Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 Volume II Part 14

Lord Lovat's usual readiness in difficulties did not fail him; he was a ruined man, and it was puerile to shrink from expedients. He applied to the Pope's nuncio, and expressed his readiness to become a Roman Catholic. The suit was, of course, encouraged, and the arch hypocrite, making a recantation of all his former errors, professed himself a member of the holy Catholic Church, and acknowledged the Pope as its head. This avowal cost him little, for he was by no means prejudiced in favour of any specific faith; and it gained him for the time, some little popularity in the gay metropolis in which he had taken refuge.

King James, indeed, to his honour, was still resolute in declining his personal homage; but Louis the Fourteenth was less scrupulous, and the Marquis de Torcy, the favourite and Minister of the French King, presented the abjured of England and Scotland at the Palais of Versailles. It is difficult to picture to oneself the savage and merciless Fraser, the pillager, the destroyer, the outlaw, conversing, as he is said to have done, with the saintly and sagacious Madame Maintenon. It is scarcely possible to conceive elegant and refined women of any nation receiving this depraved, impenitent man, with the rumour of his recent crimes still fresh in their memory, into their polished circles. Yet they made no scruple in that dissolute city, to a.s.sociate with the abandoned wretch who dared not return to Scotland, and who only looked for a pardon for his crimes through the potent workings of a faction.

Lord Lovat well knew the value of female influence. He dressed in the height of fashion--he adapted his language and sentiments to the tone of those around the Court. He was a man of considerable conversational talents; "his deportment," says his biographer, "was graceful and manly." When he was first presented to Louis the Fourteenth, who was desirous of asking some questions concerning the invasion of Scotland, he is said to have prepared an elaborate address, which he forgot in the confusion produced by the splendour around him, but to have delivered an able extempore speech, with infinite ease and good taste, upon the spur of the moment, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of Louis, who learned from De Torcy the circ.u.mstance.[163]

His advancement at the Court of Versailles was interrupted by the necessity of his return to England, in order to obtain at last a final pardon from the King for his offences. It is singular that the instrument by whom he sought to procure this remission was William Carstairs, that extraordinary man, who had suffered in the reign of James the Second the thumb-screw, and had been threatened with the iron boot, for refusing to disclose the correspondence between the friends of the Revolution. Mr. Carstairs was now secretary to King William, and he little knew, when he counselled that monarch to pardon Lovat, what a partisan of the Jacobite cause he was thus restoring to society.

His mediation was effectual, perhaps owing to a dislike which had arisen in the mind of William against the Athole family; and a pardon was procured for Lord Lovat. The affair was concluded at Loo, whither Lovat followed the King from England. "He is a bold man," the Monarch is said to have observed to Carstairs, "to come so far under sentence of death."

The pardon was unlimited, and that it might comprise the offence against Lady Athole, it was now "a complete and ample pardon for every imaginable crime." The royal seal was appended to it, and there remained only to get that of Scotland also affixed.

Lovat entrusted the management of that delicate and difficult matter to a cousin, a Simon Fraser also, by whose treachery it was suppressed; and Lord Seafield caused another pardon to pa.s.s the great seal, in which the treason against King William was alone specified; and other offences were left unpardoned. Upon this, Lord Lovat cited the Marquis of Athole before the Lords Justiciary in Edinburgh to answer before them for a false accusation: but on the very day of supporting his charge, as the biographer of his family relates, his patron the Duke of Argyle was informed that the judges had been corrupted, and that "certain death would be the result if he appeared."[164] This statement is taken from Lord Lovat's own complication of falsehoods, his incomparably audacious "Manifesto." Notwithstanding that Lovat had appeared with a retinue of a hundred armed gentlemen, "as honorable as himself," with the intention of intimidating the judges;--in spite of the Duke of Argyle's powerful influence, the friends of the outlawed n.o.bleman counselled him again to retreat to England, and to suffer judgment to go by default. The Duke of Argyle, he says, would not lose sight of him till he had seen him on horseback, and had ordered his own best horse to be brought round to the door. There was no remedy for what was called by Lord Lovat's friends, the "rascality" of the judges:--and again this unworthy Highlander was driven from his own country to seek safety in the land wherein his offences had received their pardon. The inflexibility of the justiciary lords, or their known integrity, form a fine incident in history; for the Scottish nation was at this period, ridden by Court faction, and broken down by recent oppression and ma.s.sacre.

Lord Lovat, meeting the Duke of Argyle on the frontiers, accompanied his Grace to London; and here, notwithstanding his boast, "that after his arrival in London he was at the Duke's house every day," he appears, about this time, to have been reduced to a state of miserable poverty, and merited desertion.

In the following letter to Mr. Carstairs, he complains that nothing is done for him--he applies to Mr. Carstairs for a little money to carry him home, "having no other door open."

LORD LOVAT TO MR. CARSTAIRS,

"London, June 20th, 1701.

"Dear Sir,

"I reckon myself very unhappy that my friends here do so much neglect me; and I believe my last journey to England has done me a vast prejudice; for if I had been at home, I would have got something done in my Lord Evelin's business, and would have got money before now, that might serve me to go a volunteer with the King, or maintain me anywhere; but my friend at home must have worse thoughts now of my affairs than ever, having staid so long here, and got nothing done. However, I now resolve to go to Scotland, not being able to subsist longer here. I have sent the inclosed note, that, according to your kind promise, I may have the little money which will carry me home, and it shall be precisely paid before two months; and I must say, it is one of the greatest favours ever was done me, not having any other door open, if you were not so generous as to a.s.sist me, which I shall alwise gratefully remember, and continue with all sincerity, Dear Sir, Your faithful and obliged servant,

LOVAT."

The death of William the Third revived the hopes of the Jacobite party; and to that centre of attraction the ruined and the restless, the aspiring and the profligate, alike turned their regards. Never was so great a variety of character, and so great a diversity of motives displayed in any cause, as in the various attempts which were made to secure the restoration of the Stuarts. On some natures those opinions, those schemes, which were generally known under the name of Jacobitism, acted as an incentive to self-sacrifice--and to a constancy worthy of better fortune. In other minds the poison of faction worked irremediable mischief: many who began with great and generous resolves, sank into intrigue, and ended in infidelity to the cause which that had espoused.

But Lord Lovat came under neither of these cla.s.ses; he knew not the existence of a generous emotion; he was consistent in the undeviating selfishness and baseness of his career.

If he had a sincere predilection, he was disposed to the interest of King James. Hereditary tendencies scarcely ever lose their hold upon the mind entirely: notions on politics are formed at a much earlier age than is generally supposed. The family of Fraser had been, as we have seen, from ages immemorial employed in defence of the Stuart Kings; and early prepossessions were imbibed by the unworthy descendant of a brave race, before his pa.s.sions had interfered to warp the generous sentiment of loyalty. As he grew up, Lord Lovat learned to accommodate himself to any party; and it was justly observed by Lord Middleton, one of the favourite courtiers at St. Germains, that though he boasted so much of his adherence to his Sovereign, he had never served any sovereign but King William, in whose army he had commanded a regiment.[165]

The period was now, however, approaching, when he whose moral atmosphere was, like his native climate, the tempest and the whirlwind, might hope to glean some benefit from the impending storm which threatened the peace of the British empire.

On the sixth of September, 1701, James the Second of England expired at St. Germains. This event was favourable to those of the Jacobite party who wished to bring forward the interests of the young Prince of Wales.

James had long been infirm, and had laid aside all schemes of worldly elevation. He had pa.s.sed his time between the diversion of hunting and the duties of religion. His widowed Queen retained, on the contrary, an ardent desire to see her son restored to the throne of England. She implanted that wish in his own breast; she nourished it by the society of those whom she placed around him; and she pa.s.sed her time in constantly forming new schemes for the promotion of that restoration to which her sanguine antic.i.p.ations were continually directed.

The death of James was succeeded by two events: one, the avowed determination of Louis the Fourteenth to take the exiled family of Stuart under his protection, and the consequent proclamation of the young Prince of Wales as King of England; the other, the bill for the attainder of the pretended Prince of Wales, in the English Parliament, with an additional clause of attainder against the Queen, Mary of Modena, together with an oath of abjuration of the "Pretender." The debates which impeded the progress of this measure, plainly prove how deeply engrafted in the hearts of many of the higher cla.s.ses were those rights which they were thus enforced to abjure.[166]

This was one of the last acts of William. His death, in 1702, revived the spirits of the Jacobites, for the partiality of Anne to her brother, the young Prince, was generally understood; and it appears, from the letters which have been published in later days to have been of a far more real and sisterly character than has generally been supposed. The death of the young Duke of Gloucester appeared, naturally, to make way for the restoration of the Stuart family; and there is no doubt but that Anne earnestly desired it; and that on one occasion, when her brother's life was in danger from illness, her anxiety was considerable on his account.

It is, therefore, no matter of reproach to the Jacobites, as an infatuation, although it has frequently been so represented, that they cherished those schemes which were ultimately so unfortunate, but which, had it not been that "popery appeared more dreadful in England than even the prospect of slavery and temporal oppression," would doubtless have been successful without the disastrous scenes which marked the struggle to bring them to bear.

Lord Lovat was at this time no insignificant instrument in the hands of the Jacobite party. When he found that the sentence of outlawry was not reversed; when he perceived that he must no longer hope for the peaceable enjoyment of the Lovat inheritance, his whole soul turned to the restoration of King James; and, after his death, to that of the young Prince of Wales. Yet he seems, in the course of the extraordinary affairs in which the Queen, Mary of Modena, was rash enough to employ him, to have one eye fixed upon St. James's, another upon St. Germains, and to have been perfectly uncertain as to which power he should eventually dedicate his boasted influence and talents.

Lord Lovat may be regarded as the first promoter of the Insurrection of 1715 in Scotland. Whether his exertions proceeded from a real endeavour to promote the cause of the Jacobites, or whether they were, as it has been supposed, the result of a political scheme of the Duke of Queensbury's, it is difficult to determine, and immaterial to decide; because his perfidy in disclosing the whole to that n.o.bleman has been clearly discovered. It seems, however, more than probable, that he could not go on in the straightforward path; and that he was in the employ of the Duke of Queensbury from the first, has been confidently stated.[167]

Early in 1702, Lord Lovat went to France, and pretending to have authority from some of the Highland clans and Scottish n.o.bility, offered the services of his countrymen to the Court of St. Germains. This offer was made shortly before the death of James the Second, and a proposal was made in the name of the Scottish Jacobites to raise an army of twelve thousand men, if the King of France would consent to land five thousand men at Dundee, and five hundred at Fort William. His proposals were listened to, but his integrity was suspected.[168]

According to his own account, Lord Lovat, being in full possession of his family honours, upon the death of King William, immediately proclaimed the Prince of Wales in his own province, and acting, as he declares, in accordance with the advice of his friend, the Duke of Argyle, repaired to France, "in order to do the best that he could in that country."[169]

He immediately, to pursue his own statement, engaged the Earl Lord Marischal, the Earl of Errol, Lord Constable of Scotland, in the cause; and then, pa.s.sing through England and Holland, in order to go to France through Flanders, he arrived in Paris with this commission about the month of September.

Sir John Maclean, cousin-german of Lord Lovat, had resided ten years at the Court of St. Germains, and to his guidance Lovat confided himself.

By Maclean, Lovat was introduced to the Duke of Perth, as he was called, who had been Chancellor of Scotland when James the Second abdicated, and whose influence was now divided at the Court of St. Germains, by the Earl of Middleton. For never was faction more virulent than in the Court of the exiled Monarch, and during the minority of his son. The Duke of Perth represented Lord Middleton as a "faithless traitor, a pensionary of the English Parliament, to give intelligence of all that pa.s.ses at the Court of St. Germains." It was therefore agreed that this scheme of the invasion should be carried on unknown to that n.o.bleman, and to this secrecy the Queen, it is said, gave her consent. She hailed the prospect of an insurrection in Scotland with joy, and declared twenty times to Lord Lovat that she had sent her jewels to Paris to be sold, in order to send the twenty thousand crowns,[170] which Lord Lovat represented would be necessary to equip the Highland forces. Hitherto the Court of St.

Germains had been contented merely to keep up a correspondence with their friends, retaining them in their principles, though without any expectation of immediate a.s.sistance. The offer of Lord Lovat was the first step towards more active exertions in the cause of the Stuarts. It is in this sense that he may almost be considered as the father of the Rebellion of 1715. He first excited those ardent spirits to unanimity and to action; and the project of restoration, which only languished whilst Anne lived, was never afterwards abandoned until after the year 1746.

Either through the indiscretion of Queen Mary of Modena, or through some other channel, the plot of the invasion became known to Lord Middleton.

Jealous of the family of Perth, his avowed enemies, Lord Middleton, according to Lord Lovat, was enraged at the project, and determined to ruin the projectors. It is very true that the antipathies between the prevailing factions may have excited Lord Middleton's anger; but it is evident, from his lordship's letters and memoranda, that his dislike had a far deeper source--the profligacy of the agent Lovat; a profligacy which had deterred, as it was afterwards found, many of the Highland chiefs from lending their aid to the cause. Party fury, however, ran high, and before the affair of the insurrection could be settled, Lord Middleton, declaring that the last words of King James had made a powerful impression on his mind, retired into the convent of Benedictines at Paris, to be satisfied of some doubts, and to be instructed in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. But this temporary retirement rather revived than decreased the favour of the Queen towards him. She trusted to his advice; and, as the statement which Lord Lovat gave of the affairs of Scotland appeared too favourable to the excluded family to be believed, Louis the Fourteenth counselled the Court of St. Germains to send with Lord Lovat, or, as he is invariably called in all contemporary doc.u.ments, Simon Fraser, a person who could be trusted to bring back a genuine account. Accordingly, James Murray of Stanhope, the brother of Sir David Murray, was employed to this effect. "He was," says Lord Lovat, "a spy of Lord Middleton's, his sworn creature, and a man who had no other means of subsistence."[171]

From other accounts, however, Mr. Murray is shown to have been a man of probity, although in great pecuniary difficulties, as many of the younger members of old families were at that time.[172] Mr. James Murray was sent forward into Scotland six weeks before Lord Lovat set out from France; and the Court had the wisdom to send with the latter another emissary in the person of Mr. John Murray, of Abercairney.

After these arrangements were completed, Lord Lovat received his commission. He set out upon his expedition by way of Brussels, to Calais. Not being furnished with pa.s.sports, and having no other pa.s.s than the orders of the Marquis De Torcy to the commandants of the different forts upon the coast, he was obliged also, to wait for an entire month, the arrival of an English packet for the exchange of prisoners,--the captain of the vessel having been bribed to take him and his companions on board as English prisoners of war, and to put them on sh.o.r.e during the night, in his boat, near Dover.

Through the interest of Louis the Fourteenth, Lovat had received the commission from King James of major-general, with power to raise and command forces in his behalf:[173] and thus provided, he proceeded to Scotland, where he was met by the Duke of Argyle, his friend, and conducted by that n.o.bleman to Edinburgh. Such was the simple statement of Lovat's first steps on this occasion. According to his memorial, which he afterwards presented to Queen Mary, he received a.s.surances of support from the Catholic gentry of Durham, who, "when he showed them the King's picture, fell down on their knees and kissed it."[174] This flattering statement appeared, however, to resemble the rest of the memorial of his proceedings, and met with little or no credence even in the quarter where it was most likely to be well received.

From the Duke of Queensbury, Lord Lovat received a pa.s.s to go into the Highlands, which was procured under feigned names, both for him and his two companions, from Lord Nottingham, then Secretary of State. After this necessary preliminary, Lord Lovat made a tour among some of the princ.i.p.al n.o.bility in the Lowlands. He found them, even according to his own statement, averse to take up arms without an express commission from the King. But he remarks, writing always as he does in the third person, "My Lord Lovat pursued his journey to the Highlands, where they were overjoyed to see him, because they believed him dead, having been fourteen months in France, without writing any word to his country. They came from all quarters to see him. He showed them the King's instructions, and the King of France's great promises. They were ravished to see them, and prayed to G.o.d to have their King there, and they should soon put him on the throne. My Lord Lovat told them that they must first fight for him, and beat his enemies in the kingdom. They answered him, that, if they got the a.s.sistance he promised them, they would march in three days' advertis.e.m.e.nt, and beat all the King's enemies in the kingdom."[175] This statement, though possibly not wholly untrue, must be taken with more than the usual degree of allowance for the exaggeration of a partisan. Many of the Highland n.o.blemen and chieftains were, indeed, well disposed to the cause of which Lord Lovat was the unfortunate and unworthy representative; but all regretted that their young King, as they styled him, should repose trust in so bad a character, and in many instances refused to treat with Lovat. And, indeed, the partial success which he attained might be ascribed to the credit of his companion Captain John Murray, a gentleman of good family, whose brother, Murray of Abercairney, was greatly respected in his county.

The embryo of the two Rebellions may be distinctly traced in the plain and modest memorial which Captain Murray also presented, on his return from Scotland, at the Court of St. Germains. "The Earl and Countess of Errol," he relates, "with their son Lord Hay, were the first to whom I spoke of the affairs of the King of England." "Speaking at Edinburgh with the King's friends, about his Majesty's affairs, in a more serious way than I had done before, I found that these affairs had not been mentioned among them a long time before, and that it was to them an agreeable surprise to see some hopes that they were to be revived by my negotiation."

The greatest families in Scotland were, indeed,[176] ready to come forward upon condition of a certain a.s.sistance from France; and a scheme seems even to have been suggested for the invasion of England, and to have formed the main feature in one of those various plots which were as often concerted, and as often defeated, in favour of the excluded family.[177]

In France, these continual schemes, and the various changes in the English Government, were regarded with the utmost contempt. "The people," writes the Duke of Perth, Chancellor of Scotland, "are kept from amus.e.m.e.nt, frameing conceits of government and religion, such as our giddy people frame to themselves, and make themselves the scorn and reproach of mankind, for all are now foes under the name of English, and we are said to be so changeable and foolish, that nothing from our parts seems strange. Beheading, dethroning, and banishing of kings, being but children's play with us."[178]

But all the promise of this plan was defeated, as it is generally and confidently a.s.serted, by the character of Lord Lovat. A general distrust prevailed, of his motives and of his authority, even in that very country where he had once led on his clansmen to crimes for which they had paid dearly in the humiliation and devastation of their clan. He was indeed, prevented from lingering near the home of his youth, from the decrees which had been issued against him, and the risk of discovery.

Disappointed in his efforts, unable to raise even fifty men of his own clan, and resolved upon gaining influence and favour in some quarter or another, he determined upon betraying the whole scheme, which has since obtained in history the name of the Scottish Plot, to the Duke of Queensbury.

It was on pretext of obtaining a pa.s.sport for France, that Lord Lovat now sought an interview with the Duke in London. He there discovered to that able and influential minister, then Secretary of State for Scotland, the entire details of the meditated insurrection, together with the names of the princ.i.p.al Scottish n.o.bility concerned in the conspiracy. The Duke, it appears, perfectly appreciated the character of his informant. He seems to have reflected, that from such materials as those which composed the desperate and hardened character of Lovat, the best instruments of party may be selected. He consented, it is generally believed,--although historians differ greatly according to their particular bias, as to the fact,--to furnish Lovat with a pa.s.sport, and to employ him as a spy in the French Court, in order to prosecute his discoveries still farther.

When Lovat was afterwards charged with this act of treachery, he declared, that he had told the Duke of Queensbury little more than what had escaped through the folly or malice of the Jacobites; but acknowledged that a mutual compact had pa.s.sed between him and the Duke of Queensbury.[179]

Somerville, in his history of the reign of Queen Anne, remarks, that it is doubtful whether Fraser of Lovat had ever any intention of performing effectual service to the Chevalier. "No sooner had he set foot in England," adds the same historian, "than he formed the nefarious project of counter-plotting his a.s.sociate, and betraying the trust which he had procured through the facility and precipitate confidence of the Queen."[180]

The Duke of Queensbury immediately communicated the plot, disclosed by Lovat, to Queen Anne. In the main points the conduct of that able and influential Minister appears to have been tolerably free from blame during the inquiry into the Scottish plot which was afterwards inst.i.tuted; but it is a proof of the horror and suspicion in which Lord Lovat was held, that the Duke of Queensbury's negotiations with so abandoned a tool for some time diminished the political sway which he had heretofore possessed in Scotland.[181]

Lord Lovat returned to Paris, where he had the effrontery to hand in a boasting memorial of his services, written with that particularity which gives an air of extreme accuracy to any statement. In this art he was generally accomplished, yet he seems on this occasion to have failed.

For some time he flourished; alternately, one day at Versailles--one day at St. Germains; and, whilst an under-current of dislike and suspicion marked his course, all, apparently, went on successfully with this great dissembler. The Earl of Middleton, indeed, was undeceived.

"I doubt not," he writes to the Marquis De Torcy, "you will be as much surprised at Lord Lovat's memorial as we have been; for although I never had a good opinion of him, yet, I did not believe him fool enough to accuse himself. He has not, in some places, been as careful as authors of romance to preserve probability."

"If the King thinks proper to apprehend him," concludes Lord Middleton, "it should be done without noise. His name should not be mentioned any more, and at the same time his papers should be seized."[182] Such were the preparations for the secret incarceration which it was then the practice of the French Court to sanction.

Lord Lovat was not long in ignorance of the intrigues, as he calls them, which were carried on to blast his reputation at the Court of St.

Germains. In other words, he perceived that the double game which he had been playing was discovered, and discovered in time to prevent any new or important trust being committed to his command. He fell ill, or perhaps feigned illness, probably in order to account for his absence from Court; and, although backed by the influence of the Earl of Melfort, brother of the Duke of Perth, and by the Marquis De Torcy, he found that he could never recover the confidence of the Queen Mother.

He took the usual plan adopted by servants who perceive that they are on the eve of being discarded--he announced his determination to retire.

"My Lord," he wrote to Lord Middleton, "I am daily informed, that the Queen has but a scurvy opinion of me, and that I did her Majesty bad rather than good service by my journey. My Lord, I find that my enemies have greater power with the Queen than I can have; and to please them, and ease her Majesty, I am resolved to meddle no more with any affairs till the King is of age."[183]

There seemed to have been little need of this voluntary surrender of his employments; for, after undergoing an examination, in writing from the Pope's Nuncio, and after several letters had pa.s.sed between Lord Middleton and himself, the altercation was peremptorily closed by a _lettre de cachet_, and Lord Lovat was committed, according to some statements, to the Bastille,--as others relate, to the Castle of Angouleme.[184] Upon this occasion the hardihood of Lord Lovat's character, which shone out so conspicuously at his death, was thus exemplified.