Chapter 22

His allegiance was henceforth given to the Jacobites, and his fidelity, if such a word could ever be used as applied to him, seems actually to have lasted two years,--that is from 1717 to 1719, when a Spanish invasion was undertaken in favour of the Pretender. To that Lord Lovat promised to lend his aid, and wrote to Lord Seaforth, promising to join him. But the invasion was then defeated, and Lovat continued to enjoy royal favour at home. On this occasion the letter which Lord Lovat had written to Lord Seaforth, was shown to Chisholm of Knoebsford before it was delivered, and an affidavit of its contents was sent up to Court. Upon Lord Lovat becoming acquainted with this, he immediately got himself introduced at Court, possibly with a view to deceiving the public mind. Lady Seaforth having asked some favour from him, he refused to grant it, unless she would return that letter, which had been addressed to her son. With his usual cunning he had omitted to sign the letter, which he thought could not therefore be fixed upon him. Upon receiving it back, Lovat showed it to a friend, who remarked that there was enough in it to condemn thirty lords. He immediately threw it into the fire.

During many years of iniquity, Lord Lovat had preserved, to all appearance, the good will of Duncan Forbes. That great lawyer had been Lovat's legal advocate during the long and expensive suits for the establishment of his claims, and had generously refused all fees or remuneration for his exertions. The letters addressed by Lovat to him breathe the utmost regard, and speak an intimacy which, as Sir Walter Scott observes, "is less wonderful when we consider that Duncan Forbes could endure the society of the infamous Charteris."[224] Lovat's expressions of regard were frequently written in French. "Mon aimable General:" he writes to Mr. John Forbes, also, the President's elder brother.--"My dear Culloden." "Your affectionate friend, and most obedient and most humble servant."

To the President, whom he always addressed with some allusion to his brief military service,--"My dear General." "Your own Lovat." In 1716 such professions as these are made to Mr. John Forbes.

"My dearest Provost (we must give you your title, since it is to last but short), my dear General's letter and yours are terrible; but I was long ere now prepared for all that could happen to me on your illustrious brother's account: I'll stand by him to the last; and if I fall, as I do not doubt but I will, I'll receive the blow without regret. But all I can tell you is this, that we are very like to see a troublesome world, and my Generall and you will be yet useful; and I am ready to be with you to the last drop, for I am yours eternally, Lovat." His frequent style to the President was thus,--"The most faithfull and affectionat of your slaves." It is indeed evident, in almost every letter, what real obligations Lovat received from both Culloden and his brother; and how strenuously they supported his claim against Fraserdale.[225]

At the hospitable house of Culloden he was a frequent guest,--"a house, or castle," says the author of "Letters from the North," written previous to the year 1730, "belonging to a gentleman whose hospitality knows no bounds. It is the custom of that house, at the first visit or introduction, to take up war freedom, by cracking his nut, as he terms it; that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds a pint, filled with champagne, or such other sort of wine as you shall chuse. You may guess, by the introduction, of the contents of the volume. Few go away sober at any time; and for the greatest part of his guests, in the conclusion, they cannot go at all."

"This he partly brings about artfully, by proposing, after the public healths (which always imply bumpers), such private ones as he knows will pique the interest or inclination of each particular person of the company, whose turn it is to take the lead, to begin it in a brimmer; and he himself being always cheerful, and sometimes saying good things, his guests soon lose their guard, and then--I need say no more."[226]

In this hospitable house, a strange contrast to the penuriousness and despotic management of Castle Downie, Lord Lovat was on the most intimate footing. His professions of friendship to the laird were unceasing. "I dare freely say," he observes in one of his characteristic letters, "that there is not a Forbes alive wishes your personal health and prosperity more than I do, affectionate and sincerely; and I should be a very ungrateful man if it was otherways, for no man gave me more proofs of love and friendship at home and abroad than John Forbes of Colodin did.

"As to carrying your lime to Lovat, I shall do more in it than if it was for my own use. I shall give the most pressing orders to my officers to send in my tenants' horses; and to show them the zeal and desire that I have to serve you, I shall send my own labouring horses to carry it, with as much pleasure as if it was to build a house in Castle Downie."

Even his wife and his "bearns" are "Colodin's faithful slaves--" "I'll never see a laird of Culodin I love so much," he declares in another letter;--in which, also, he reminds Mr. Forbes of a promise that he "will do him the honour, since he cannot himself at this time be present, to hold up his forthcoming child to receive the holy water of baptisme, and make it a better Christian than the father. I expect this mark of friendship from my dear John Forbes of Culodin."[227]

Yet all these professions were wholly forgotten, when Lord Lovat, being fairly established in his honours, no longer deemed the friendship of the Forbes family necessary to him. An occasion then occurred, in which Mr. Forbes's "grateful slave" showed the caprice inherent in his nature. Forbes of Culloden had long been the representative of Inverness, chiefly through the interest of Lord Lovat; but when Sir William Grant came forward to oppose the return of Forbes, to the dismay of that gentleman, Lord Lovat turned round, and, upon the plea of consanguinity, used his interest in favour of the new candidate. The disappointment resulting from this defeat is said to have preyed upon the spirits of the worthy Laird of Culloden, and to have caused his death.[228]

The decline of this alliance between the Forbes family and Lord Lovat, was the prelude to greater changes.

In order to repress the local disturbances in the Highlands, Government had adopted a remedy, well termed by Sir Walter Scott, "of a doubtful and dangerous character." This was the raising of a number of independent companies among the Highlanders, to be commanded by chieftains, and officered by their sons, by tackmen, or by _Dnihne_ vassals. At the period when those great military roads were formed in the Highlands between the year 1715 and 1745, these companies were better calculated, it was supposed, to maintain the repose of a country with which they were well acquainted, than regular troops. But the experiment did not succeed. The Highland companies, known by the famous name of the Black Watch, traversed the country, it is true, night and day, and tracked its inmost recesses; they knew the most dangerous characters; they were supposed to suppress all internal disorders. But they were Highlanders. Whilst they looked leniently upon robberies and outrages to which they had been familiarized from their youth, they revived in their countrymen the military spirit which the late Act for disarming the clans had subdued. Upon their removal from the Highlands, and their exportation to Flanders, the mischief became apparent; and no regular force being sent to the Highlands in their stead, those chieftains who were favourable to the exiled family, found it easy to turn the restless temper and martial habits of their clansmen to their own purposes.

Lord Lovat was one of those who thus acted. The Ministry, irritated by his patronage of Sir William Grant's interests, in preference to those of Forbes, at the election for Inverness, suddenly deprived him of his pension in 1739, and also of the command of the free company of Highlanders. This was a rash proceeding, and contrary to the advice of President Forbes. Lord Lovat, who had caused his clansmen to enter his regiment by rotation, and had thus, without suspicion, been training his clan to the use of arms, soon showed how dangerous a weapon had been placed in his hand, and at how critical a period he had been incensed to turn it against Government.

He had long been suspected. Even in 1737, information had been given of his buying up muskets, broadswords, and targets, in numbers. When challenged to defend himself from the imputation of Jacobitism by a friend, he insisted upon the services he had done in 1715 as a reason why he should for ever be free from the imputation of disloyalty; and he continued to play the same subtle part, and to pretend indifference to all fresh enterprises, to his friends at Culloden, as that which he had always affected.

"Everybody expects we shall have a war very soon," he writes to his friend John Forbes in 1729--"which I am not fond of; for being now growne old, I desire and wish to live in peace with all mankind, except some damned Presbyterian ministers who dayly plague me."[229] Yet, even then he was engaged in a plot to restore the Stuarts. In 1736, when he was Sheriff for the county, he received the celebrated Roy Stuart, who was imprisoned at Inverness for high treason, when he broke out of gaol, and kept him six weeks in his house; sending by him an assurance to the Pretender of his fidelity, and at the same time desiring Roy Stuart to procure him a commission as lieutenant-general, and a patent of dukedom.

This was the secret spring of his whole proceeding. It is degrading to the rest of the Jacobites, to give this double traitor an epithet ever applied to honourable, and fervent, and disinterested men. The sole business of Lovat was personal aggrandizement; revenge was his amusement.

Henderson, in his "History of the Rebellion," attributes to Lord Lovat the entire suggestion of the invasion of 1745. It is true that the Chevalier refused to accede to the proposal made by Roy Stuart of an invasion in 1735, not considering, as he said, that the "time for his deliverance was as yet come." But, after consulting the Pope, it was agreed that the present time might be well employed in "whetting the minds of the Highlanders, and in sowing in them the seeds of loyalty that so frequently appeared." In consequence of this, Lord Lovat's request was granted; a letter was written to him from the Court, then at Albano, giving him full power to act in the name of James, and the title of Duke of Fraser and Lieutenant-General of the Highlands was conferred upon the man who seems to have had the art of infatuating all with whom he dealt.[230]

Lord Lovat immediately changed the whole style of his deportment. He quitted the comparative retirement of Castle Downie; went to Edinburgh, where he set up a chariot, and lived there in a sumptuous manner, though with little of those ceremonials which we generally associate with rank and opulence. He now sought and obtained a very general acquaintance. Few men had more to tell; and he could converse about his former hardships, relate the account of his introduction to Louis the Fourteenth, and to the gracious Maintenon. He returned to Castle Downie. That seat, conducted hitherto on the most penurious scale, suddenly became the scene of a plenteous hospitality; and its lord, once churlish and severe, became liberal and free. He entertained the clans after their hearts' desire, and he kept a purse of sixpences for the poor. As his castle was almost in the middle of the Highlands, it was much frequented; and the crafty Lovat now adapted his conversation to his own secret ends. He expatiated to the Highlanders, always greedy of fame, and vain beyond all parallel of their country, upon the victories of Montrose on the fields of Killicrankie and Cromdale.

"Such a sword and target," he would say to a listener, "your honest grandfather wore that day, and with it he forced his way through a hundred men. Well did I know him; he was my great friend, and an honest man. Few are like him now-a-days;--you resemble him pretty much."

Then he began to interpret prophecies and dreams, and to relate to his superstitious listeners the dreams their fathers had before the battle, in which they fought. He would trace genealogies as far back as the clansmen pleased, and show their connection with their chieftains. They were all his "cousins and friends;" for he knew every person that had lived in the country for years.

Then he spoke of the superiority of the broad-sword and target over the gun and the bayonet; he sneered at the weakness of an army, after so many years of peace, commanded by boys; he boasted of the valour of the Scots in Sweden and France; he even unriddled the prophecies of Bede and of Merlin. By these methods he prepared the minds of those over whom he ruled for the Rebellion; but in the event, as it has been truly said, "the thread of his policy was spun so fine that at last it failed in the maker's hand."[231]

The shrewdness of Lovat's judgment might indeed be called in question, when he decided to risk the undisturbed possession of his Highland property for a dukedom and prospect. But there were many persons of rank and influence who believed, with Prince Charles Edward, that "the Hanoverian yoke was severely felt in England, and that now was the time to shake it off." "The intruders of the family of Hanover," observes a strenuous Jacobite,[232] "conscious of the lameness of their title and the precariousness of their tenure, seem to have had nothing in view but increasing their power, and gratifying their insatiable avarice: by the former, they proposed to get above the caprice of the people; and by the latter, they made sure of something, happen what would." "Abundance of the Tories," he further remarks, "had still a warm side for the family of Stuart; and as for the old stanch Whigs, their attachment and aversion to families had no other spring but their love of liberty, which they saw expiring with the family of Hanover: they had still this, and but this chance to recover it. In fine, there was little opposition to be dreaded from any quarter but from the army,--gentlemen of that profession being accustomed to follow their leaders, and obey orders without asking any questions. But there were malcontents among them, too; such as were men of property, whose estates exceeded the value of their commissions, did by no means approve of the present measures."[233]

Upon the whole the conjuncture seemed favourable, and Lord Lovat, whose political views were very limited, was the first to sign the association despatched in 1736, according to some accounts, by others in 1740, and signed and sealed by many persons of note in Scotland, inviting the Chevalier to come over to that country. His belief was, that France had at all times the power to bring in James Stuart if she had the will; that, indeed, was the general expectation of the Jacobites.

"Most of the powers in Europe," writes Mr. Maxwell, "were engaged, either as principals or auxiliaries, in a war about the succession to the Austrian dominions. France and England were hitherto only auxiliaries, but so deeply concerned, and so sanguine, that it was visible they would soon come to an open rupture with one another; and Spain had been at war with England some years, nor was there the least prospect of an accommodation. From those circumstances it seemed highly probable that France and Spain would concur in forwarding the Prince's views."

Influenced by these considerations, Lovat now became chiefly involved in all the schemes of the Chevalier. In 1743, when the invasion was actually resolved upon, Lovat was fixed upon as a person of importance to conduct the insurrection in the Highlands. Nor did the failure of that project deter him from continued exertions. During the two succeeding years, and until after the battle of Preston Pans, he acted with such caution and dissimulation, that, had his party lost, he might still have made terms, as he thought, with the Hanoverians.

In the beginning of the year 1745, Prince Charles despatched several commissions to be distributed among his friends in Scotland, with certain letters delivered by Sir Hector Maclean, begging his friends in the Highlands to be in readiness to receive him, and desiring, "if possible, that all the castles and fortresses in Scotland might be taken before his arrival."[234] On the twenty-fifth of July,[235] the gallant Charles Edward landed in a remote corner of the Western Highlands, with only seven adherents. Lord Lovat was informed of this event, but he continued to play the deep game which his perfidious mind suggested on all occasions. He sent one of his principal agents into Lochaber to receive the young Prince's commands, as Regent of the three kingdoms, and to express his joy at his arrival. He sent also secretly for his son, who was then a student at the University of St. Andrews, and compelled him to leave his pursuits there, appointing him colonel of his clan. Arms, money, and provisions were collected; and the fiery cross was circulated throughout the country.

Such proceedings could not be concealed, and the Lord Advocate, Craigie, wrote to Lord Lovat from Edinburgh, in the month of August, calling upon him to prove his allegiance, referring to Lovat's son as well able to assist him, and asking his counsels on the state of the Highlands. The epistle alluded to a long cessation of any friendly correspondence between the Lord Advocate and Lord Lovat.

It was answered by assurances of loyalty. "I am as ready this day (as far as I am able) to serve the King and Government as I was in the year 1715, &c. But my clan and I have been so neglected these many years past, that I have not twelve stand of arms in my country, though I thank God I could bring twelve hundred good men to the field for the King's service if I had arms and other accoutrements for them." He then entreats a supply of arms, names a thousand stand to be sent to Inverness, and promises to engage himself in the King's service. He continues,--"Therefore, my good Lord, I earnestly entreat that as you wish that I would do good service to the Government on this critical occasion, you may order immediately a thousand stand of arms to be delivered to me and my clan at Inverness, and then your Lordship shall see that I will exert myself for the King's service; and if we do not get these arms immediately, we will certainly be undone; for these madmen that are in arms with the pretended Prince of Wales, threaten every day to burn and destroy my country if we do not rise in arms and join them; so that my people cry hourly that they have no arms to defend themselves, nor no protection or support from the Government. So I earnestly entreat your Lordship may consider seriously on this, for it will be an essential and singular loss to the Government if my clan and kindred be destroyed, who possess the centre of the Highlands of Scotland, and the countries most proper, by their situation, to serve the King and Government."

"As to my son, my Lord, that you are so good as to mention, he is very young, and just done with his colleges at St. Andrews, under the care of a relation of yours, Mr. Thomas Craigie, professor of Hebrew, who I truly think one of the prettiest, most complete gentlemen that I ever conversed with in any country: and I think I never saw a youth that pleased him more than my eldest son; he says he is a very good scholar, and has the best genius for learning of any he has seen, and it is by Mr. Thomas Craigie's positive advice, which he will tell you when you see him, that I send my son immediately to Utrecht to complete his education. But I have many a one of my family more fitted to command than he is at his tender age; and I do assure your Lordship that they will behave well if they are supported as they ought from the Government."

This artful letter, wherein he talks of sending his son to Utrecht, when he was, at that time, by threats and persuasion driving him into the field of civil war, is finished thus:--

"I hear that mad and unaccountable gentleman" (thus he designates the Prince) "has set up a standard at a place called Glenfinnin--Monday last. This place is the inlet from Moydart to Lochaber; and I hear of none that joined him as yet, except the Camerons and Macdonells."

But this masterpiece of art could not deceive the honest yet discerning mind of him to whom it was addressed.

Since the death of Mr. Forbes, the President had resided frequently at Culloden, now his own property; his observing eye was turned upon the proceedings of his neighbour at Castle Downie, but still appearances were maintained between him and Lovat. "This day," writes the President to a friend, "the Lord Lovat came to dine with me. He said he had heard with uneasiness the reports that were scattered abroad; but that he looked on the attempt as very desperate; that though he thought himself but indifferently used lately, in taking his company from him, yet his wishes still being, as well as his interest, led him to support the present Royal Family; that he had lain absolutely still and quiet, lest his stirring in any sort might have been misrepresented or misconstrued; and he said his business with me was, to be advised what was to be done on this occasion. I approved greatly of his disposition, and advised him, until the scene should open a little, to lay himself out to gain the most certain intelligence he could come at, which the situation of his clan will enable him to execute, and to prevent his kinsmen from being seduced by their mad neighbours, which he readily promised to do."

Consistent with these professions were the letters of Lovat to the President.

"I have but melancholy news to tell you, my dear Lord, of my own country; for I have a strong report that mad Foyers is either gone, or preparing to go, to the West; and I have the same report of poor Kilbockie; but I don't believe it. However, if I be able to ride in my chariot the length of Inverness, I am resolved to go to Stratherrick next week, and endeavour to keep my people in order. I forgot to tell you that the man yesterday assured me that they were resolved to burn and destroy all the countries where the men would not join them, with fire and sword, which truly frights me much, and has made me think of the best expedient I could imagine to preserve my people.

"As I know that the Laird of Lochiel has always a very affectionate friendship for me, as his relation, and a man that did him singular services, and as he is perfectly well acquainted with Gortuleg, I endeavoured all I could to persuade Tom to go there, and that he should endeavour in my name to persuade Lochiel to protect my country; in which I think I could succeed; but I cannot persuade Gortuleg to go; he is so nice with his points of honour that he thinks his going would bring upon him the character of a spy, and that he swears he would not have for the creation. I used all the arguments that I was capable of, and told him plainly that it was the greatest service he could do to me and to my country, as I knew he could bring me a full account of their situation, and that is the only effectual means that I can think of to keep the Stratherrick men and the rest of my people at home. He told me at last he would take some days to consider of it until he comes out of Stratherrick; but I am afraid that will be too late. I own I was not well pleased with him, and we parted in a cooler manner than we used to do."[236]