentleman of learning and character, and one who had befriended Lord Lovat in all his troubles, and had refused to join with Fraserdale in the Rebellion of 1715. Mr. Fraser had the charge of Lord Lovat's domestic affairs, more especially of his law contests, both in Edinburgh and in London. When accounts were balanced between Lord Lovat and Mr. Fraser, it was found that a considerable sum was due to the latter. Among his other peculiarities Lord Lovat had a great objection to pay his debts. As usual, he insulted Fraser, and even threatened him with a suit. Mr. Fraser, knowing well the man with whom he had to deal, submitted the affair to arbitration. A Mr. Cuthbert of Castlehill was chosen on the part of his Lordship; the result was, a decision that a very considerable sum was due to Fraser. Lord Lovat was violently enraged at this, and declared that Castlehill had broken his trust. Not many days afterwards, Castlehill Park, near Inverness, was invaded by a party of Highlanders, armed and disguised; the fences and enclosures were broken down, and a hundred of his best milch-cows killed. Again the finger of public opinion pointed at Lovat, but pointed in silence, as the author of this wicked attack. None dared to name him; all dreaded a summary vengeance: his crimes were detailed with a shudder of horror and disgust; their author was not mentioned.

Lord Lovat, moreover, instantly commenced a law-suit against Fraser, in order to set aside the arbitration. This process, which lasted during the lifetime of the victim, was scarcely begun when one night Fraser's seat at Phopachy, which, unhappily, was near the den of horrors, Castle Downie, was beset by Highlanders, armed and disguised, who broke into the house and inquired for Mr. Fraser. He was, luckily, abroad. The daughters of the unfortunate gentleman were, however, in the house; they were bound to the bed-posts and gagged; and, doubtless, the whole premises would have been pillaged or destroyed, had not a female servant snatched a dirk from the hands of one of the ruffians; and although wounded, defended herself, while by her shrieks she roused the servants and neighbours. The villains fled, all save two, who were taken, and who, after a desperate resistance, were carried off to the gaol at Inverness; they were afterwards tried, and capitally convicted of housebreaking, or _hamesaken_, as it is called in Scotland, and eventually hung. It appeared, from the confession of one of these men to a clergyman at Inverness, that the same head which planned the destruction of Mr. Robertson's stacks had contrived this outrage, and had even determined on the murder of his former friend, Mr. Fraser. But the hour was now at hand in which retribution for these crimes was to be signally visited upon this disgrace to his species.[220]

One more sufferer under his vile designs must be recorded, the unhappy Lady Grange. In that story which has been related of her fate, and which might, indeed, furnish a theme for romance, she is said to have ever alluded to Lord Lovat as the remorseless contriver of that scheme which doomed her to sufferings far worse than death, and to years of imbecility and wanderings.[221] The subtlety of Lord Lovat equalled his fierceness; it is not often that such qualities are combined in such fearful perfection. He could stoop to the smallest attentions to gain an influence or promote an alliance: a tradition is even believed of his going to the dancing-school with two young ladies, and buying them _sweeties_, in order to conciliate the favour of their father, Lord Alva.

His habitual cunning and management were manifested in his discipline of his clan. It was his chief aim to impress upon the minds of his vassals that his authority among them was absolute, and that no power on earth could absolve them from it; that they had no right to inquire into the merits or justifiableness of the action they were ordered to engage in; his will ought to be their law, his resentment a sufficient reason for taking his part in a quarrel, whether it were right or wrong.

One can hardly conceive that it could be requisite for the Frasers to give any fresh proof of their obedience and fealty; yet it seems to have required a continual effort on the part of Lord Lovat to establish his authority and to keep up his dignity among the Frasers. The reason assigned for this is, that though they were his vassals, tenants, and dependants, yet they must be brought to acknowledge his sovereignty; otherwise, when on some emergency he might require their assistance, they might assume their natural right of independence, and refuse to rise. It was Lord Lovat's policy, therefore, to discourage all disposition in his clansmen to enter trade or to go to sea and seek their fortunes abroad, lest they should both shake off their dependence on him, and also, by emigrating, diminish the broad and pompous retinue with which he chose to appear on all occasions. It was therefore his endeavour to check industry, to oppose improvement, to preach up the heroism of his ancestors, who never stooped to the meannesses of commerce, but made themselves famous by martial deeds. "Never," thus argued the chieftain, "had those brave men enervated their bodies and debased their minds by labours fit only for beasts or stupid drudges. Should not the generous blood which flowed in their veins still animate the brave Frasers to deeds of heroism?"[222]

Notwithstanding all these exalted sentiments, the chief, who was set upon this pinnacle of power, hesitated not to retain a hired assassin for the purpose of executing any of his dark projects. Donald Gramoach, a notorious robber, was long in the employ of Lovat, who lavished large sums upon him. At length, in the year 1742, this man was apprehended, lodged in Dingwall Gaol; and being convicted of robbery, was sentenced to be hanged. Lord Lovat immediately despatched a body of his Highlanders to rescue the prisoner; but the magistrates were aware of his intentions; the prison was doubly guarded, and the culprit met with his due punishment.

Lord Lovat had long thrown off the mask of courtesy, and had laid aside the arts of fawning to which he had had recourse before his claims to the honours and estates had been fully acknowledged. His tenants now felt the iron rule of a merciless and necessitous master; for Lord Lovat's expenditure far exceeded his means and revenue. He raised his rents, and many of the farmers were forced to quit their farms; but his _vassals by tenure_ were even more ruinously oppressed by suits of law, compelling them to make out their titles to their estates; if they failed in so doing, he insisted on forfeiture or escheate; and, in some instances, these suits were so expensive that it was almost wiser to relinquish an estate, than to be plundered in long and anxious processes.

At last, to prevent their utter ruin, the gentlemen who held lands under Lord Lovat determined upon resistance; after twenty-seven years of bondage they resolved to free themselves. They met together, and unanimously resolved to unite their arms, and to deliver themselves by their swords; to this extremity were reduced these brave and devoted adherents, who had blindly rushed into every crime and every danger at the command of their ungrateful chieftain. Their resolution alarmed the tyrant; he ordered the suits against his vassals to be stopped, and excused, as well as he could, and with his usual odious courtesy, the severities into which he had been led. He was playing a desperate game; and the adherence of these unhappy dependants was soon to be put to the test.

His oppression of his stewards and agents was consistent with the rest of his conduct. They could rarely induce him to settle his accounts; and if they ventured to ask for sums due to them, he threatened them with actions at law. He was all powerful, and they were forced to submit. His inferior servants were treated even still more oppressively. If they wished to leave his Lordship's service, or asked for their wages, he alleged some crime against them, which he always found sufficient witnesses to prove. They were then sent off to the cave of Beauly, a dismal retreat, about a mile from his castle, where they were confined until they were reduced to submission. That such enormities should have been tolerated in a land of liberty, seems almost incredible; but the slavery of the clans, the poverty and ignorance of the people, the vast power and influence of the chief, account, in some measure, for this degrading bondage on the one hand, this absolute monarchy on the other.[223]

This long-endured course of tyranny had not tended to humble the heart of him who indulged in such an immoderate exercise of power. The ambition of Lord Lovat, always of a low and personal nature, increased with years. He watched the state of public affairs, and built upon their threatening character a scheme by which he might, as he afterwards said, "be in a condition of humbling his neighbours."