The Last Highlander (15 page)

At Versailles, Louis XIV welcomed back an Irish spy in his pay called Colonel Hooke. He had just returned from a mission to sound out British Jacobites about an uprising. Hooke carried a memorial letter from the Jacobite leaders in Edinburgh. Bitterly aggrieved with the aftermath of the Union, they promised Louis that 30,000 men would rise to support the invaders, if James Stuart came to lead them. Post-Union Scotland was deteriorating further, swamped by the bigger English economy. The new Scots MPs at Westminster felt poor and irrelevant when they protested that England rode roughshod over Articles of Union and were totally ignored. With renewed hope, Lovat bombarded Torcy with letters and tactical advice as revived plans to invade Scotland finally entered the final phase.

In early 1708, John rode to Paris to await orders to join the invasion. Lord Lovat was ordered to stay where he was. Within a month they would be back, ‘after the entire failure of the unfortunate enterprise’.

*    *    *

It felt doomed from the start, the operation being first delayed when James Stuart was struck down by measles. Then, the minute Marlborough’s intelligence chief Lord Cadogan heard that the French were preparing to embark ships and the nineteen-year-old James out of France, he informed his senior naval commander Admiral Byng. The British Admiral found the French expeditionary fleet lying at Dunkirk and blockaded the port. Forbin, head of the French force, realised the Royal Navy was anchored nearby and wanted to call it all off. James badgered Louis XIV not to lose faith, and when a thick fog descended, cloaking the coast, the invading force slipped away. When it lifted, Byng saw the birds had flown and gave chase.

The would-be ‘James III of England and VIII of Scotland’ stood in the lifting mist on the deck of the
Mary
, ‘bound for my ancient kingdom’ of Scotland. The former enemies, Perth and Middleton, stood with him. The young prince was going to the country for which he was born, of which he knew nothing but reports and assessments from people, most of whom had not seen it for over twenty years. James pondered how his subjects would receive him. He consulted the Duke of Perth and the Earl of Middleton, but particularly Perth, the passionate Scot. The
Mary
creaked up the coast of England, passing Newcastle and then the ancient monastic foundation of Lindisfarne on Holy Island.

The aspiring invaders crossed paths with British troops returning from Europe. As Lovat had been predicting for five years, when they heard of an invasion, the British marched ten regiments of foot soldiers from the front line to Ostend. Marlborough ordered them north to Leith to defend the Protestant succession and the Union. The Jacobite expedition was fulfilling the strategic goal: divide British forces and distract the concentration of the commander-in-chief. The invasion force neared the Firth of Forth, with Edinburgh halfway along its southern coast, and the coastline of the Kingdom of Fife on its northern shore. Forbin misread his sightings, badly, and overshot Edinburgh’s port at Leith. Instead of landing James, they kept sailing north, a hundred miles from Inverness. By the time the French admiral realised the extent to which he had miscalculated his location, the pursuing British fleet had pushed him further north leaving him unable to land James safely. Forbin, over-cautious with his instructions, lost his nerve. The French navy turned and made a run for France chased by the English who were only a day behind him.

James had sailed so close he could smell his land, and see it, but not stand on it. Now he was carried back to the only real home he had ever known – the grim grace-and-favour palace of St-Germains-en-Laye. Lovat commented ruefully: ‘It seemed as if this prince had always been followed by an unfortunate star.’ How would these men wrench a kingdom back out of its possessors’ hands with that spirit? Were such indecisive men worth his loyalty, he asked himself?

He wrote to Torcy again, begging him to put an end to his banishment. No reply came. Lovat was no longer worthy of even a line. ‘What was nearest to my heart was now to return to my beloved clan and to live and die in the midst of them,’ he said. Right now he felt he ‘would not merely have enlisted himself in the party of the house of Hanover’, but ‘any foreign prince in the universe, who would have assisted … in the attainment of his just and laudable design’, to regain his clan.

Lovat wrote to the English ministry. He offered to make peace with Queen Anne’s administration and fished for an amnesty to let him come home without the risk of the extant death sentence being carried out. He would ‘demean himself like a good and faithful subject to her Majesty’, and abandon the Jacobites and Louis XIV’s France. He offered to help keep the Highlands quiet, accepting that it meant telling his clan George of Hanover would be their next King. Secretary of State, Robert Harley, rejected him. They did not need someone like him.

By 1711 the invasion threat had receded. On 27 September, France and England agreed to preliminary articles of peace. Both countries were sick and tired of war. Louis XIV recognised Anne and the English succession in the House of Hanover. He agreed to make James Stuart leave France, since England could not negotiate with a country that harboured a usurper. James left for Lorraine, a duchy in the Holy Roman Empire. His mother stayed at St Germains. Jacobitism was a dead issue.

The following year, a peace agreement was signed. In 1713, Lovat again sent his brother John home to keep his family’s presence there alive. Lovat loaded John with letters, among them one to Lord Leven, a trusted former ally and colleague of the late Duke of Argyll. He told Leven to lead the clan in case of trouble. John must place his Frasers at the disposal of the Duke of Argyll, John Campbell (son of Lovat’s former patron and one of Marlborough’s generals), whichever side he espoused. Unknown to Lovat, Leven had turned Jacobite. He sent the letter straight back to James Stuart, by now the guest of the Duke of Lorraine. Middleton repeated his call for Lord Lovat to be executed.

During 1713, Queen Anne had become ill and by the end of the year her ‘ailment appeared dangerous’. The news provoked fresh fears including rumours that the clans were getting ready to rise for James and throw off the wretched Union. In 1713 a vote to break the Union had failed by just one vote in the House of Commons. John Fraser wrote pleading with his brother to come and give the Frasers a lead ‘upon the eve of a period when the whole kingdom would be full of war and confusion’. His clan did not know whom they should support. But Lovat dared not break out of exile and offer his enemies the reason they needed to kill him.

He was in a low state in the house at Saumur, in July 1714, when he heard someone ask for him in a Highland accent, using his Celtic patronymic – MacShimidh Mor. His heart skipped a beat as his French valet announced a visitor, and a man in thick tartan breeches walked in and greeted him in Gaelic. It was Castleleathers.

THIRTEEN

The end of exile, 1714

‘Come to fish in Drumly Waters’

– CASTLELEATHERS TO LOVAT

Major James Fraser of Castleleathers sweated heavily under his tartan bonnet, a woollen plaid flung over his shoulders. He fell on one knee to greet his chief, his button eyes sparkling as they took in this sorry situation. On 1 May 1714, at four o’clock in the morning, he explained, he had taken ‘journey from his dwelling house with his habersack and left his wife and children spralling on the ground in tears’. He had no tongues to navigate through France but English and Gaelic. Desperation brought him here. He had come to bring his chief home.

Lovat looked at him. How could this be true? Was it a plot to make him go on the run so he could be killed as an outlaw? He hardly dared let himself hope after more than a decade in exile.

Castleleathers explained that after the marriage of Amelia Fraser to Mackenzie of Fraserdale, ‘the poor name of Fraser was then looked down upon by all the neighbouring clans. Encroachment made on them daily by the Mackenzies’ wore them down, until Lovat’s brother John appeared last year, to tell them their chief was alive and in trouble. Up to that point, most of the clan ‘knew nothing of the natural chief’s being in life’. They were amazed to discover he lived. The Reverend James – Castleleathers’s father-in-law – died five years ago, he said, and had dedicated his chronicles to Lovat, their absent chief, hoping he might come back and raise his people.

No one had talked to Lovat like this for nearly fifteen years. The clan elite felt that ‘if Lovat could be stolen out of France, he might come to fish in Drumly Waters’, said the Major – ‘Drumly’ meant all churned up, like a river in spate, the water murky but full of nutrients and attracting the biggest fish and best fishermen.

Suddenly, Lovat leapt up and started hugging the Major, finding he ‘could not express himself for joy’. Castleleathers was delighted with his success thus far. To complete his mission all he had to do was repeat the thousand-mile journey in reverse and get his Lordship back to Inverness-shire. It worried him to see Lovat so ‘very low in his person’. Encouraging him as much as he could, he ‘asked him if he had any thoughts of ever returning home?’

It was the purpose of his life, Lovat snapped back, shocked that Castleleathers needed to ask such a question. But he could not go without permission from St Germains, he said. It was too dangerous. The Major settled in and over the next few days he and Lovat walked by the Loire and thrashed out a plan. His Lordship was not the recklessly confident youth the Major remembered. He now hesitated, wary even of Castleleathers. It puzzled the Major to hear him talk about the Highlands and then decline every plan to get there. A return to Castle Dounie and the Fraser lands seemed a remote dream. Castleleathers humoured his chief, saying the obvious solution was for him to go to Versailles to plead for his chief’s release. The man who had never been imprisoned, condemned to death twice, cut off, alienated from all that gave meaning to his life, could not understand his illustrious prisoner’s guardedness. But Castleleathers had not come here to be his chief’s companion in exile. He had journeyed through two foreign countries on foot, in wartime, to release his Fraser chief. He made Lovat write long letters of memorial to James Stuart, protesting his loyalty and pleading for permission to go home, rescue his clan from usurpers and stir up the Jacobites at this propitious time of Queen Anne’s illness. As far as Castleleathers was concerned, James ‘III’ was the Pretender not the King. But Lovat was still a Jacobite, a fact Castleleathers would ignore until he got him to England; then Lovat must reconcile with the British authorities.

Packing the letters away, ‘the poor Major walked off on foot in his shirt, with his cloaths on the hilt of his sword’. Days were slipping into weeks; Castleleathers had to press on. Worse, they wasted time at exactly the moment when an opportunity arose for Lovat to make his peace with the British authorities. The news was spreading through France that Queen Anne had died.

The English Parliament proclaimed George I King of Great Britain. On the streets all over England, Tory Jacobites yelled and protested against the accession of a German Elector who spoke no English. Over eighty riots erupted to cries of ‘No Hanover!’ ‘No cuckold!’ Were Lovat to come now, as someone imprisoned and despised by the Jacobites, and offer George his loyalty and service, he might be accepted.

From Lorraine, ‘James III and VIII’ wrote an open letter to the ‘people of Britain’. In it he plumbed ancient fears and allegiances, charging his erstwhile subjects that the ‘People … voted themselves a parliament, and assumed a right of deposing and electing Kings, contrary to the fundamental laws of the land, and the most express and solemn oaths that Christians are capable of taking.’ Barely anybody in the kingdom would fail to feel some anxiety on reading this. The symbol of the King was sacred. ‘Whensoever it should please God to restore us, we would make the Laws of the Land the Rule of our Government, and to grant to our Subjects a general Indemnity for whatsoever has been done contrary to those Laws; And all the Security and Satisfaction they could desire, for the Preservation of their Religion, Right, Liberties and Properties.’ Dispossession had schooled James to be a profoundly tolerant man. Whitehall did not extend the same toleration to him. They had tried the male Stuarts twice. The trust was gone.

Castleleathers was granted an audience with James Stuart at the Duke of Lorraine’s palace on the French eastern frontier at Lunéville. Playing the Jacobite, the Major offered Lovat’s long memorial. James took it, pocketed it unopened, and asked Castleleathers how he had got this far without a word of German or French. The Major replied that he had three sentences. James asked to hear them. When we are alone, the Major said, embarrassed. James insisted. In the first phrase the Major asked the road, the second for a bottle of wine, the third: to beg a bed. Hearing his accent they all ‘burst out a laughing’. Castleleathers replied that ‘he was glad to come twelve- or thirteen-hundred miles to make his Majesty laugh so hearty’.

James then informed Castleleathers that Lord Lovat would never regain his favour or confidence. He was ‘well and authentically informed that the Frasers would pay as much respect to the recommendations of Lord Atholl, and that they would assemble under the orders of Mr Mackenzie of Prestonhall’. Castleleathers was stunned. He had come all this way to free his clan from under the heels of Mackenzie of Fraserdale and the Duke of Atholl. If the Frasers did not want to live with these two, they were not going to die for them. Castleleathers told James that if ‘Prestonhall were mad enough to put himself at their head, he would be so saluted with musket bullets, that light would be seen through every part of his body’. Did James know the clans that poorly he could not remember they were ‘so attached to their natural chiefs’ they would oppose neighbours – that was why Castleleathers was here after all? Kings came and went. Government, remote in Edinburgh, had retreated even further to London. Clan bonds were the most meaningful thing to which a man could give his heart and arm.

James retorted that
he
would be chief to the Frasers himself before he allowed Lovat to leave France. Castleleathers repeated that if James would give them their natural head and chief, ‘they would venture their lives and fortunes in his cause; and if not, that they had declared that if they should die to a man, they would never draw sword for him or any of his’. Whereupon James ‘took the Major by the button of his clothes, and with a smile told him he was sure he would fight’. Castleleathers replied that ‘he behoved to do as the rest of his clan did’.

James pushed him away. He would give leadership of the Frasers to ‘any other commander they pleased’, but
never
to Lord Lovat! Castleleathers shook his head. He now knew he and Lovat would have to make a run for England, in spite of James Stuart.

The next day, Castleleathers set out in the balmy early morning air, mounted on a horse given to him by the Duke of Lorraine and sucking a fine pipe from the Duchess. This was the vision that greeted Lovat when the Major eventually arrived back at Saumur on a late summer’s night. Lovat was relieved to see him, but his good mood did not survive the bad news. The two men retired, knowing they had difficult decisions ahead.

Next morning, Major Fraser rose and went to salute his chief. Lovat glared at him. He ‘looked like a Tyger on a Chain, and asked the Major if it was to betray him that he came to that country’. The way Lovat saw it, Castleleathers had returned after some delay from his time with James, smoking luxurious tobacco and riding a beautiful fine horse, saying ‘the King’ would never free him. Years of imprisonment and the attempts by Atholl and then Middleton to have him executed had left him paranoid. He was sure Major Fraser had been paid to assassinate him the moment they left.

Castleleathers ignored his chief’s outburst, suggesting they send Lovat’s valet to England to ‘see what encouragement his friends would give him to go home’. Lovat wrote to a friend from his youth, his clan neighbour Brigadier Grant, who had forgiven Lovat his youthful crimes – the kidnappings, the forced marriage. Grant was a follower of the 2nd Duke of Argyll’s faction at King’s George I’s Court. Now a British MP and army officer, the laird of Grant would be a useful ally. Lovat hinted at rumours in France of an uprising in Scotland. ‘We will see very soon a time in which true friendship will be useful and necessary. For tho’ all the possible appearance be for King George, there is a great storm that hangs over Scotland, and will break out sooner than people expects.’ I am, Lovat promised, committed to ‘live and die with the Duke of Argyll and his family’ and need ‘his Grace to ask and obtain my full remission’.

The valet returned with good news from Brigadier Grant and John Forbes of Culloden and people in the north, but no word from Argyll and his brother the Earl of Ilay. Castleleathers was stumped. He had anticipated difficulties with the journey to and from the Highlands, but not with getting his chief to move one mile. The Major pointed out to his chief that Louis XIV’s heir, the Duke of Orleans, who would rule as regent on Louis’s death, hated Lovat. The King was ill and probably dying. ‘The next day after the King of France’s death, he might expect the bastille for a closet.’

With some trepidation, Lovat gave in. He sold his possessions and accompanied Castleleathers to the French coast at Boulogne. England was a mere twenty-five miles away. They thought ‘to hire an open boat’ for fifteen pistoles. The crew of the boat ‘did not favour’ the Major’s horse, but Castleleathers refused to leave without it. Lovat could not go without the Major, so eventually the crew gave way. They all lifted the animal into the boat, and weighed anchor at seven o’clock on the night of 14 November 1714. The wind blew up. The sails were soon taut and they whipped along. By nightfall, conditions hit gale force, ‘the storm being so great they all despaired of their lives’. The horse ‘turned so unruly at the sea coming over him, that he had to be bound with ropes; in which situation he lay until they were landed’. By two the next afternoon, the party arrived at Dover, and fell exhausted onto the dock.