Simon Fraser, lord Lovat, his life and times

Preface

Since Dr. Hill Burton wrote, about sixty years ago, his account of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat (avowedly as a dark background to his " Life " of Duncan Forbes of Culloden), a good deal of additional matter, much of it still unprinted, has become available. I have made considerable use of the new material, more particularly of the Additional Manuscripts in the British Museum. I have also drawn largely upon Major Eraser' s Manuscript (published in 1889 by Lieut-Colonel Alexander Fergusson) — which is a valuable authority when used with discrimination. This manuscript was known to Dr. Hill Burton, but he was not aware of the circumstances that gave to it the special value which it possesses ; moreover, it came into his hands too late for adequate use in the preparation of his biography. Lovat's " Memoirs," written by himself in French, and admirably translated by William Godwin, furnish many supplemental details, which, when sifted in the light of other contemporary records of undoubted credibility, are found, on the whole, to be substantially accurate in essentials. The same remark cannot justly be made about the contemporary so-called " Lives," which were written at a time when the public wanted, and received, sensational accounts of Lovat's career. It must have been one of these

685444 vi PREFACE

" Lives " that Voltaire desired to be sent to him. They are all more or less untrustworthy, and I have practically ignored them.

I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. William Burns and Mr. William Mackay, both of Inverness, for useful hints relating to Lovat matters. Mr. Burns has written a series of stimulating letters on Simon Fraser, and Mr. Mackay has published, in the "Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness," a quantity of highly interesting Lovat correspondence. The index has been kindly prepared by Mr. J. Parker Anderson, late of the British Museum, to whom my thanks are due for the admirable manner in which the work has been performed.

I have thought it desirable to deal in greater detail with the earlier and little-known part of Simon Fraser's life than with the later and well-known portion. A full knowledge of his younger days is necessary for an adequate comprehension of the events of his old age, with which the general reader is more conversant.

My object has been to write an interesting narrative of Lovat's remarkable career, based upon the most reliable material that I have been able to find, and divested of all prejudice. It has been my desire to appear neither as an advocate nor an opponent, but simply as a narrator and an interpreter. I have not attempted either to whitewash or to blacken Lovat's character ; the latter, indeed, has already been done so effectively, that any further attempt in that direction would be a work of supererogation. It may be a matter of opinion whether, after all, Simon Fraser is worthy of a biography ; but it can scarcely be denied that the part he played in shaping British history entitles

PREFACE vii

him to a place in the gallery of British politicians. And should this narrative of his eventful experiences throw anyadditional light upon the troubled times in which he lived, its purpose will have been well served.

W. C. MACKENZIE.

London, 1908.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Simon Fraser in his Prime .

After Le Clare.

Archibald, ist Duke of Argyll .

Mary of Modena

James, 2nd Duke of Queensberry

Major James Fraser of Castle Leather

John, iith Earl of Mar

James Francis Edward, the Old Chevalier .

By permission of the Editor of the Celtic Monthly, Glasgow

John, 2ND Duke of Argyll .

William, 5TH Earl of Seaforth .

By permission of Colonel Stewart-Mackenzie of Seaforth.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart

"Bonnie Prince Charlie."

Duncan Forbes of Culloden Simon Fraser in his Old Agf.

After Hogarth.

FACING PAG8

Frontispiece

37 86

212 230

260 282

SIMON FRASER, LORD LOVAT

HIS LIFE AND TIMES

Chapter I

The ancestors of Simon Fraser were the Frisales, or Frisels, the old form of spelling the name of Fraser. In all likelihood, the Frisales came over with William the Norman. But one of the earliest of their genealogists — a clergyman of the seventeenth century — tells us that "about the year 1060, came the Frasers into Scotland."1 This would appear to suggest a pre-Norman ancestry, unless the Frisales, like the Macleans at the Flood, had " a boat of their own " and crossed the Channel independently. Their name figures in the Roll of Battle Abbey, and their Norman origin is indisputable.2 Even Celtic enthusiasts, who sweep all and sundry Highland families into their Gaelic net, have been compelled to give the Frasers up. One of them, a well-known writer on Highland subjects, attempted, indeed, to show that the name was probably derived from the Gaelic Friosal, " the race of the forest," but the etymology and the idea it conveys are alike delusive. The Frasers of old were never remarkable for the guilelessness characteristic of children of the forest. Rather did they show their Norman ancestry by the facility with which they " conquessed " —

1 Wardlaw MS. (Scott. Hist. Society, vol. 47, p. 50).

2 Skene's Highlanders of Scotland (MacBain), p. 378.

B to use the quaint old Scots word — the estates of their neighbours.

The Norman way of acquiring property in Scotland was twofold : the sword and the heiress. When one means failed, the other succeeded, and when both failed, grants by friendly kings of kindred blood transformed needy Norman adventurers into great territorial magnates and founders of powerful families, who lorded it over their native neighbours. Thus, even in the Highlands of Scotland, where the Celtic race maintained its independence against the vigorous Anglo-Saxons long after the Lowlands had become largely assimilated by speech and race with the people south of the Tweed, Norman families gradually established themselves, and some of their descendants are to-day among the most Celtic in spirit of the Highland families.

Of these families one of the foremost are the Frasers. Their first settlement in Scotland was in East Lothian. Thence they migrated to Tweeddale, where, by means of native ability — and a judicious marriage with the heiress of Tweeddale — they acquired considerable possessions and influence, as the ruins of no fewer than four castles testify. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Tweeddale Frasers reached the zenith of their fame in the persons of Sir Simon Fraser, the High Sheriff of Tweeddale, and his more renowned son, also named Simon, the gallant soldier and the faithful companion of Wallace in the War of Independence with England. The younger Simon suffered in London the ignominious death of a traitor, or the glorious death of a patriot — according to the contemporary standpoint, whether English or Scottish — though at the present day no difference of opinion can exist.

The Frasers gradually found their way to the northeast, establishing branches of their family in Aberdeenshire and Inverness-shire. The first of the northern Frasers was Sir Andrew, uncle of Sir Simon, the patriot.

He married a wealthy heiress of Caithness, and their son was Simon, the first of the Frasers of Lovat He, too, married an heiress, the daughter of the Earl of Orkney and Caithness, through whom, by her mother, a daughter of Graham of Lovat, he acquired the property of Lovat (with the fortress of Beaufort and the subsidiary fortalice of Lovat) which had anciently belonged to the Bissets, another Norman family whose ambition and unrulincss led to their undoing. From the first Fraser of Lovat is derived the Gaelic patronymic of the clan, viz. : — MacShimi (son of Simon). This Simon, with his two brothers, was killed at the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333. His son, Hugh, was the first Lord Fraser of Lovat. The ninth Lord Fraser, also named Hugh, had six sons, the fourth of whom was Thomas of Beaufort, whose second son, by Sybilla, daughter of John Macleod of Macleod, was Simon, the subject of this biography.1

The exact date of Simon Fraser's birth is uncertain, but the evidence shows that it must have been about 1676. This is the date given in his " Memoirs," and although it is contradicted by the view accepted by all historians that he was eighty years of age when he was executed in 1747, there is conclusive evidence that he was about nine years younger. There are no records of his boyhood, a fact which leaves a good deal to the imagination ; but Murray of Broughton tells us that he was educated by his uncle, Macleod. Almost certainly he received his early education at the Grammar School of Inverness. He entered

1 Skene's Highlanders. Anderson's Historical Account of the Family of Fraser. Mackenzie's History of the Frasers. In the celebrated Lovat peerage case, decided in the Court of Session in 1730, Simon Fraser's opponents rested their claim that the estate was a female fief, on the assertion, which was disproved, that the Bissets had borne the title of Lord Lovat, and that a daughter and only child of Bisset was married to a Fraser, from whom it descended to the heirs of line, and, consequently, to the claimant, the daughter of Hugh, eleventh Lord Fraser of Lovat. Simon Fraser's researches in Scottish history contributed towards the upsetting of this theory. (See Memorial of Simon, Lord Lovat, Collection of Papers in Lovat Cases.)

King's College, Aberdeen, in 1691, which would make his age fifteen at the date of entry, thus corresponding with the known period of life (twelve to sixteen years of age) at which students entered Aberdeen University about the end of the seventeenth century. He graduated Master of Arts in 1695.1

He had just begun the study of Civil Law when his aspirations were directed into another channel. To speculate on a man's future had he followed this or that career, instead of the actual one of his choice, is a useless though attractive occupation. In some instances, a strong bent of mind in a certain direction affords a sure guide to the path of successful effort. In others, there is no clearly defined mental bias upon which to base a scheme of life. Simon Fraser belonged to the former class. It may be confidently postulated that had he chosen the Bar or the Pulpit of his native country as a profession, the highest honours that either career could offer would have been placed well within his reach. His dialectical skill would have won for him renown in the one direction, and his powers of persuasion in the other. He might have very well ended his days as Lord President of the Court of Session, or as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland.

When Simon entered King's College, his elder brother Alexander had been dead two years. The latter was a youth of great promise. He graduated at Aberdeen University in 1679, and in 1683 received the freedom of the Royal burgh of Inverness. He fought under Dundee at the battle of Killiecrankie, where he led the Frasers, and was wounded at the battle, or during the subsequent attack on Dunkeld. He was carried home by his clansmen in a litter, and died on November 20, 1689. There is a story told that after Killiecrankie he killed a piper or a fiddler,

1 Letter from Mr. P. J. Anderson, Aberdeen University Library {Inverness Courier, January 14, 1908.)

at a wedding or a funeral (the accounts vary), and fled to Wales, where he married and left a family. This story formed in 1885 the basis of an unsuccessful claim upon the Lovat estates by an alleged descendant of Alexander. But the register of the parish of Kirkhill was accepted as conclusive evidence of the death of Alexander in 1689 ; in which year, consequently, Simon became his father's heir.1

To an ambitious youth — and Simon was nothing if not ambitious — this change in his prospects must have opened up a vista of future greatness which had previously seemed to be beyond his grasp. For the shot which laid his brother low was the signal for Simon's elevation to the male heirship of the great Lovat estates. It was true that the tempting fruit which dangled from the family tree might never fall into his father's lap, nor into his. There were others ready to pluck it when ripe, or even before it was ripe. His father's nephew, Hugh, was then in possession of the property and the title as eleventh Lord Fraser of Lovat. Hugh was a weak, amiable man, "of contracted understanding," according to Simon's blunt estimate of his character. His early years had been spent under the tutelage of his maternal uncle, Sir George Mackenzie, of Tarbat (afterwards the first Earl of Cromartie) ; and he continued during his lifetime to be under the influence of stronger natures than his own. He married — it is more accurate to say that he was married to — Lady Amelia Murray, daughter of John, Marquis of Atholl, and sister of Lord John Murray, afterwards created Earl of Tullibardine, and (on his father's death) first Duke of Atholl. By Lord Hugh's contract of marriage, dated May 18, 1685 (confirmed by charter, dated February 22, 1694), he resigned

1 Letter from Mr. William Burns, solicitor, Inverness {Inverness Courier, December 3, 1907). Simon says that his brother was the first in the North to join Dundee, whom he helped materially with provisions, and with whom he remained until he was "carried home in a litter " (Addl. MSS. 31253 ft". 4, 5), the lordship and barony of Lovat and others in favour of the male issue of his marriage with Lady Amelia, or of any other marriage ; in default of whom, to any heirs by this marriage, with a preference to the eldest daughter, without division, if she married a husband bearing the name of Fraser. Lord Hugh is said to have had three sons, all of whom died young. The eldest of his four daughters, who appears to have been born in 1686, and, like her mother, was named Amelia, was thus constituted the preferential and sole heiress if she fulfilled the condition laid down by the contract. This, then, was the position at the time when Simon Fraser had completed his course of philosophy at King's College, and was about to commence the study of Civil Law.1

He was a diligent student. He tells us that he " read ten hours every day." Yet, in his old age, he affected to hold his University education in low esteem. "Idle college learning," he called it. " I have no benefite," he says, " by the four years that I most slav'd in my Life at the College, but a little taste of Logics and Philosophy." But the truth is, that the study of " Logics and Philosophy " gave his mind a certain bent which, for good or ill, influenced his career to an appreciable extent. He had little leisure to brood over his grievances. But they existed notwithstanding. And it required the assistance of all the philosophy he had acquired at King's College to enable him to bear them with equanimity.

He must have felt that he was being juggled out of his rights by the Murrays. His weak-minded cousin had just confirmed his contract of marriage, the practical effect of which was to exclude Simon's father and himself from the title and property of which they were the rightful heirs. A chit of a girl was to be the head of the clan Fraser, instead of a spirited young man brimming over

1 Collection of Papers in Lovat Cases. Anderson, p. iiS. Mackenzie, p. 210.

with feudal ardour. Conscious of his own natural parts, he was condemned to be a poor hanger-on to the skirts of nobility, instead of being a great territorial magnate, with the lives and fortunes of hundreds of warlike Frasers at his unchallenged and complete disposal. True, there was a way round : the old Norman and Celtic way of marrying the heiress. But she was only eight years of age, and her relations might have other views for her.

Already the astute mind of Simon Fraser was hatching schemes for the preservation of his rights. It is not too much to assert that, until finally the desire of his heart was gained, his actions were dominated by one governing motive, to which all political considerations, all family ties, all the demands of honour itself, were subordinated. He had determined that if he lived, the estates and the title of Lovat should one day be his.

Those estates were indeed well worth fighting for. They stretched for miles on both sides of Loch Ness. On the south-east side was Stratherrick, a broad plain lying between the hills which skirt the loch, and the mountains on the borders of Badenoch and Strathdearn. Two centuries ago a bleak, hillocky, hard-looking country, like the granite of which it is mainly composed, it has since undergone improvements in common with the rest of the Highlands.

Contrasting with the bleakness of this valley, the Foyers country in its vicinity offers the traveller the scenic delights afforded by the sylvan beauty of Killin, and the " whitening sheet " of the celebrated falls, their picturesqueness modified at the present day by the exigencies of aluminium. Protected at one end by the romantic pass of Inverfarikaig, and at the other by the towering bulk of Corryarrick, Stratherrick, at the end of the seventeenth century, was vulnerable only at ono point, which, in 171 5, was strengthened by the erection of Fort Augustus. An excellent place of refuge for a fugitive ; and such Simon Fraser found it to be in his hour of need.

But the principal part of the Lovat property lay on the north-west side of Loch Ness. The Aird MacShimi, or Lovat's Aird — so called to distinguish it from other airds, or heights, in the same quarter — is situated on the Inverness-shire border of the Beauly Firth, and Beaufort — the appanage of a younger son, and thus the incontestable property of Simon Fraser's father — lies between the towns of Inverness and Beauly, the latter in the heart of the Aird country. A rich, fertile tract at the present day, the Aird, two centuries ago, was a relatively desirable possession, and with the other extensive pertinents of Lovat situated on both sides of Loch Ness, formed one of the finest properties in the North of Scotland. The valley of the Beauly, or Beaulieu, fittingly received its name from the most beautiful queen who ever sat on the Scottish throne. Rejecting the commonplace suggestion of Celtic etymologists that the name is derived from a Gaelic word signifying the "town of the ford," we accept the more romantic signification associated with it by tradition. It is one of the most lovely straths in that part of Scotland where beautiful valleys abound. The high-terraced banks of the river Beauly converge towards the west, where the foaming waters leap through a rocky gorge in the picturesque falls of Kilmorack. On the slopes of the hills, birch-clad and fir-clad, the hand of the industrious cultivator has left its mark. The heights of Strathglass and Glenstrathfarar form a rugged background on the western horizon. The giant Ben Wyvis keeps guard on the north over the peaceful valley. Towards the mouth of the river, a plain of lowland richness stretches eastwards ; and the gentle slopes of the Beauly Firth display the same signs of agricultural wealth. Yonder, near the banks of the river, are the ruins of the ancient Priory of Beauly (founded by John Bisset of

Lovat), where the French monks of the order of Valliscaulium, brought to Scotland in the thirteenth century, tilled the land, educated the people, and strove to maintain among their wild and lawless neighbours, a life of austerity and virtue. Of old the God's-acre of the Fraser chiefs, the shadow of its influence was thrown over the market town of Beauly, whose ancient Gaelic name is Balmanach, the town of the monks.

Such was the property which was as the apple of Simon Fraser's eye. It would be doing him an injustice to suppose that what he coveted was mainly the revenue of this fertile (but debt-burdened) land. Nothing is clearer than the fact that his aims were more comprehensive. He was not indifferent to the advantages of wealth — far from it — but he was no mere money-grubber. To be acknowledged as my Lord Lovat ; to have the means of helping his friends and crushing his foes ; to be looked up to as the head of the Fraser family ; to acquire the despotic power that Celtic feudalism conferred upon the chiefs of the powerful clans ; these appear to have been the motives that urged him to risk everything in acquiring what his old father seems, on the whole, to have regarded as a tinsel title and a troublesome estate.

There is a good deal to be said for Simon's point of view. When the feudal system flourished in the Highlands, it was imperative that a clan should be ruled by a man of physical and mental vigour, capable of leading his men in tribal or insurrectionary warfare. If the rightful male heir were incapacitated for leadership by youth or infirmity, he was set aside in favour of a more competent chief. A chieftainess was unthinkable. If a woman happened to be the heiress, the only thing to be done was to get her married as quickly as convenient, and, if possible, to the nearest male heir. That was the later method, for in ancient times, previous to the advent of feudalism, the operation of the law of gavel operated to exclude females from acquiring property. Thus the claims of young Beaufort were fortified, alike by the persistence of patriarchal notions among his clansmen, and by the practical inconveniences that resulted from the clan being ruled by a woman.

Simon Fraser's position was, in fact, unassailable ; for it was supported alike by tradition, by sentiment, and, most important of all, by the law of the land. The barony of Lovat had always been a male fief, and in 1730, the Supreme Court of Scotland upheld the view that, notwithstanding all efforts to prove the contrary, a male fief it continued to remain.1

1 Riddell on Peerage and Consistorial Law, vol. i. pp. 285-287, and pp. 370-375, where the question is dealt with fully.

Chapter II

THERE were two avenues, by either of which young Beaufort might reasonably hope to reach the goal of his ambition with greater ease than was possible without their assistance ; and these avenues were, respectively, the Law and the Army. One was a long and tedious path, whose windings confused the man accustomed to a straight, open road, but offered no obstacles to the man of clear sisht and subtle mind. The other was a short, broad way, leading sometimes to disillusionment and destruction, but frequently to honours and estates. Which of these would be Simon Fraser's choice ? An accident — if there be such a thing as accident in those matters — decided him to throw over the Law and enter the Army. And thus the Bar of Scotland lost a lawyer who might well have proved, in point of ability, a worthy successor to Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, while the British Army gained a recruit who wished to command before he learned to obey.

Lord John Murray, the eldest son of the Marquis of Atholl, had received a commission to raise a regiment for the service of William of Orange. Murray was in high favour at Court. His services in the Dundee campaign were not forgotten. He was appointed Secretary of State for Scotland and Commissioner to the Scots Parliament. He was thus the most influential man in Scotland in 1694, and the value of his friendship to a penniless youth like Simon Fraser, whose father had "spent his patrimony,"

was obvious. Murray found that the task he had undertaken of raising a regiment was by no means an easy one. His father was a secret Jacobite, and gave him no countenance. His father's clansmen regarded him as a renegade, and during the Dundee campaign, they had deserted him in a body. In his extremity, he bethought himself of his easy-going brother-in-law, Lord Hugh of Lovat, who had a following of faithful Frasers ready to obey (as he thought) the call of their chief. Therefore he offered Lord Lovat a command in his regiment, a bribe which Lovat accepted. But the faithful Frasers turned their backs on their chief, apparently because they distrusted his colonel. Chagrined by the attitude of his clansmen, Lovat declared that he had accepted the commission only to bestow it upon his cousin, Simon, whose interests he wished to advance. But Simon was a staunch Jacobite : for he had imbibed " loyalty " with his mother's milk. According to his own statement, he had served under General Buchan, and had been " three times thrown into prison for his exertions in the Royal Cause before he was sixteen." So, if his statement is correct, he had learned something in a rougher school before going to King's College to acquire a knowledge of " Logics and Philosophy." The latter studies had not weakened his loyalty to King James, but they had revealed to him the possibilities and the practical utility of casuistry, as a valuable antidote to the inconvenient insistence of principle. When he took his degree of Master of Arts, he had already attained proficiency in minor arts not prescribed by the Faculty.

Accordingly, it was not difficult for him to reconcile his professedly ardent Jacobitism with his acceptance, in 1695, of a commission in the army of King William. Obviously, he found it necessary to explain his inconsistency. Lord John Murray told him privately (he says), that the regiment he was raising was destined ultimately for the service of him whom the Williamites called the Pretender, and the Jacobites, the King. That the Secretary of State for Scotland should thus run the risk of placing himself in the power of a youth of nineteen who, he must have foreseen, might one day prove a thorn in the side of the Atholl family, may be conceivable, but is scarcely probable. Simon's story runs that, after having gained his object — a company of Frasers being easily recruited by the heir-apparent — Lord Murray played him the scurvy trick of refusing him his company until he had brought three hundred recruits to the regiment, and even then he was compelled to compensate in money the officer whom he had displaced. In the interval he had to content himself with a lieutenancy of Grenadiers. In 1696, the officers of Lord Murray's regiment were obliged to take the oath of abjuration, which elicited a protest from those of them who were Jacobites. Simon had another private interview with his colonel, who appears to have had little difficulty in overcoming his scruples. But he was not slow to describe Lord Tullibardine's cleverness in getting the better of him, as " infamous " — a favourite adjective of Simon's, by the way.1

Major James Fraser gives us a much less tangled account of this transaction. He states simply that the " Marquis of Atholl, seeing him (Simon) to be a young man of spirit, and also being the heir male of the family, thought proper to encourage him, and to put him into the army. My Lord Tullabardine, having then a regiment, brought him in to be lieutenant of the Grandineers, where he continued in the years 1694-5." 2 This version has, at least, the merit of straightforwardness and probability ; for it is likely enough that Murray wished to conciliate the Beauforts. Yet, from other sources of information, we are justified in believing that the recruiting story had some

1 Memoirs of the Life of Lord Lovat (1797), pp. 7-18.

2 Major Fraser's MS., vol. i. (Fergusson), pp. 102, 103.

foundation in fact. But by whatever means he obtained the appointment, Simon was now Captain Fraser in the service of Dutch William, the enemy of the Jacobites, the defender of civil liberty, and the bulwark of the Protestant faith. Fairly launched upon the career of a soldier, he had placed his feet on the first rung of the ladder by which he hoped to mount to the height of a well-defined ambition. This young man started out in life with a single aim in view, which he attained after years of patient waiting, clever scheming, and invincible determination.

He had not long to wait for his first chance. In March, 1696, his cousin, Lord Lovat, went to London with Lord Murray, to be presented to the King by the latter ; and Simon accompanied them. Lord Lovat stayed in London some months, "and spent some money," with the assistance of his young cousin, and other boon companions like Colonel Alexander Mackenzie, brother of the Earl of Seaforth. On March 26, 1696, Lord Lovat signed in London a deed, annulling the disposition of his estates already made, and conveying them to Thomas Fraser of Beaufort as the male heir, in case he himself died without male issue ; * and on the same date, he executed a bond in Simon's favour for 50,000 merks Scots, the consideration for which was "the special love and affection I bear to my cousin, Master Simon Fraser, eldest lawful son of Thomas Beaufort, and for certain onerous causes and others moving me." 2 Simon is accused in " A letter from a gentleman in the City to his friend in the country" (1704) of having forged this deed and two bonds about 1699-