The Last Highlander (19 page)

Argyll held a council of war. His troops could not take another day like that. If Mar came on tomorrow, as surely he must, sheer force of numbers was going to deliver him victory, and with it all of Scotland. There would be no one to stop them marching into England, with Scotland at their backs to supply them. Faced with this vision, Argyll saw no option for him but to retreat to Stirling and risk the Jacobites slipping through his fingers as they marched south.

The Jacobites had lost about seventeen per cent of their men but still with around 4,000 in their number could have regrouped to finish the business ‘without too much trouble’. Mar assembled his senior officers and the heads of the clans to debate whether they should attack again. Some of the leaders, like Marshal Keith, insisted they must regroup and seal the victory. Others reported, wrongly, that Argyll’s numbers were now equal to the Jacobites’, adding that the Highlanders, Mar’s bravest and most committed troops, were exhausted ‘and had eat nothing in two days’. They were ‘averse’ to re-engaging Argyll’s forces. The defeatists carried the day. ‘It was resolved … to let the enemy retire unmolested … The loss of colours was about equal on both sides; but the enemy got five piece of our cannon.’

Thus, the battle was decided by Mar in his tent. ‘Neither side gained much honour,’ Marshal Keith recalled, but the decision was ‘the entire ruin’ of the Jacobite campaign.

A massive surge in desertions now compounded Jacobite losses. Fighting clansmen poured north and west. To them this was not desertion, but their terms of engagement. When the chief called them out, they answered, did their duty, picked up spoils of war and, full of honour, took it home to their wives and mothers. They would certainly come out again when summoned. Mar’s regular army officers were horrified.

Not only had the ordinary men of the clan left. News of the fall of Inverness reached the Jacobite high command at Sheriffmuir very fast. The Earl of Seaforth packed up and went home, taking his men with him, fearing for his lands and properties close to Inverness. His kinsman Mackenzie of Fraserdale was appalled to learn that Simon Fraser, calling himself Lord Lovat, had reappeared and was playing an essential part in resurrecting the campaign around the ‘the key to the North’. Fraserdale now followed his high chief to attempt to secure his estates against the outlaw Beaufort.

In the face of desertions and excuses to withdraw, Mar could offer no intelligence where or when the inspiration for this whole, substantial but wavering insurrection was going to arrive and take charge, and bring back those now riding away. Where was ‘King James’?

In Fraserdale’s favour, at least Lord Lovat was still outlawed, though how long he would remain so was doubtful. Argyll told Secretary Townshend: ‘I find Lord Lovat’s being in the north has been of infinite service to his Majesty … I am informed our people there have possessed themselves of Inverness, which is certainly owing to him, and I am persuaded he will do all that is possible to spirit up our people there to make a diversion.’

Before Lovat arrived, King George’s men had not even attempted to retake Inverness. Within ten days of his return they had achieved the first significant Hanoverian victory of the rebellion. Now reports came in daily about their movements all across the northern Highlands, securing targets with speed and efficiency. Argyll, a very experienced general, knew this was no mere coincidence. Lovat’s energy and tactical acuity had given the Hanoverians’ northern army the confidence to snap into action. Now Lord Lovat demanded his prize: a pardon and freedom; the Fraser titles and estates back in the line of the heir male. The Mackenzies and Murrays prepared to do anything to hang on to them.

SEVENTEEN

Home, 1715–16

‘There was nothing done for the government till I took arms … I obliged the rebels to desert this town’

– LOVAT TO SECRETARY OF STATE TOWNSHEND

Lovat rode to Castle Dounie with hundreds of Fraser fighting men. As he walked through rooms he had not seen for years, he found himself in a singular position of having no pardon, or title to the castle and all the lands leading in every direction from its doors and windows. He despatched Lady Amelia and her children to a nearby farmhouse, and noticed the family silver was missing. He determined to discover what had happened to it.

From one point of view, he occupied rebel property on behalf of the government. He anticipated it would be assigned to him permanently in due course, as reward for his role in crushing this rebellion, and as a key aspect of the pardon that he was sure must soon be granted. Titles to parts of his patrimony were bound up in four-foot-long, legal documents tied with red ribbons in Edinburgh lawyers’ offices. Tactical indebtedness by Sir Roderick, continued by his son, left wadsets (mortgages) hibernating in the charter chests of Mackenzie lairds. Lovat had no idea whether money had actually always changed hands, or if they were a device and Mackenzie’s cousins merely agreed to say they were creditors, should they ever need to stake a claim on the assets of the Lovat estates. Certainly, when he looked into it, it seemed to Lovat that some creditors had not pressed for any repayment for twenty years. Others, when he examined them, were obviously the ordinary debts any gentleman owed money lenders.

He sat at his old desk, trying to work out what had been happening. Frequent interruptions called him away: he spoke to soldiers arriving from Inverness with instructions and requests from the other Hanoverian leaders; his fellow officers came to Dounie to hold war councils with him, to ask his advice in planning the next phase of the campaign to crush the claims of the royal family Lovat had hoped to restore for two nearly decades, and to reinforce the strength of a Union he believed cursed Scotland.

The seeming rehabilitation of Lovat had sent Fraserdale into a frenzy of anxiety. They were both outlaws now. Who would the authorities favour? The longer Lovat kept possession of Castle Dounie the harder it was to throw him out legally. He and Lovat raced to ingratiate themselves and accuse each other. Fraserdale surrendered to government forces and begged not to be prosecuted, desperate to stop his estates being forfeit to the Crown and assigned to someone loyal to King George.

Lovat stressed to Townshend: ‘There was nothing done for the government till I took arms … I obliged the rebels to desert this town … All my people, whom Mackenzie of Fraserdale forced by open violence to go with him to Mar’s camp, deserted all and came and joined me when they heard I was in my country,’ and Fraserdale ‘pretends now to submit himself’ to British justice. It was vital Lovat introduce the element of pretence into Fraserdale’s submission, and talk up the power of his own authority in the area.

Fraserdale responded with urgent pleas to his Edinburgh supporters for help with his release. Foremost among his allies was his wife’s uncle, the Duke of Atholl. Atholl called on the Scottish Secretary, the Duke of Montrose, and requested his niece’s husband be brought to Edinburgh, where the courts were full of friends and inclined to be lenient with rebel gentlemen who offered guarantees of good behaviour and signs of repentance. Cockburn, Justice Clerk of the Court of Session, was prepared to do all he could to keep Lovat out and make sure the estates were not forfeited to the crown.

Good luck and cool planning had given this branch of the Mackenzies the sort of prestige birth had not assigned them – not to mention properties and income that only a fool would relinquish without a fight to the death. The couple’s son, Hugh, thrived, and was set to inherit the titles and estates after Fraserdale’s death. If the boy changed his name as Fraserdale’s late father had advised in his 1706 letter to the Fraser gentlemen, then this boy would be Hugh Mackenzie, 12th Lord Lovat. If they could not kill Simon Fraser of Beaufort by law, perhaps they might slowly smother him into failure and insignificance by law. He would waste his life in semi-scandalous obscurity, walled in by legal documents, some sound, some unsound. It would take him decades and cost him a fortune he did not have to unravel it all.

A week after the taking of Inverness, a soldier arrived at Dunrobin to tell the Earl of Sutherland his subordinate officers had achieved what Sutherland failed even to attempt. The Earl realised it was time for him to resume active command of his forces in Inverness. He did not want his name to be conspicuous only by its absence from reports of the victories in Scotland.

Others were already too active that way for Sutherland’s liking. He wrote to King George that he was preparing to come and lead his forces when the Inverness junior officers took the initiative and attacked without his authority. ‘The Earl of Sutherland was greatly disappointed that he was thus deprived of the honour of taking Inverness,’ Sutherland reported. ‘This treatment was very provoking, yet I stifled all resentment, the better to go on with your Majesty’s service.’ He had no generous word yet of how well his fellow officers had done. He went on, recasting his defeat by Seaforth into a wonderful and self-sacrificing diversionary manoeuvre. His unequal force of 1,800 tackling 4,000 enemy soldiers interrupted the Mackenzies’ march to join the rebels; the ‘diversion I gave them for some time was probably the ruin of their cause’, Sutherland judged confidently. ‘I may say, without vanity, that God was pleased to make use of me, as an instrument to prevent’ Argyll being crushed by weight of enemy numbers at Sheriffmuir. Sutherland had performed this heroic act, he reminded the King, ‘long before Lord Lovat and some other assuming gentlemen came to the north and joined me’.

At the same time Sutherland wrote to Lovat and asked him ‘to send some of his force to meet them, as they were afraid that the Earl of Seaforth, returning from Sheriffmuir with a great following of the clans, would attack them at the head of the Mackenzies and MacDonalds’, and defeat Sutherland again on his way south. Lovat obliged and sent men under Castleleathers to escort his wary commanding officer to Inverness.

In this way, the story of the capture of Inverness became a battle in itself. When he had some peace, Lovat meant to put his version to the King. In the hinterland of the rebellion, they were all boasting and seeking royal favour in the shape of promotions and pensions. How else could a man get ahead? Lovat needed to go further than most. Sutherland was merely making the best of his advantage as commanding officer.

From the government camp at Stirling, one of the Grant elite wrote to Lovat. ‘I hope when the King is
rightly
informed of the part you acted in recovering the castle and town of Inverness he will reward you suitably to that great and important service.’ In London, he warned, the Highland victories were talked of ‘as if nobody had acted any part but the Earl of Sutherland and those he brought with him’. In addition, Grant promised to try ‘to stop anything that may be intended to be done for Fraserdale’, by Atholl or Montrose. The Brigadier told Lovat he wanted ‘an impartial account of facts, with the people who were there … People at London are surprised … when I tell them that had it not been for the appearance made in Inverness-shire by Lord Lovat and others, that the Earl of Sutherland nor any of the others would have ventured to cross’ out of their own clan lands. They all needed payment for their services. When the time came, Grant did not want the King to look back over the reports and read only the name of Sutherland everywhere, when he was not within fifty miles of the town.

At home, Lovat plunged his nib into his ink with delight, and set his mind to establishing peace in his region and publicising his opinions and activities. The mid-winter weather was appalling. Yet Lovat was exuberant, declaring ‘we are resolved to make our graves in the streets rather than yield this place, till it is in flames about our ears, and we will sell our lives as dear as we can, for we know that this place is the centre of the rebellion and the key of the north’. Their intelligence told them Mar was planning his retreat north. If he did, the centre of rebel activity would move with him. All his life friends had asked him to keep quiet, not to speak up. Grant invited him to lift his trumpet to his lips and announce his presence and the renown of his services. He did not need to be asked twice.

It had been quite a year after decades of reverses. In twelve months, Lovat had gone from exile in France, to a London gaolhouse, to commanding hundreds of Fraser men now encamped below his battlements at Dounie. He was back in the clan chief’s house, amused each evening by the respectful and lively table talk of peers and gentlemen. Reading his reports, the government would breathe a sigh of relief that he was there, one of their own, comprehending what was needed, and holding the line. King George’s ministers would hesitate to suggest an effective and committed nobleman should be moved out again because a proven rebel, Fraserdale, craved rehabilitation. But the sentence hanging over Lovat shaded his joy.

In the middle of these negotiations James Stuart appeared – long expected, but in the end unannounced. A poor seaman, he landed at last at Peterhead near Aberdeen, in the north-east corner of Scotland. On 8 January 1716, he addressed the Earl of Huntly. ‘My presence will inspire,’ James hazarded; ‘I do not doubt, new life and vigour into the troops you command.’ Actually, most Highland troops had gone home for the winter after the debacle at Sheriffmuir. ‘It is of the last consequence … that in conjunction with the Earl of Seaforth you lose no time in reducing Inverness … I heartily wish you … satisfaction.’ Thus James discharged the full fire of his rhetoric – slightly ponderous, slow moving, considered.

The Jacobite earls listened to their King with dismay. ‘Now there’s no help for it, we must all ruin with him,’ groaned the Earl of Huntly. ‘Would to God he had come sooner.’ For four months they linked the coming of the King with inspiration and success. Now Huntly connected his late arrival with catastrophe for all his supporters, some of whom were already negotiating the terms of their surrender to British justice. Seaforth promised James he would raise his Mackenzie clan again to retake Inverness, and also asked the Dowager Countess of Seaforth to persuade Lovat to help him to submit to King George. The Hanoverians’ council of war in Inverness had resolved to lay waste Mackenzie country, to bring the clan to heel.

In Perth, James worried over the lack of action. He knew his northern magnates were trimming – talking to representatives of George I, as well as planning to come out for him again – and that Lord Lovat was at the heart of it, tactically. While he talked to Lovat, the Earl of Huntly renewed preparations to go to Perth and join James. He repeated his request for men and arms. The Earl of Mar repeated his refusal. ‘We are unable to supply your wants at this time,’ he said, but added that ‘Lovat has it now in his power to reconcile himself to the King, which I am not without hopes he will do, and if he did, it would make the work easy.’ Mar told James miserably that Lovat was the ‘life and soul’ of the Whigs in Inverness, such that ‘the whole country and his name dote on him’. James agreed this gave his own prospects ‘a very melancholy aspect’. Having denied Lovat for so long, suddenly the Jacobite leadership realised they had totally underestimated him. Now he held the key to the north. Lovat had always maintained that the Gaelic-speaking Highlands, semi-independent since time immemorial, a huge swathe of them passionately loyal to the Stuarts, was an obvious place to look for loyalty and forces. If James could link Perth and Inverness with a broad belt of support that spanned the Highlands from Inverness in the east to Fort William in the west, and with his rule secure north of that line, the Highlands would serve as a base from which he could spread his influence south in the spring. James’s senior officers should try to turn Lovat back to them.

*    *    *

Lovat wrote to his old friend and university colleague, John Glenbuchat, one of the Gordon gentry. Moustaches reaching to his shoulders billowed to either side as he moved. Old Glenbuchat’s fierce gaze seemed compelled by something very irritating on the horizon. ‘When all this is over, men of honour will be known, and whatever comes, though we should fight against one another, that will never make me forget our old comradeship,’ Lovat wrote, signalling his affection, but that he was on the other side. Their old comradeship was based on shared hopes for the Stuart kings and perhaps an independent Scotland.

A week later, Glenbuchat replied bluntly, ‘I heartily regret that your opinion is so much changed … “Bad companies corrupt good manners”, and I am sorry you are so trysted.’ Glenbuchat had seen James a week ago. ‘I had the honour of kissing the King’s hand at Scone,’ he told Lovat. James ‘asked concerning your behaviour particularly. If I could wait on you in safety I would give account of his sentiments. None can persuade him that you will draw your sword against him … I am very much concerned to be contrary to you,’ Glenbuchat observed with some sadness, ‘though I hope it will not be for long, for I am convinced you believe I have the just side.’ His appeal was severe and seductive. He had known Lovat for thirty years.