Volume II Part 15 (1/2)
”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 n.o.ble family he was, and how much blood had been spent in the cause of the Monarchs by his ancestors.”[185]
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 a.s.sa.s.sin, demanding from him his sword in the King's name.
The villain of a prevot,” adds his Lords.h.i.+p, ”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.[186]
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 fort.i.tude. 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.”[187] 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 n.o.blemen 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 a.s.sertions 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;[188] 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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.
”The house of Frezeliere, which ascends,” says Lord Lovat, ”in an uninterrupted line, and without any unequal alliance, to the year 1030, with its sixty-four quarterings in its armorial bearings, and all n.o.ble, its t.i.tles of seven hundred years standing in the Abbey of Notre Dame de Noyers in Touraine, and its many other circ.u.mstances of inherent dignity,” was, as we have seen, derived from the same blood with the family of Frezel, or Fraser. In former, and more prosperous days, a common and authentic Act of Recognition of this relations.h.i.+p had been drawn up at Paris by the Marquis and his many ill.u.s.trious kinsmen, the three sons of the Marshal Luxembourg de Montmorenci; and executed, on the other hand, by Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, and by his brother, and several of their nearest kin.
The Marquis De Frezeliere appears to have been a fine specimen of that proud and valiant aristocracy, not even then wholly broken down in France by the effeminacy of the times. He was haughty and determined, ”an eagle in the concerns of war,” and of a spirit not to be subdued. By his powerful intercession, checked only by the disgust which Mary of Modena felt towards Lovat, he procured from the King of France permission for his relative to repair to the waters of Bourbon for the restoration of his health. This order was signed by Louis the Fourteenth, and countersigned by the Marquis De Torcy, as ”Colbert.”
Four days afterwards, a second order was received by the authorities at Angouleme, by which his Majesty commanded that Lord Lovat, after the restoration of his health, should repair to his town of Saumur, until further orders. ”At the same time,” says Lord Lovat, ”he was permitted to take with him the Chevalier De Frezel, his brother.” These orders were dated August the second and August the fourteenth, 1707.
The brother, whom Lord Lovat always designates as the Chevalier de Fraser, had been placed with a Doctor of the Civil Law at Bourges, in order to learn French, and the profession of a civilian. He had been arrested at the same time with Lord Lovat; and was now, after a temporary separation, permitted to share the pleasures of a removal to Bourbon. According to Lord Lovat, a pension from the French Government was settled upon this young man as long as he resided in France; and Lord Lovat received also the ample income of four thousand francs, (one hundred and sixty-six pounds, thirteen s.h.i.+llings and fourpence,) from the same quarter: nor was it in the power of his enemies at St. Germains to induce Louis the Fourteenth to withdraw this allowance.[189]
The Marquis de Frezeliere continued firm in his regard towards Lord Lovat. On his road to Saumur, Lord Lovat was received and entertained at the chateau of the Marquis with hospitality and kindness, and no opportunity was omitted by which the Marquis could testify the sincerity of his interest in the fate of his relative. Meantime daily reports were circulated that the projected insurrection, far from being abandoned, had been revived, and that the Chevalier was going to undertake the conduct of the invasion in person. But that young Prince was still inexorable to any pet.i.tion in favour of Lovat, and was wisely resolved not to let him partic.i.p.ate in the operations. ”Were he not already in prison,” he is stated by Lovat himself to have said, ”I would make it my first request to the King of France to throw him into one.” This fixed aversion was owing to the determined dislike of the Queen to abdicate, as it was her resolution, if there were no other person to be employed, never to make Lord Lovat an instrument of her affairs.
Lovat, therefore, now clearly perceived that, during the life of the Queen and of Lord Middleton, he must look for nothing favourable from the Court of St. Germains. That of Versailles, although, by his account, decidedly friendly to his release, refused to support those whom the Chevalier had renounced. He resolved, therefore, to make every exertion to return to his own country, and to place himself once more at the head of his clan, who, in spite of his crimes, in spite of his long absence and imprisonment, had still refused to acknowledge any other chief. The attempt was indeed desperate, but Lovat resolved to risk it, and to escape, at all events, from France.
To the vengeance of the Athole family, Lord Lovat always imputed much of the severity shown him by the Court at St. Germains: and it is probable that the representations of that powerful house may have contributed to the odium in which the character of Lord Lovat was universally held. His own deeds were, however, sufficient to ensure him universal hatred. The great source of surprise is, that this unscrupulous intriguer, this unprincipled member of society, seems, at times, during the course of his eventful life, to have met with friends, firm in their faith to him, and to have enjoyed, in that respect, the privilege of virtue.
The young heiress of Lovat, Amelia Fraser, was now married to Alexander Mackenzie, son of Lord Prestonhall; Mr. Mackenzie had adopted the t.i.tle of Fraserdale; and a son had been born of this marriage, who had been named after his grandfather, Hugh. Fraserdale and his lady had taken possession both of the t.i.tle and estates of Lord Lovat, during his absence; but, since the dignity and estates had always been enjoyed by an heir-male, from the origin of the house of Fraser, these claimants to the estate of the outlawed Lovat spread a report that the honours and lands had, in old times, belonged to the Bissets, whose daughter and only child had married a Fraser, from whom the estates had descended to the heir of that line. A suit was inst.i.tuted against Lord Lovat and, on the ninth of March, 1703, Lord Prestonhall, the father of Fraserdale, himself adjudged the Lords.h.i.+p and Barony of Lovat to Amelia Fraser. An entail of the estates and honours upon the heirs of the marriage between Amelia Fraser and Mackenzie of Fraserdale, was then executed, and the former a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Lady Lovat, whilst her son was designated the Master of Lovat.[190]
Lord Prestonhall seems to have acted with the same unscrupulous spirit which characterizes most of the business transactions of those who intermeddled with the forfeited or disputed estates. It was his aim, as the Memorial for the Lovat case, subsequently tried, sets forth, to extirpate the clan of the Frasers, and to raise that of the Mackenzies upon its ruins. ”Accordingly,” says Mr. Anderson, in his curious and elaborate account of the house of Fraser, ”he framed a deed, with the sly contrivance of sinking the Frasers into the Mackenzies, by encouraging the former to change their names, and providing, as a condition of the estate, that should they return to, and rea.s.sume their ancient name of Fraser, they should forfeit their right.”[191]
The arms of Mackenzie, Macleod of Lewis, and Bisset, were to be quartered with those of Fraser, in this deed, which bore the signature of Robert Mackenzie, and was dated the twenty-third of February, 1706.
This decision, and the deed which followed it, appeared to complete the misfortunes of the disgraced and banished Lord Lovat. But, in fact, the act of injustice and rapacity, so repugnant to the spirit of the Highlanders,--this attempt to force upon the heirs of Fraser a foreign name, and thus to lower the dignity of the clan, was the most auspicious event that could happen to the wretched outlaw. What was his exact condition, or what were his circ.u.mstances, during the seven years of his imprisonment, three of which were pa.s.sed under strict, though not harsh control, in the Castle of Angouleme, and four, apparently on his parole, in the Fortress of Saumur, it is not easy to describe. The cause of the obscurity of his fate at this time, is not that too little, but that too much, has been stated relative to his movements.
It is always an inconvenience when one cannot take a man's own story in evidence. According to Lord Lovat's own account, these weary years were spent in visits to different members of the n.o.bility. The charming Countess de la Roche succeeded the Marquis de la Frezeliere as his friend and patroness, after the death of the Marquis in 1711, an event which, according to Lord Lovat's statement, brought him nearly to the grave from grief. The Countess was a woman of a masculine understanding, and of admirable talents, bold, insinuating, and ambitious. Her education in the household of the great Conde, and her long attendance upon the Princess de Conti, the hero's daughter, had qualified her for those arduous and delicate intrigues, without which no woman of intellect at that period in France might think herself sufficiently distinguished.
The appointment of the Duke of Hamilton as amba.s.sador at the Court of Louis, rendered such a friend as Madame de la Roche, who was also distantly related to him, very essential for the prosecution of Lord Lovat's present schemes, which were, to obtain his release, and to procure employment in any enterprise concerted by the Jacobites against England.
Fate, however, relieved Lord Lovat from one apprehension. The Duke of Hamilton was killed in a duel by Lord Mohun, in Hyde Park; and this fresh source of danger was thus annihilated. The kindness which the famous Colbert, Marquis de Torcy, had shown to Lord Lovat, and the promise which he had given to that n.o.bleman, not to break his parole, and to return to England, seems to have been the only check to a long-cherished project on the part of Lord Lovat to escape to London, and to risk all that law might there inflict. It is uncertain in what manner, during the tedious interval between intrigues and intrigues, he solaced his leisure. It has been stated by one of his biographers that he actually joined a society of Jesuits,--by another, that he took priest's orders, and acted as parochial priest at St. Omers. Of course, in compiling a defence of his life, the wary man of the world omitted such particulars as would, at any rate, betray inconsistency, and beget suspicion. His object in becoming a Jesuit, is said to have been to hear confessions and to discover intrigues. With respect to the report of his having entered the order of Jesuits, it is justly alleged in answer, that no Jesuit is permitted to hear confessions until he has been fifteen years a member of the society, or, at least, in priest's orders.[192]