Part 32

"Gortulegg came home last night, with Inocralachy's brother; and the two Sandy Fairfield's son, and mine: and I am glad to know, that you are in perfect health, which you may be sure I wish the continuance of. I am sure for all Sandy's reluctance to come to this country, he will be better pleased with it than any where else; for he has his commerade, Gortuleg's son, to travell up and down with him; I shall not desire him to stay ane hour in the house but when he pleases.

"My cousin, Mr. William Fraser, tells me that the Prince sent notice to Sir Alexander Bennerman, by Sir John M'Donell, that he would go some of these days, and view my country of the Aird, and fish salmon upon my river of Beauly, I do not much covet that great honour at this time as my house is quite out of order, and that I am not at home myself nor you: however, if the Prince takes the fancy to go, you must offer to go along with him, and offer him a glass of wine and any cold meat you can get there. I shall send Sanday Doan over immediately, if you think that the Prince is to go: so I have ordered the glyd post to be here precisely this night.

"Mr. William Fraser says, that Sir Alexander Bennerman will not give his answer to Sir John M'Donell, till he return about the Prince's going to Beaufort; and that cannot be before Saturday morning. So I beg, my dearest child, you may consider seriously of this, not to let us be affronted; for after Sir Alexander and other gentlemen were entertained at your house, if the Prince should go and meet with no reception, it will be ane affront, and a stain upon you and me while we breathe. So, my dearest child, don't neglect this; for it is truely of greater consequence to our honour than you can imagine, tho' in itself it's but a maggot: but, I fancy, since Cumberland is comeing so near, that these fancy's will be out of head. However, I beg you may not neglect to acquaint me (if it was by ane express) when you are rightly informed that the Prince is going. I have been extreamly bad these four days past with a fever and a cough; but I thank God I am better since yesterday affernoon. I shall be glad to see you here, if you think it proper for as short or as long a time as you please. All in this family offer you their compliments: and I ever am, more than I can express, my dearest child, your most affected and dutiful father,

"----."

"P.S.--The Prince's reason for going to my house is, to see a salmon kill'd with the rod, which he never saw before; and if he proposes that fancy, he must not be disappointed.

"I long to hear from you by the glyd post some time this night. I beg, my dear child, you may send me any news you have from the east, and from the north, and from the south."

It was not until after the battle of Culloden that Charles Edward and Lord Lovat first met. In that engagement, Lovat's infirmities, as well as his precautions, had prevented his taking an active part; but his son, the Master of Lovat, whose energy in the cause which he had unwillingly espoused, met the praise of Prince Charles, led his clan up to the encounter, and was one of the few who effected a junction with the Prince on the morning of the battle. Fresh auxiliaries from the clan Fraser were hastening in at the very moment of that ill-judged action; and they behaved with their accustomed bravery, and were permitted to march off unattacked, with their pipes playing, and their colours flying. The great body of the clan Fraser were led by Charles Fraser, junior, of Inverlaltochy, as Lieutenant-Colonel in the absence of the Master of Lovat, who was coming up with three hundred men, but met the Highlanders flying. The brave Inverlaltochy was killed; and the fugitives were sorely harassed by Kingston's light horse.

The battle of Culloden occurring shortly afterwards, decided the question of Lord Lovat's political bias. Very different accounts have been transmitted of the feelings and conduct of Prince Charles after the fury of the contest had been decided. By some it has been stated, that he lost on that sad occasion those claims to a character for valour which even his enemies had not hitherto refused him; but Mr. Maxwell has justified the unfortunate and inexperienced young man.

"The Prince," he says, "seeing his army entirely routed, and all his endeavours to rally the men fruitless, was at last prevailed upon to retire. Most of his horse assembled around his person to secure his retreat, which was made without any danger, for the enemy advanced very leisurely over the ground. They were too happy to have got so cheap a victory over a Prince and an enemy that they had so much reason to dread. They made no attack where there was any body of the Prince's men together, but contented themselves with sabering such unfortunate people as fell in his way single and disarmed."

"If he did less at Culloden than was expected from him," adds this partial, but honest follower, "'twas only because he had formerly done more than could be expected." He justly blames the Prince's having come over without any officer of experience to guide him. "He was too young himself, and had too little experience to perform all the functions of a general; and though there are examples of princes that seem to have been born generals, they had the advice and assistance of old experienced officers, men that understood, in detail, all that belongs to any army."

Lord Elcho, in his manuscript, thus accounts for the censures which were cast upon the Prince by those who shared his misfortunes.

"What displeased the people of fashion (consequence) was, that he did not seem to have the least sense of what they had done for him; but, after all, would afterwards say they had done nothing but their duty, as his father's subjects were bound to do.

"And there were people about him that took advantage to represent the Scotch to him as a mutinous people, and that it was not so much for him they were fighting as for themselves; and repeated to him all their bad behaviour to Charles the First and Charles the Second, and put it to him in the worst light, that at the battle of Culloden he thought that all the Scots in general were a parcel of traitors. And he would have continued in the same mind had he got out of the country immediately; but the care they took of his person when he was hiding made him change his mind, and affix treason only to particulars."

After the battle was decided, and the plain of Culloden abandoned to the fury of an enemy more merciless and insatiable than any who ever before or after answered to an English name, the Prince retired across a moor in the direction of Fort Augustus, and, according to Maxwell, slept that night at the house of Fraser of Gortuleg; and there for the first time saw Lord Lovat. But this interview is declared by Arbuthnot, who appears to have gathered his facts chiefly from local information, in the Castle of Downie; and the testimony of Sir Walter Scott confirms the assertion. "A lady," writes Sir Walter, "who, then a girl, was residing in Lord Lovat's family, described to us the unexpected appearance of Prince Charles and his flying attendants at Castle Downie. The wild and desolate vale on which she was gazing with indolent composure, was at once so suddenly filled with horsemen riding furiously towards the Castle, that, impressed with the idea that they were fairies, who, according to men, are visible only from one twinkle of the eyelid to another, she strove to refrain from the vibration which she believed would occasion the strange and magnificent apparition to become invisible. To Lord Lovat it brought a certainty more dreadful than the presence of fairies or even demons. The tower on which he had depended had fallen to crush him, and he only met the Chevalier to exchange mutual condolences."

The Prince, it is affirmed, rushed into the chamber where Lovat, supported by men, for he could not stand without assistance, awaited his approach. The unhappy fugitive broke into lamentations. "My Lord," he exclaimed, "we are undone; my army is routed: what will become of poor Scotland?" Unable to utter any more, he sank fainting on a bed near him. Lord Lovat immediately summoned assistance, and by proper remedies the Prince was restored to a consciousness of his misfortunes, and to the recollection that Castle Downie, a spot upon which the vengeance of the Government was sure to fall, could be no safe abiding place for him or for his followers.

Such was the commencement of those wanderings, to the interest and romance of which no fiction can add. After this conference was ended, Prince Charles went to Invergarie; Lord Lovat prepared for flight.

His first place of retreat was to a mountain, whence he could behold the field of battle; he collected his officers and men around him, and they gazed with mournful interest upon the plain of Culloden. Heaps of wounded men were lying in their blood; others were still pursued by the soldiers of an army whose orders were, from their royal General, to give no quarter; fire and sword were everywhere; vengeance and fury raged on the moor watered by the river Nairn. Here, too, the unhappy Frasers and their chief might view Culloden House, a large fabric of stone, graced with a noble avenue of great length leading to the house, and surrounded by a park covered with heather. Here Charles Edward had slept the night before the battle. The remembrance of many social hours, of the hospitality of that old hall, might recur at this moment to the mind of Lovat. But whatever might be his reflections, his fortitude remained unbroken. He turned to the sorrowful clan around them, and addressed them. He recurred to his former predictions: "I have foretold," he said, still attempting to keep up his old influence over the minds of his clans, "that our enemies would destroy us with the fire and sword; they have begun with me, nor will they cease until they have ravaged all the country." He still, however, exhorted his captains to keep together their men, and to maintain a mountain war, so that at least they might obtain better terms of peace. Having thus counselled them, he was carried upon the shoulders of his followers to the still farther mountains, from one of which he is said, by a singular stroke of retributive justice, to have beheld Castle Downie, the scene of his crime, to maintain the splendour of which he had sacrificed every principle, and compassed every crime, burned by the infuriated enemy. Nine hundred men, under Brigadier Mordaunt, were detached for this purpose.

In one of the Highland fastnesses Lovat remained some time; but the blood-thirsty Cumberland was eager in pursuit. Parties of soldiers were sent out in search of Lovat, and he soon found that it was no longer safe to remain in the vicinity of Beaufort. He fled, in the first instance, to Cawdor Castle. In this famous structure, with its iron-grated doors, its ancient tapestry hanging over secret passages and obscure approaches, he took refuge. In one of its towers, in a small low chamber beneath the roof, the wretched old man concealed himself for some months. When he was at last obliged to quit it, he descended by means of a rope from his chamber.

He had still lost neither resolution nor energy. On the fourth of May, fifteen of the Jacobite chieftains, Lord Lovat among the number, met in the Island of Mortlaig, to concert measures for raising a body of men to resist the victorious troops. On this occasion Lord Lovat declared that they need not be uneasy, since he had no doubt but that they should be able to collect eight or ten thousand men to fight the Elector of Hanover's troops. Cameron of Lochiel, Murray of Broughton, and several other leaders of distinction were present; Lord Lovat was attended by many of his own clan, who were armed with dirks, swords, and pistols, and marked by wearing sprays of yew in their bonnets. But the conference broke up without any important result. The leaders embraced each other, drank to Prince Charles's health, and separated. On this occasion Lord Lovat headed that party among the Jacobites who still looked for aid from France, and abjured the notion of surrendering to the conqueror. Still hunted, to use his own expression, "like a fox," through the main land, Lovat now got off in a boat to the Island of Morar, where he thought himself secure from his enemies; but it was decreed that his iniquitous life should not close in peaceful obscurity. It was not long before he heard that a party of the King's troops had arrived in pursuit of him, and a detachment of the garrison of Fort William, on board the Terror and Furnace sloops, was also despatched, to make descents on different parts of the island. Lovat retreated into the woods; Captain Mellon, who commanded the detachment searched every town, village, and house; but not finding the fugitive, he resolved to traverse the woods, planting parties at the openings to intercept an escape. In the course of his researches he passed a very old tree, which, from some slits in its trunk, he and his men perceived to be hollow. One of the soldiers, peeping into the aperture, thought he saw a man's leg; upon which he summoned his captain, who, on investigating farther, found on one side a large opening, in which stood a pair of legs, the rest of the figure being hidden within the hollow of the tree. This was, however, quickly discovered to be Lord Lovat, for whom this party had then been three days in search. He was wrapped in blankets, to protect his aged limbs from the cold.

Thus discovered, Lovat was forced to surrender, but his spirit rose with the occasion: he told Captain Mellon that "he had best take care of him; for if he did not, he should make him answer for his conduct before a set of gentlemen the very sight of whom would make him tremble." He was taken, in the first instance, to Fort William, where he was treated with humanity, in obedience to the express orders of the Duke of Cumberland. From this prison Lovat wrote a letter to the Duke, reminding his Royal Highness of the services which he had performed in 1715, and of the favour shown him by George the First. "I often carried your Royal Highness," pursues the unhappy old man, "in my arms, in the palaces of Kensington and of Hampton Court, to hold you up to your royal grandfather, that he might embrace you, for he was very fond of you and the young princesses." He then represented to the Duke that if mercy were shown him, and he "might have the honour to kiss the Duke's hand, he might do more service to the King and Government than destroying a hundred such old and very infirm men like me, (past seventy, without the least use of my hands, legs, or knees,) can be of advantage in any shape to the Government."

He was conveyed soon after this letter, which is dated June the twenty-second, 1746, to Fort Augustus. He had requested that a litter might be prepared for him, for he was not able either to stand, walk, or ride. On the fifteenth of July he was removed, under a strong guard, to Stirling, where a party of Lord Mark Ker's dragoons received him. After a few days rest he passed through Edinburgh for the last time; thence to Berwick, and on the twenty-fifth he began his last journey under the escort of sixty dragoons commanded by Major Gardner. His journey to London was divided into twenty stages, and he was to travel one stage a day. It was, indeed, of importance to the Government that he should reach London alive, since many disclosures were expected from Lovat. On reaching Newcastle three days afterwards he appeared to be in a very feeble state, and walked from his coach to his lodgings supported by two of the dragoons. As he travelled along in a sort of cage, or horse-litter, the acclamations and hisses of the populace everywhere assailed him; but his spirits were unbroken, and he talked confidently of his return.

But as he drew near London this security diminished. He happened to reach London a few days before the unhappy Jacobite noblemen were beheaded on Tower Hill. On his way to the Tower he passed the scaffold which was erected for their execution. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I suppose it will not be long before I shall make my exit there."

He was received in the Tower by the Lieutenant-Governor, who conducted him to the apartment prepared for his reception. Here, reclining in an elbow chair, he is said to have broken out into reflections upon his eventful and singular career. He uttered many moral sentiments, and expressed himself, as many other men have done on similar occasions, perfectly satisfied with his own intentions. Such was the self-deception of this extraordinary man.

In this prison Lovat remained during five months without being brought to trial. But the delay was of infinite importance; it prepared him to quit, with what may be almost termed heroism, a life which he had employed in iniquity. Without remembering this interval, during which ample time for preparation had been afforded, the hardihood which could sport with the most solemn of all subjects, would shock rather than astonish. In consideration of the conduct of many of our state prisoners on the scaffold, we must recollect how familiarized they had previously become with death, in those gloomy chambers whence they could see many a fellow sufferer issue, to shed his blood on the same scaffold which would soon be re-erected for themselves.

During his imprisonment, Lovat had the affliction of hearing that his estates, after being plundered of everything and destroyed by fire, were given by the Duke of Cumberland to James Fraser of Cullen Castle. He was therefore left without a shilling of revenue during his confinement, and was thus treated as a convicted prisoner. In this situation he was reduced to the utmost distress, and indebted solely to the bounty of a kinsman, administered through Governor Williamson, for subsistence. At length, early in the year 1747, upon preferring a petition to the House of Lords, these grievances were in a great measure redressed. Yet the unhappy prisoner had sustained many hardships. Among others the legal plunder of his strong box, containing the sum of seven hundred pounds, and of many valuables.

After much deliberation on the part of the Crown lawyers, Lord Lovat was impeached of high treason. "We learn," says Mr. Anderson, "from Lord Mansfield's speech in the Sutherland cause, that much deliberation was necessary. It was foreseen that his Lordship would have recourse to art. If he was tried as a commoner he might claim to be a peer; if tried as a peer he might claim to be a commoner. Everything was fully considered; the true solid ground upon which he was tried as a peer, was the presumption in favour of the heirs male."

On Monday, the ninth of March, the proceedings were commenced against Lord Lovat; and a renewal took place of that scene which Horace Walpole declared to be "most solemn and fine;--a coronation is a puppet-show, and all the splendour of it idle; but this sight at once feasted the eyes, and engaged all one's passions."

Lord Lovat was now dragged forth to play the last scene of his eventful life. His size had by this time become enormous, so that when he had first entered the Tower it was jestingly said that the doors must be enlarged to receive him. He could neither walk nor ride, as he was almost helpless; he was deaf, purblind, eighty years of age, ignorant of English law, and it was therefore not a matter of surprise that the high-born tribes, who thronged to his trial, were disappointed in the brilliancy of his parts, and in the readiness of his wit. "I see little of parts in him," observes Walpole, "nor attribute much to that cunning for which he is so famous; it might catch wild Highlanders." Singular, indeed, must have been the contrast between Lord Lovat and the polished assembly around him: the Lord High Steward, Hardwicke, comely, and endowed with a fine voice, but "curiously searching for occasions to bow to the Minister, Henry Pelham," and asking at all hands what he was to do. The rude Highland clansmen, vassals of Lord Lovat's, but witnesses against him; above all, the blot and scourge of the Jacobite cause, Murray of Broughton, who was the chief witness against the prisoner, must have formed an assembly of differing characters not often to be seen, and never to be forgotten.