Part 25

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 passes at the Court of St. Germains." It was therefore agreed that this scheme of the invasion should be carried on unknown to that nobleman, 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, 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 assistance. 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 documents, 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." 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. 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 passports, and having no other pass 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 shore 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: and thus provided, he proceeded to Scotland, where he was met by the Duke of Argyle, his friend, and conducted by that nobleman 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 assurances 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." 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 pass 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 principal nobility 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 God 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 assistance he promised them, they would march in three days' advertisement, and beat all the King's enemies in the kingdom." 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 noblemen 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, ready to come forward upon condition of a certain assistance 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.

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 amusement, 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."

But all the promise of this plan was defeated, as it is generally and confidently asserted, 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 passport 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 principal Scottish nobility 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 passport, 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 passed between him and the Duke of Queensbury.

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 associate, and betraying the trust which he had procured through the facility and precipitate confidence of the Queen."

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 instituted; 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.

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." 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."

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 passed 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. Upon this occasion the hardihood of Lord Lovat's character, which shone out so conspicuously at his death, was thus exemplified.

"As they went along the Captain (by this name he was generally called among his friends) discoursed the officer with the same freedom as if he had been carrying him to some merry-meeting; and, on observing on his men's coats a badge all full of points, with this device--monstrorum terror,--'the terror of monsters,' he said wittily, pointing to the men, 'Behold there the terror, and here the monster!' meaning himself. 'And if either of the Kings had a hundred thousand of such, they would be fitter to fright their enemies than to hurt any one of them.' He took occasion, also, to let his attendants know of what a great and noble family he was, and how much blood had been spent in the cause of the Monarchs by his ancestors."

According to Lord Lovat's manifesto, he was at dinner at Bourges, whither he had been sent on some pretext by the French Government, when "a grand fat prevot, accompanied by his lieutenant and twenty-four archers, stole into the drawing-room, and seized Lord Lovat as if he had been an assassin, demanding from him his sword in the King's name. The villain of a prevot," adds his Lordship, "was so obliging as to attend Lord Lovat, with his archers, all the way to Angouleme. He had the luck to procure a cursed little chaise, where Lord Lovat was in a manner buried alive under the unwieldy bulk of this enormous porpoise." This relation, so different from that given by Mr. Arbuthnot, weakens the veracity of both accounts, and leads one to infer that the long narrative by the reverend gentleman of Lord Lovat's adventures in the Bastille were written upon hearsay.

In the Castle of Angouleme Lord Lovat continued for three years; at first, being treated with great severity: "thirty-five days in perfect darkness, where every moment he expected death, and prepared to meet it with becoming fortitude. He listened with eagerness and anxiety to every noise, and, when his door screached upon its hinges, he believed that it was the executioner come to put an end to his unfortunate days."

In this predicament, finding that the last punishment was delayed, he "thought proper to address himself to a grim jailoress, who came every day to throw him something to eat, in the same silent and cautious manner in which you would feed a mad dog." By the "clink of a louis d'or," the prisoner managed to subdue the fidelity of this fair jailoress; she supplied him with pens and paper, and he immediately began a correspondence with his absent friends at the French Court.

After a time, the severity of Lord Lovat's imprisonment was mitigated. The Castle of Angouleme was, in a manner, an open prison, having an extensive park within its walls, with walks open to the inhabitants; and here, through the influence of Monsieur De Torcy, Lord Lovat was permitted to take exercise. His insinuating manners won upon the inhabitants, and the prison of Angouleme became so agreeable to him, that he was often heard to say, that "if there was a beautiful and enchanting prison in the world, it was the Castle of Angouleme."

Meantime, the scheme of invasion was by no means relinquished on the part of the Jacobites, although it had received a considerable check from the treachery of its agents.

It is stated by some historians that scarcely had Lord Lovat quitted England, than Sir John Maclean, his cousin-german, and Campbell, of Glendarnel, disclosed the plot to Lord Athole and Lord Tarbat. These noblemen instantly went to Queen Anne, and accused the Duke of Queensbury of high treason, in carrying on a villanous plot with the Court of St. Germains. Queensbury defended himself before the House of Lords, and the accusation, which rested chiefly on the assertions of Ferguson, the famous hatcher of plots, was declared false and scandalous, and Ferguson was committed to Newgate. The reluctance of the Duke of Queensbury to give up the correspondence, excited, however, suspicions of his integrity; which, as Harley, Lord Oxford, expressed it, could only be cleared up by Fraser, Lord Lovat; but Lord Lovat was not then to be found.

In all this singular and complicated affair, it is impossible to help wondering at the folly and audacity which Lord Lovat had shown in returning to France, conscious of having placed himself at the mercy of ruthless politicians, and aware that in that country he could expect no redress nor protection from law. But the original crime for which he had been sent forth, an outlaw from his country, was the source of all his subsequent mistakes and misfortunes. France was open to him; Scotland was closed; and England was a scene of peril to one who trod on fragile ice, beneath which a deep gulf yawned.

Lord Lovat had been two years in prison before any of his former friends, for even he was not wholly devoid of partisans, interfered with success in his behalf; and it was the good, old-fashioned feeling of kindred that finally moved the Marquis De Frezeliere, or Frezel, or Frezeau de la Frezeliere, to interest himself in the fate of his despised, and perhaps forgotten, relative.