that nobleman, being a politician as well as a soldier, is alleged to have seen more prospect of personal aggrandisement in an insurrection, which would render his services indispensable, than in a peaceful submission of the Highlands to the House of Hanover. Accordingly, the Earl of Marr came over to Scotland; the standard of the Chevalier St George was raised; and almost all the Highland chiefs of name and eminence assembled their forces at Perth. But Marr, by whom they were commanded, was better fitted for the intrigues of a court, than for leading an army and directing a campaign; and a force of Highlanders, the greatest ever assembled, and which, under Montrose, Dundee, or even Charles Edward, would have made itself master of all Scotland, was (with the exception of the forlorn hope under Mackintosh of Borlum, which shared the fate of the Northumbrian insurgents) completely neutralized, and pent up mountains, though undervalued by some, are nevertheless acknowledged to have at all times been fruitful in providing hardy and gallant men, and such, we hope, shall never be wanting amongst us, who shall be ready to undergo all dangers in defence of your Majesty, and your royal posterity's only rightful title to the crown of Great Britain. Our behaviour shall always witness for us, that with unalterable firmness and zeal we are, "May it please your Majesty, "Your Majesty's most loyal, most obedient "J. CAMERON, of Lochiele, &c. &c. within the friths of Clyde and Forth, by the Duke of Argyle, at the head of a force not exceeding two or three thousand men. The indecisive battle of Sheriffmoor only served to show the incapacity of the Jacobite general, and the valour of the troops he commanded. It was upon this memorable day that young Clanronald fell, leading on the Highlanders of the right wing. His death dispirited the assailants, who began to waver. But Glengarry, chief of a rival branch of the Clan Colla, started from the ranks, and waving his bonnet round his head, cried out, "To-day for revenge, and to-morrow for mourning!" The Highlanders received a new impulse from his words, and, charging with redoubled fury, bore down all before them. But their left wing was less fortunate, being completely routed, and pushed as far as the river Allan, two miles from the field of battle. Both parties retreated after this doubtful action, the Highlanders to Perth, the Duke of Argyle to Stirling but the ultimate advantage rested with the former. At this period of Highland history, Duncan Forbes, afterwards President of the Court of Session, and whose original papers and correspondence are here given to the world, made a considerable figure in public affairs. He was a younger son of the family of Culloden, which had a considerable estate in the neighbourhood of Inverness, and was thus connected by blood and friendship with almost all the respectable families in that district, and with many of the Highland chiefs. Mr Forbes was educated to the law, in which he was early distinguished, not more by eloquence than by sound sense and depth of knowledge. At the time of the insurrection in 1715, his elder brother, John Forbes, of Culloden, as well as himself, engaged with heart and hand in the service of the government, to which they were enabled to render important services, partly through their own influence and exertions, partly by means of a chief, whose history forms a strange illustration of the effect of power and ambition upon a mind naturally shrewd, crafty, and resolute, but wild, tameless, and unprincipled this was the celebrated Simon Fraser, of Lovat, of whose previous history we must give the outlines. Simon was the son of Thomas Fraser of Beaufort, next male heir to the house of Lovat after the death of Hugh Lord Lovat, without issue male. Being regarded as the heir apparent of the chieftainship as well as of the estate of Lovat, he attempted to unite by marriage his own claim with that of the eldest daughter of the deceased Lord Hugh. The dowager Lady Lovat was a daughter of the Marquis of Athole; and that powerful family was therefore induced to take great interest in disposing of the young lady in marriage. Various quarrels, during the time that Simon of Beaufort held a commission in his regiment, had made him particularly unacceptable to the Marquis of Athole and his family, who viewed his assuming the title of Master of Lovat, and proposing himself as a husband for their kinswoman, with a very evil eye: they therefore removed the young lady to Dunkeld, and set on foot a match between her and Lord Saltoun, a Lowland family bearing the name of Fraser. When Lord Saltoun, accompanied by Athole's brother, Lord Mungo Murray, and other connexions of the family, entered upon the territories of the Frasers, with the purpose of paying his respects to the mother of his intended bride, they were surprised, seized, and disarmed, by Simon, to whom the greater part of the clan adhered, as representing his father, their true chief. Having gained this advantage, he attempted to improve it by an act of depravity, which can hardly be accounted for, except by irregularity of intellect, and an eager desire to put a deep dishonour and mortal displeasure upon the family of Athole. As the heiress, the original object of his suit, made no part of his prisoners, but remained secure in the castle of Dunkeld, he abandoned all thoughts of that alliance, and formed the strange and apparently sudden resolution of marrying her mother, the Dowager Lady Lovat. Having raised a gallows on the green before Castle-Downie, where she then resided, to intimidate all who might protect the object of his violence,a lady advanced in life, and whose person is said to have been as little inviting as her character was respectable, he went through the mock ceremony of a wedding, had her dress cut from her person with a dirk, and subjected her to the last extremity of brutal violence, while the pipes played in the next apartment to drown her screams. This out never rage Lovat has positively denied, in the Memoirs of his own Life, where he terms the accusation a chimera raised up to blacken his character: but we shall soon see reason to believe that his assertions were not always squared by matter of fact. Besides, he denies the marriage as well as the force with which it was perpetrated, and declares that he even approached her person; assigning many reasons why she could neither be an object to him of desire nor of ambition. Now, in a letter from his father to the Earl of Argyle, subscribed by himself and other gentlemen of his clan, he says," Also they'll have my son and his complices guilty of a rape, though his wife was married to him by a minister, and they have always lived since as man and wife." 2 It may be more difficult to conceive how Lovat, blackened with such an unmanly crime, was at any time afterwards considered as fit society for men of honour, and particularly how he could become the friend of such a man as Duncan Forbes. This might partly arise from the practice in the Highlands. Even in ordinary cases, the bride was expected to affect some reluctance; and the greater or less degree of violence did not, in these wild times, appear a matter of much consequence. The Scottish law-books are crowded with instances of this sort of raptus, or, as it is called in their law, "forcible abduction 1 Memoirs of the Life of Simon Lord Lovat. London. 1797. 8vo. P. 60. 2 Carstairs's State Papers, p. 434. |