Part 31

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."

In all his letters he characterizes Charles Edward, to whom he had just pledged his allegiance, as the "pretended Prince." His affectation of zeal in the cause of Government, his pretence of an earnest endeavour to arrest the career of the very persons whom he was exciting to action, his exertions with my "cousin Gortuleg," and his delight to find that "honest Kilbockie," whom he had been vilifying, had not stirred, and would do nothing without his consent, might be amusing if they were not traits of such wanton irreclaimable falsehood in an aged man, soon to be called to an account, before a heavenly tribunal, for a long career of crime and injury to his neighbours.

If any further instance of his duplicity can be read with patience, the following letter to Lochiel, who, according to Lovat, had a very affectionate friendship for him, affords a curious specimen of cunning.

"1745.

"Dear Lochiel,

"I fear you have been over rash in going ere affairs were ripe. You are in a dangerous state. The Elector's General, Cope, is in your rear, hanging at your tail with three thousand men, such as have not been seen here since Dundee's affair, and we have no force to meet him. If the Macphersons will take the field I would bring out my lads to help the work; and 'twixt the two we might cause Cope to keep his Christmas here; but only Cluny is earnest in the cause, and my Lord Advocate plays at cat and mouse with me; but times may change, I may bring him to Saint Johnstone's tippet. Meantime look to yourselves, for ye may expect many a sour face and sharp weapons in the South. I'll aid when I can, but my prayers are all I can give at present. My service to the Prince, but I wish he had not come here so empty-handed. Siller would go far in the Highlands. I send this by Evan Fraser, whom I have charged to give it to yourself; for were Duncan to find it, it would be my head to an onion. Farewell!

"Your faithful friend, "LOVAT."

"For the Laird of Lochiel. "Yese."

But perhaps the most odious feature in this part of Lovat's career was his treachery to Duncan Forbes, whose exertions had placed his unworthy client in possession of his property, and whose early ties of neighbourhood ought, at any rate, to have secured him from danger. A party of the Stratherric Frasers, kinsmen and clansmen of Lovat's, attacked Culloden House, as there was every reason to believe with the full concurrence of Lovat. Forbes, who was perfectly aware of the source whence the assault proceeded, appeared to treat it lightly, talked of it as an "idle attempt," never hinting that he guessed Lovat's participation in the affair, and only lamenting that the ruffians had "robbed the gardener and the poor weaver, who was a common benefit to the country." Lovat, as it has been sagaciously remarked, the guilty man, took it up much more knowingly.

This tissue of artifice was carried on for some weeks; first by a vehement desire to have arms sent in order to repel the rebels, then by hints that the inclinations of his people, and the extensive popularity of the cause began to make it doubtful whether he could control their rash ardour. "Your Lordship may remember," he wrote to Forbes, "that I had a vast deal of trouble to prevent my men rising at the beginning of this affair; but now the contagion is so general, by the late success of the Highlanders, that they laugh at any man that would dissuade them from going; so that I really know not how to behave. I really wish I had been in any part of Britain these twelve months past, both for my health and other considerations." The feebleness of his health was a point on which, for some reasons or other, he continually insisted. It is not often that one can hear an aged man complain, without responding by pity and sympathy.

"I'm exceeding glad to know that your Lordship is in great health and spirits: I am so unlucky that my condition is the reverse; for I have neither health nor spirits. I have entirely lost the use of my limbs, for I can neither walk nor mount a horseback without the help of three or four men, which makes my life both uneasy and melancholy. But I submit to the will of God." This account, indeed, rather confirms a tradition that Lord Lovat, after the separation from his wife, sank into a state of despondency, and lay two years in bed previous to the Rebellion of 1745. When the news of the Prince's landing was brought to him, he cried out, "Lassie, bring me my brogues.--I'll rise too."

At length, this wary traitor took a decisive step. His dilatoriness had made many of the Pretender's friends uneasy, and showed too plainly that he had been playing a double game. He was urged by some emissaries of Charles Edward "to throw off the mask," upon which he pulled off his hat and exclaimed "there it is!" He then, in the midst of his assembled vassals, drank "confusion to the white horse, and all the generation of them." He declared that he would "cut off" in a moment any of his tenants who refused to join the cause, and expressed his conviction that as sure as the sun shined his "master would prevail."

This was in the latter part of the summer: on the twenty-first of September the battle of Preston Pans raised the hopes of the Jacobites to the highest pitch, and Alexander Macleod was sent to the Highland chieftains to stimulate their loyalty and to secure their rising. Upon his visiting Castle Downie he found Lovat greatly elated by the recent victory, which he declared was not to be paralleled. He now began to assemble his men, and to prepare in earnest for that part which he had long intended to adopt; "but," observes Sir Walter Scott, "with that machiavelism inherent in his nature, he resolved that his own personal interest in the insurrection should be as little evident as possible, and determined that his son, whose safety he was bound, by the laws of God and man, to prefer to his own, should be his stalking-horse, and in case of need his scape-goat."

Lord President Forbes, who had been addressing himself to the Highland chieftains, exhorting the well-affected to bestir themselves, and entreating those who were devoted to the Pretender not to involve themselves and their families in ruin, expostulated by letter with Lord Lovat upon the course which his son was now openly pursuing, pointing out how greatly it would reflect upon the father, whose co-operation or countenance he supposed to be impossible. The letters written on this subject by Forbes are admirable, and show a deep interest not only in the security of his country, but also in the fate of the young man, who afterwards redeemed his involuntary errors by a career of the highest respectability.

"You have now so far pulled off the mask," writes the President, "that we can see the mark you aimed at." "You sent away your son, and the best part of your clan," he adds, after a remonstrance full of good sense and candour, "to join the Pretender, with as little concern as if no danger had attended such a step. And I am sorry to tell you, my Lord, that I could sooner undertake to plead the cause of any one of those unhappy gentlemen who are actually in arms against his Majesty; and I could say more in defence of their conduct, than I could in defence of your Lordship's."

Can any instance of moral degradation be adduced more complete than this? The implication of a son by a father, who had used his absolute authority to drive his son into an active part in the affairs of the day?

"I received the honour of your Lordship's letter," writes Lovat, in reply, "late last night, of yesterday's date; and I own that I never received any one like it since I was born; and I give your Lordship the thousand thanks for the kind freedom you use with me in it; for I see by it that for my misfortune of having ane obstinate stubborn son, and ane ungrateful kindred, my family must go to destruction, and I must lose my life in my old age. Such usage looks rather like a Turkish or Persian government than like a British. Am I, my Lord, the first father that had ane undutiful and unnatural son? or am I the first man that has made a good estate, and saw it destroyed in his own time? but I never heard till now, that the foolishness of a son, would take away the liberty and life of a father, that lived peaceably, that was ane honest man, and well inclined to the rest of mankind. But I find the longer a man lives, the more wonders, and extraordinary things he sees.

"Now, my Lord, as to the civil war that occasions my misfortune; and in which, almost the whole kingdom is involved on one side or other. I humbly think that men should be moderate on both sides, since it is morally impossible to know the event. For thousands, nay, ten thousands on both sides are positive that their own party will carry; and suppose that this Highland army should be utterly defeat, and that the Government should carry all in triumph, no man can think that any king upon the throne would destroy so many ancient families that are engaged in it."

Upon the news of the Pretender's troops marching to England, the Frasers, headed by the Master of Lovat, formed a sort of blockade round Fort Augustus; upon which the Earl of Loudon, with a large body of the well-affected clans, marched, in a very severe frost during the month of December, to the relief of Fort Augustus. His route lay through Stratherric, Lord Lovat's estate, on the south side of Loch Ness. Fort Augustus surrendered without opposition; and the next visit which Lord Loudon paid was to Castle Downie, where he prevailed on Lord Lovat to go with him to Inverness, and to remain there under Loudon's eye, until his clan should have been compelled to bring in their arms. Lord Lovat was now very submissive; he promised that this should be done in three days, and highly condemned the conduct of his son. But he still delayed to surrender the arms; and, at last, found means, in spite of his lameness which he was always lamenting, to get out of the house where he was lodged by a back passage, and to make his escape to the Isle of Muily, in Glenstrathfarrer. Here he occupied himself in exciting all the clans, especially his own Frasers, to join in the insurrection. A scheme having been submitted to the Duke of Cumberland, for the prevention of all future disturbances by transporting all those who had been found in arms to America, Lord Lovat had this document translated into Gaelic, and circulated in the Highlands, in order to exasperate the natives against the Duke, and to show that that General intended to extirpate them root and branch. Unhappily, the event did not serve to dispel those suspicions. This manifesto, as it was called, was read publicly in the churches every Sunday.

The march of the rebels to Inverness drove Lord Loudon to retire into Sutherland early in 1746, and President Forbes had accompanied him in his retreat. It was, therefore, again practicable for Lord Lovat to return to his own territory; and we find him, before the battle of Culloden, alternately at Castle Downie, or among some of his adherents, chiefly at the House of Fraser of Gortuleg, from which the following letter which exemplifies much of the character of Lovat, appears to have been written.

"March 20, 1746.

"My dearest Child,