Volume II Part 14 (1/2)
Lord Lovat's usual readiness in difficulties did not fail him; he was a ruined man, and it was puerile to shrink from expedients He applied to the Pope's nuncio, and expressed his readiness to becoed, and the arch hypocrite,a recantation of all his former errors, professed hied the Pope as its head This avowal cost him little, for he was by no ained hiayJa his personal hoe; but Louis the Fourteenth was less scrupulous, and the Marquis de Torcy, the favourite and Minister of the French King, presented the abjured of England and Scotland at the Palais of Versailles It is difficult to picture to oneself the savage and er, the destroyer, the outlaw, conversing, as he is said to have done, with the saintly and sagacious Madaant and refined wo this depraved, impenitent man, with the rumour of his recent crimes still fresh in their memory, into their polished circles Yet they made no scruple in that dissolute city, to associate with the abandoned wretch who dared not return to Scotland, and who only looked for a pardon for his cris of a faction
Lord Lovat well knew the value of feht of fashi+on--he adapted his language and sentiments to the tone of those around the Court He was a man of considerable conversational talents; ”his deportraceful and manly” When he was first presented to Louis the Fourteenth, as desirous of asking so the invasion of Scotland, he is said to have prepared an elaborate address, which he forgot in the confusion produced by the splendour around him, but to have delivered an able exteood taste, upon the spur of the reat amusement of Louis, who learned from De Torcy the circumstance[163]
His advancement at the Court of Versailles was interrupted by the necessity of his return to England, in order to obtain at last a final pardon froular that the instruht to procure this remission was William Carstairs, that extraordinary n of James the Second the thumb-screw, and had been threatened with the iron boot, for refusing to disclose the correspondence between the friends of the Revolution Mr Carstairs was now secretary to King William, and he little knehen he counselled that monarch to pardon Lovat, what a partisan of the Jacobite cause he was thus restoring to society
Histo a dislike which had arisen in the ainst the Athole family; and a pardon was procured for Lord Lovat The affair was concluded at Loo, whither Lovat followed the King froland ”He is a bold man,” the Monarch is said to have observed to Carstairs, ”to come so far under sentence of death”
The pardon was unliainst Lady Athole, it was now ”a coinable crime” The royal seal was appended to it, and there reet that of Scotland also affixed
Lovat entrusted the ement of that delicate and difficult matter to a cousin, a Simon Fraser also, by whose treachery it was suppressed; and Lord Seafield caused another pardon to pass the great seal, in which the treason against King William was alone specified; and other offences were left unpardoned Upon this, Lord Lovat cited the Marquis of Athole before the Lords Justiciary in Edinburgh to answer before the his charge, as the biographer of his fayle was infores had been corrupted, and that ”certain death would be the result if he appeared”[164] This statement is taken from Lord Lovat's own complication of falsehoods, his inco that Lovat had appeared with a retinue of a hundred arentlemen, ”as honorable as hies;--in spite of the Duke of Argyle's powerful influence, the friends of the outlawed nobleland, and to suffer judgyle, he says, would not lose sight of him till he had seen hiht round to the door There was no remedy for as called by Lord Lovat's friends, the ”rascality” of the judges:--and again this unworthy Highlander was driven from his own country to seek safety in the land wherein his offences had received their pardon The inflexibility of the justiciary lords, or their known integrity, form a fine incident in history; for the Scottish nation was at this period, ridden by Court faction, and broken down by recent oppression and yle on the frontiers, acco his boast, ”that after his arrival in London he was at the Duke's house every day,” he appears, about this time, to have been reduced to a state of miserable poverty, andletter to Mr Carstairs, he co is done for him--he applies to Mr Carstairs for a littleno other door open”
LORD LOVAT TO MR CARSTAIRS,
”London, June 20th, 1701
”Dear Sir,
”I reckon lect land has done ot soot o a volunteer with the King, or maintain hts now of ot nothing done However, I now resolve to go to Scotland, not being able to subsist longer here I have sent the inclosed note, that, according to your kind promise, I may have the little money which will carry me home, and it shall be precisely paid before two reatest favours ever was done enerous as to assist ratefully remember, and continue with all sincerity, Dear Sir, Your faithful and obliged servant,
LOVAT”
The death of William the Third revived the hopes of the Jacobite party; and to that centre of attraction the ruined and the restless, the aspiring and the profligate, alike turned their regards Never was so great a variety of character, and so great a diversity of motives displayed in any cause, as in the various attempts which were made to secure the restoration of the Stuarts On soenerally known under the name of Jacobitism, acted as an incentive to self-sacrifice--and to a constancy worthy of better fortune In other minds the poison of faction worked irreenerous resolves, sank into intrigue, and ended in infidelity to the cause which that had espoused
But Lord Lovat came under neither of these classes; he knew not the existence of a generous e selfishness and baseness of his career
If he had a sincere predilection, he was disposed to the interest of King James Hereditary tendencies scarcely ever lose their hold upon the mind entirely: notions on politics are forenerally supposed The faes is; and early prepossessions were imbibed by the unworthy descendant of a brave race, before his passions had interfered to warp the generous sentirew up, Lord Lovat learned to accommodate himself to any party; and it was justly observed by Lord Middleton, one of the favourite courtiers at St Gerh he boasted so n, he had never served any sovereign but King Williai, when he whose moral atmosphere was, like his native clilean so storm which threatened the peace of the British empire
On the sixth of Septeland expired at St Germains This event was favourable to those of the Jacobite party ished to bring forward the interests of the young Prince of Wales
Ja been infirm, and had laid aside all schemes of worldly elevation He had passed his tiion His ed Queen retained, on the contrary, an ardent desire to see her son restored to the throne of England She implanted that wish in his own breast; she nourished it by the society of those whom she placed around hi new scheuine anticipations were continually directed
The death of James was succeeded by two events: one, the avowed determination of Louis the Fourteenth to take the exiled family of Stuart under his protection, and the consequent proclaland; the other, the bill for the attainder of the pretended Prince of Wales, in the English Parliaainst the Queen, Mary of Modena, together with an oath of abjuration of the ”Pretender” The debates which iress of this rafted in the hearts of hts which they were thus enforced to abjure[166]
This was one of the last acts of William His death, in 1702, revived the spirits of the Jacobites, for the partiality of Anne to her brother, the young Prince, was generally understood; and it appears, from the letters which have been published in later days to have been of a far enerally been supposed The death of the young Duke of Gloucester appeared, naturally, to make way for the restoration of the Stuart family; and there is no doubt but that Anne earnestly desired it; and that on one occasion, when her brother's life was in danger from illness, her anxiety was considerable on his account
It is, therefore, no matter of reproach to the Jacobites, as an infatuation, although it has frequently been so represented, that they cherished those schemes which were ultimately so unfortunate, but which, had it not been that ”popery appeared land than even the prospect of slavery and temporal oppression,” would doubtless have been successful without the disastrous scenes whichthenificant instrument in the hands of the Jacobite party When he found that the sentence of outlaas not reversed; when he perceived that he er hope for the peaceable enjoyment of the Lovat inheritance, his whole soul turned to the restoration of King Ja Prince of Wales Yet he seems, in the course of the extraordinary affairs in which the Queen, Mary of Modena, was rash enough to employ him, to have one eye fixed upon St James's, another upon St Germains, and to have been perfectly uncertain as to which power he should eventually dedicate his boasted influence and talents
Lord Lovat arded as the first promoter of the Insurrection of 1715 in Scotland Whether his exertions proceeded from a real endeavour to promote the cause of the Jacobites, or whether they were, as it has been supposed, the result of a political scheme of the Duke of Queensbury's, it is difficult to determine, and i the whole to that nobleman has been clearly discovered It seeo on in the straightforward path; and that he was in the employ of the Duke of Queensbury from the first, has been confidently stated[167]
Early in 1702, Lord Lovat went to France, and pretending to have authority frohland clans and Scottish nobility, offered the services of his countrymen to the Court of St Germains This offer was made shortly before the death of James the Second, and a proposal was made in the name of the Scottish Jacobites to raise an ar of France would consent to land five thousand men at Dundee, and five hundred at Fort Williarity was suspected[168]
According to his own account, Lord Lovat, being in full possession of his fa William, immediately proclai, as he declares, in accordance with the advice of his friend, the Duke of Argyle, repaired to France, ”in order to do the best that he could in that country”[169]
He ied the Earl Lord Marischal, the Earl of Errol, Lord Constable of Scotland, in the cause; and then, passing through England and Holland, in order to go to France through Flanders, he arrived in Paris with this commission about the erman of Lord Lovat, had resided ten years at the Court of St Geruidance 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 Parliaence of all that passes at the Court of St Gerreed that this scheme of the invasion should be carried on unknown to that nobleave 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,[170] which Lord Lovat represented would be necessary to equip the Highland forces Hitherto the Court of St