The Last Highlander (45 page)

67  
Sir James Stewart
…
profitable trade
. William’s ministers too often told him what he wanted to hear, not what was actually the case. William’s poor management of Scotland led to a deepening and broadening of Jacobite sentiment.

76  
Lovat’s first contact
…
Amen
. Multilingual, multi-denominational, multi-cultural, these men played with words, allusions, images and other references freely in their letters. See BL Add MSS 31251.

76  
Before Louis XIV
…
each façade.
A major exhibition on the Stuart Court in exile resulted in much graphic and written detail of the period, especially the observations of members of the French Court on their neighbours. A good starting point is the catalogue,
La Cour des Stuarts à Saint-Germain-en-Laye au Temps de Louis XIV
(Paris, 1992).

77  
tells a story
…
while he professed it
. There was a vast network of spies and informers, the main source of inside information to intelligence ministers, before the days of hacking and tapping.

78  
Middleton’s secretary
…
so fatal to him
. The tragedy of the ‘James II and III’, was the lack of guile. Sincere and passionate Roman Catholics, they simply could not politic their way back onto the thrones, keeping private belief and public policy well apart; though hundreds of thousands wanted them back. Even Samuel Johnson, as late as the 1760s, would write that, if polled, the majority of Britons would recall the Stuarts, though they would not give a penny to bring it about. This comment is from HLA Scots Plot.

79  
He bemoaned
…
a miracle
. See
La Cour des Stuarts
, p. 165.

79  
There is a party
…
would be restored
. See James Macpherson,
Original Papers, containing the Secret History of Great Britain, from the Restoration, to the accession of the House of Hanover
(London, 1775); Lovat’s
Memoirs
; and Macky,
Journey through Scotland
for the arguments about strategy in the next few pages. The fascinating vacillations of the Jacobites in France, and of Queen Anne’s most important ministers, illustrates how fundamental to British politics were the internal and external debates men conducted about who should rule, and how and why. It engaged them at the deepest levels of their hearts, heads and souls.

81  
Brother McLoghlan
…
the Highland clans.
BL Add MSS 31250–53 has much of Lovat’s correspondence at this time, showing him petitioning and working feverishly for the restoration of the Stuarts, via an independent Scottish monarch, in part as an image of his own restoration to the Lovat estates and titles.

83  
Addressing the King
… In BL Add MSS 31250–52; and Lovat’s
Memoirs
, Lovat flatters and cajoles Louis XIV to mount an invasion of Scotland.

87  
the most effectual … Crown of Scotland
. See Macpherson,
Original Papers
, but this was the rock on which Jacobite factions split: English Jacobites could never consent to the implied dissolution of the Union of Crowns.

88  
doggerel
. BL Add MSS 31251 ff214 has several examples of these
jeux d’esprits
.

88  
In Scotland
…
daughter-in-law and grandsons
. This was an old-fashioned piece of chicanery for obtaining control of property – buy up the debts and foreclose, knowing the person could not, or in this case was told not to pay, and assign them to your representative. The handiwork is traced in NLS Dep 327: 182 – Roderick Mackenzie, Lord Prestonhall; fB17.23; fB17.4; fB17.7; f no number, and so on.

89  
By the spring of 1793
…
Their decision
. This doomed fantasy showed how out of touch Middleton was – the most influential minister at St Germains.

91  
under sentence
…
would converse.
See
The Lockhart Papers
, p. 81. This was Lovat’s problem. The writer was a Scottish Jacobite and natural ally, but many people distrusted Lovat, even on his own side, since his actions made him an outlaw in Scotland.

91  
Eventually they sneaked away
… The months covered by the beginning of this chapter, including the Northallerton escapade, is recorded in Add MSS 31252 especially ff88–93, and Lovat’s
Memoirs
.

95  
At Northumberland
… Lovat reported back to Mary of Modena and Middleton on the lack of solid commitment, in Macpherson,
Original Papers
, p. 641ff.

96  
Mary of Modena
…
averse to it.
See HLA Scots Plot, which is full of witness statements about the Scots, or Queensberry Plot, with Lovat at the heart of it. Queensberry comes out of it as a devil or a decent man depending on your politics.
The Lockhart Papers
take the devil/Jacobite line, and Clerk of Penicuik (in
Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Baronet, baron of the Exchequer, extracted by himself from his own journals, 1676–1755
: Scottish Historical Society, 1892) takes the government line – that Queensberry did a decent job in a thankless situation. Thereby Lovat is a litmus test for political allegiances in Britain in 1704. Renaudot’s views, essentially Louis XIV’s, are expressed in Haile,
Queen Mary of Modena
, p. 386ff.

97  
It was apparent
…
Hanover and Union
. For one record of the debates see
The Lockhart Papers
, p. 64ff.

100  
On 11 August
…
the Parliament again
. This was the first outward sign of Lovat’s change of heart, see Macpherson,
Original Papers
, Vol. 2, pp. 4–5.

101  
They were perfectly ravished
…
lives in the cause
. Lovat’s
Memoirs
emphasise their enthusiasm but the dangers that would arise if they moved from passive support to active participation were decisive. They had too much to lose. Hate William as most of them did, he had pensioned many into peaceableness.

102  
Under cover of darkness
…
incriminating material
. There is a wealth of primary and secondary textual commentary on these events. Lovat features, sometimes prominently, especially in HLA Scots Plot; Macpherson,
Original Papers
; W. C. Mackenzie,
Simon Fraser
,
Lord Lovat
,
His Life and Times
(London: Chapman & Hall, 1908), and BL Add MSS 15398 ff229–33.

104  
Summoning the leading
…
control of the game
. See Macpherson,
Original Papers
, Vol. 1, p. 643ff, in which Lovat’s memorial to Mary of Modena is printed. The original is BL Add MSS 31252 ff101–04. The memorial aims at a more definite commitment to act from the Stuarts, to provoke the British Jacobites to respond in kind. The witnesses appearing in the HLA Scots Plot record – who, by the next spring needed to persuade the government they never intended treason – of course said the opposite. See also Macky,
Journey through Scotland
, and
The Lockhart Papers
for more contemporary reactions.

111  
We are come safe here
…
victory at Speirs
. Macpherson,
Original Papers
gives the reaction he wanted the British to hear, in the person of Queensberry. Add MSS 51252 f98 is for his French masters. These contradictions make sense in the light of his one unifying desire – to get home and take possession of his titles and clan and estates.

113  
The Fraser party
…
rumours from England.
Comments in Major MS, Vol. 1, p. 138ff; Lovat’s
Memoirs
; Macpherson,
Original Papers
, p. 643ff; Haile,
Queen Mary of Modena
, p. 378ff; and Colonel Nathanial Hooke,
Correspondence of Colonel Hooke in 1703–1707
(London: Roxburghe Club, 1870), p. 113ff.

114  
Despite all this
…
Court of St Germains.
This was the feeling of Bishop Burnet, a politically alert cleric observing his fellows in the House of Lords.

117  
Lovat was as aghast
…
stay put.
See Lovat’s
Memoirs
; BL Add MSS 31252 ff163–65.

119  
the following morning to the hospital.
Lovat’s letters about the event are in BL Add MSS 31252, ff172–84, 187–88; also Lovat’s
Memoirs
, p. 293.

120  
on néglige le reste
. See Hooke,
Correspondence
, Vol. 1, p. 155.

120  
At Angoulême
…
No one came.
Lovat correspondence in BL Add MSS 31252 f198ff.

121  
By 1706
…
final elimination
. Letter reproduced in Mackenzie,
History of the Frasers
, pp. 292–93.

121  
Frantic to go home
…
responded wearily.
Correspondence between Lovat and French ministers in BL Add MSS 31252 ff203–06, ff218–19, f 245.

122  
cette Union infernelle
in BL Add MSS 31252 f281.

123  
The years at Angouleme
…
to Saumur
. See Lovat’s
Memoirs
, p. 326.

123  
At Versailles
…
unfortunate enterprise
. Jeremy Black,
Culloden and the ’45
(Stroud: Sutton, 1993), p. 16, Macpherson,
Original Papers
; Lovat’s
Memoirs
; and BL Add MSS 31252.

125  
It seemed
…
unfortunate star
. Lovat’s
Memoirs
, p. 381.

126  
Leven had turned
…
executed
. See Macpherson,
Original Papers
; W. C. Mackenzie,
Simon Fraser
.

127  
Major James Fraser
…
decisions ahead.
As well as Lovat’s
Memoirs
, and BL Add MSS 31252, much of the story of Lovat leaving France is drawn from Major MS, a highly entertaining account of Major James Fraser of Castleleathers’s journey to retrieve his chief. The Major was the son-in-law of Lovat’s old chaplain and clan tradition-bearer, the Revd James Fraser of Wardlaw.

129  
No Hanover! No cuckold!
See Paul Monod’s fascinating study of how widespread was Jacobitism throughout England,
Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788
.

129  
James III and VIII
…
the trust was gone.
See Duncan Warrand (ed.),
Culloden Papers
(London: Cadell & Davies, 1815), p. 30, and the volumes of
More Culloden Papers
(also edited by Duncan Warrand) for the correspondence of the Forbeses, Lovat’s neighbours in Inverness and a family that rose to prominence in the first half of the eighteenth century. John Forbes of Culloden was a British MP. His brother Duncan became both a British MP and the Lord President of the Court of Session, the highest civil court in Scotland, a vital contact for anyone involved in disputes over property rights.

131  
Now a British MP
…
full remission
. See Sir William Fraser,
The Chiefs of Grant
(Edinburgh, 1883),Vol. 2, pp. 282–83.

133  
On 19 November
…
before me
. Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 283–84.

134  
a knife being plunged into his neck.
Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 286.

134  
When Mackenzie of Fraserdale
…
further trouble this way
. See Warrand (ed.),
More Culloden Papers
(Inverness: Robert Carruthers, 1923–30), Vol. 3, p. 4; Atholl,
Chronicles
, Vol. 2, p. 179; Lovat’s
Memoirs
, p. 463.

135  
The King’s ministers
…
remission with King George
. Major MS, Vol. 2, p. 12, Lovat’s
Memoirs
, p. 465.

136  
The Forbes brothers
…
cannot so easily lay
. See Fraser,
Chiefs of Grant
, Vol. 2, pp. 289–90; Warrand (ed.),
More Culloden Papers
, Vol. 2, pp. 57, 60, 65.

137  
The money was at last
…
nothing would come of it
. Warrand (ed.),
Culloden Papers
, pp. 338–39.

137  
Spring drifted
…
on the run from the law
. Major MS, Vol. 2, p. 14ff.

139  
They looked on it
…
lead a rebellion
. See John Master of Sinclair,
Memoirs of the Insurrection in Scotland in 1715
(Edinburgh: Abbotsford Society, 1858), p. 36, and Field Marshal James Keith,
A Fragment of a Memoir
…
, 1714–1734
(Edinburgh: Spalding Club, 1843), p. 393ff.

139  
Go with what you can get
…
come to his aid
. Calendar, Vol. 1, p. 377.

140  
Just ‘make the best … the Fraser chief
. See
Sir William Fraser, The Sutherland Book
(Edinburgh, 1892), Vol. 2, p. 205ff.