The Last Highlander (25 page)

TWENTY-THREE

Lovat under Wade’s eye, 1725–27

‘Vain of his clan, the Fraziers, and ready to sacrifice everything to their interest’

– JOHN CLERK OF PENICUIK ABOUT LOVAT

Wade, the intelligence adviser, had to consider the implications of disclosures from a man who lived at Castle Dounie by standards he claimed to deplore. The two men arranged to meet at Inverness Castle, where Lovat presented himself to the General as Simon Fraser, the 11th Lord Lovat – frockcoat, lace cuffs and legal documents to the fore. Wade was here to advise on the management of what Lovat described as ‘that part of Scotland [that] is very barren and unimproven, has little or no trade, and not much intercourse with the Low Country … [where] the people wear their ancient habit, convenient for their wandering up and down and peculiar habit of living, which inures them to all sorts of fatigue. Their language, being a dialect of Irish, is understood by none but themselves.’

The next day, Lovat came as MacShimidh, eighteenth chief of the name Fraser – dressed ‘in the ancient habit’ and accompanied by a brace of Highland gentlemen. Here was the head and heart of a clanned power that identified itself as Fraser first, Scottish second, and British by shameful derogation of their identity; the head of a kindred who had lived according to the laws of clanship for 500 years, and who dominated his country with the power and mystique of a divinely appointed prince. Wade had to admit that Lovat was uniquely qualified to speak about what motivated the Highlanders.

Feuding and raiding threatened the peace, said Lovat. The clans ‘grow averse to all notions of peace and tranquillity – they constantly practise their use of arms – they increase their numbers by drawing into their gang [those] who would otherwise be good subjects – and they remain ready and proper materials for disturbing the government upon the first occasion’. Wade was mindful that a lack of respect for property rights and the rule of law had shown itself in recent troubles involving the Frasers, and the chronic state of imminent feuding with certain of the Mackenzies.

The General dined and was entertained at Castle Dounie frequently. He enjoyed Lovat’s company, but it also gave him the chance to compare the laird’s recommendations with Wade’s own direct experience of a traditional Highland clan in its home environment. Wade’s observations would lead him to endorse much of the Fraser chief’s analysis, and persuade the government to revive the Independent Companies. One of the first to benefit was Lord Lovat himself, who filled his Independent Company with loyal Frasers. It was a private army at hand when he negotiated with other clans and ‘iniquitous’ and ‘unnatural’ Fraser lairds trying to abandon clanship for the modern world.

James Ferguson, the brilliant Scottish astronomer and instrument-maker who was a guest at Castle Dounie, later recalled how much Lord Lovat’s life at Dounie differed from an English aristocrat’s, to the detriment of the former. ‘This powerful Laird’ resided ‘in a sort of Tower, forming at best such a kind of house as would be esteemed but an indifferent one for a very private plain country gentleman in England. It had in all only four apartments on a floor, and of those, none of them large. Yet he moved like a king.’

Highland chiefs did not need showy palaces, though Lovat liked to collect portraits of his Scottish heroes when he could. Lovat had ‘country’, 500 square miles of it. The windows of Dounie framed mountains and views extending over many miles. ‘He kept a sort of Court,’ Ferguson noted, ‘and several public tables, and had a very numerous body of retainers always attending.’ Lovat led a semi-public life and saw himself as his kindred’s servant, in the way a prince served his people. The head of the kin must be available to be seen by his people, to listen to their complaints, and to speak with the most pretentious and the most humble of them.
Dion
– protection – was the abiding virtue of clanship. But Lovat was also princely in the way he brooked no attempt to question or limit his power.

‘His own constant residence, and the place where he received company, and even dined constantly with them, was in just one room only, and that the very room wherein he lodged,’ the young star-gazer wrote. Lovat slept, worked, received guests and dined in his room, adjoining the great hall. ‘His Lady’s sole apartment was also her own bedchamber.’ The only provision made for ‘lodging either of the domestic servants, or of the numerous herd of retainers was a quantity of straw, which was spread every night, on the floors of the four lower rooms in this sort of Tower-like structure – where the whole inferior part of the family, consisting of a very great number of persons, took up their abode. Sometimes, above four hundred persons, attending on this petty court, were kennelled here.’ No one was turned away who wanted shelter. It was not too small to accommodate 400, though Ferguson – a self-made man from a very humble background in Banffshire – inferred there was something primitive about ‘the family’ in the word ‘kennelled’ and ‘herd’.

Outside the castle were ‘those wretched dependents’ whom Lovat caught breaking the law. Because he had the ‘right of regality’ – that is, the law in all cases except treason – ‘three, four, and sometimes half a dozen, [were] hung up by the heels, for hours, on the few trees round the mansion’. Then they were cut down and taken inside. Ferguson stayed as a guest of the Lovats for several months. Lovat had first met him in Inverness when he had been working as an artist and asked him to come to Dounie to paint him. They discussed the young astronomer’s work mapping the heavens, and the motions of the stars using beads and string. Always interested in philosophy, Lovat was intrigued what this new science inferred about the meaning of life; about determinism and divine intervention; about superstition, second sight and omens – such as comets. Ferguson, a future Fellow of the Royal Society, recognised Lovat’s power, but the astronomer had left home to become part of the Enlightenment Republic of Letters, where learning and the printed word gave more power and prestige than hundreds of square miles of land and thousands of illiterate, Gaelic-speaking dependants educated through oral culture.

General Wade saw all that Ferguson saw, but did not agree with the young Scot’s analysis. Wade found much to enjoy at Dounie. He and his officers wined and dined and celebrated with Lovat when, in October 1726, Lady Lovat was brought to bed and gave birth to a healthy boy, named Simon. Approaching his mid-fifties, his Lordship had a son and heir at last, a direct descendant of the first Fraser chief. He and Margaret had lost their precious Georgina to fever. Lovat confided his pain in a letter to Lord Cowper. Though every parent expected and dreaded the death of children, it did not spare them anguish. And they had two more healthy daughters, Janet (Jenny) and Sibyl, before they got their longed-for son and heir.

Lady Lovat and her son lay in bed, visible to everyone in the hall through the doors of her chamber. Wade loved the Gaelic music and poetry that celebrated the birth and asked for some translations to be made for him. He admired the clan’s inclusiveness: the stories of the clan were the stories of them all, not just the nobles at the top of the heap. MacShimidh ‘was a man of a bold, nimbling kind of sense’, said John Clerk of Penicuik who knew Lovat in Edinburgh; ‘very vain of his clan, the Fraziers, and ready to sacrifice everything to their interest’. Wade thought Lovat certainly was pumped with ambition, and understood why he was so motivated. He saw how all this feasting and inter-marrying and shared history in music and song tied these men to each other and their country. He just hoped they would then bond themselves to the fledgling kingdom of Great Britain.

Like Ferguson, some of Wade’s men could not see past the lack of sophistication at Dounie. To them it was all on a grand scale, but rather shabby, uncomfortable, and pretentious. All the leading men of the region dined here. One of Wade’s officers, Captain Burt, wrote that a ‘band of music struck up in a little place out of sight’ as they sat to dine. He assumed Lovat ‘would have us think they were his constant domestics’ but ‘I knew they were brought from’ Inverness for these occasions. The lower-ranking officers shrank from the noisy gangs of Highlanders who served at table, ‘whose feet and foul linen, or woollen, I don’t know which, were more than a match for the odour of the dishes’. One remarked that ‘many a peruke [wig] had been baked in a better crust’.

At supper, there was rare beef on silver plates and ‘a great number of dishes … almost all cold’. However, Captain Burt could not tell what most of them were as they were ‘disguised after the French manner’, that is, with sauces. The English officer did not like French food. ‘My palate … is always inclined to plain eating,’ he said, pleased with his own humility; but he admitted the wine was ‘very good’. Everyone knew that the wine had arrived through illegal channels, what the Highlanders called ‘free’ or ‘fair trade’. A more appreciative guest recorded that MacShimidh gave all his pocket could supply.

Wade’s officers admitted that the laird’s hunting was good: ‘salmon and trout just taken out of the river … partridge, grouse, hare, duck and mallard, woodcocks, snipes, etc., each in its proper season’. But even this was not quite right: it was all ‘to exuberance; rather too much I think, for the sportsman’s diversion’, while the conversation ‘was greatly engrossed by the chief, before, at, and after dinner’. Captain Burt remarked that nothing of note was said. His commander, General Wade, was riveted. Time spent on intelligence was never wasted.

Sitting back, Wade agreed with much of Lovat’s analysis of the Highland clans’ disrespect for British justice: there were hardly any JPs to keep the peace locally, while three of the Sheriff Deputies had been out for the rebels in the 1715 uprising. Though aspects of clanship offended Wade, his own pleasure in Gaelic culture surprised him. He also recognised that it was Scottish nationalism, not so-called ‘Highland barbarism’, that rankled with him and London. But how could you make Scottish people not Scottish, or Highland; or make them Scottish or Celtic in a way that blended with being British?

Among the ordinary Highlanders, Wade could not help but notice Lovat’s huge popularity. One soldier born on the Isle of Skye, a humble man of the MacLeod clan who knew Lovat’s reputation as a
deulnach
, a great Highland chief, had walked from Edinburgh to Castle Dounie just to enlist in Lovat’s new Independent Company. Arriving before dawn, he sat on the green in front of Dounie and waited. At daybreak he glimpsed ‘a fine-looking tall man’ at the window. Lovat moved through the hall in a morning coat. A servant attended, ‘throwing open the great folding doors and all the outer doors and windows of the house’. Looking out, Lovat spotted the stranger and came down. He bowed and invited the man in to explain his presence and take breakfast with them. MacLeod followed the chief and saw a huge table extending from one end of the hall to another, covered in various types of meat and drink. The place was soon ‘crowded by kindred visitors, neighbours, vassals and tenants of all ranks’ and resounded with noise. MacLeod explained he had come to offer himself for Lovat’s Independent Company. ‘For a thousand men such as you I would give my estate,’ Lovat responded and asked him to tell his story. Hearing it, the chief ‘clasped him in his arms and kissed him; and holding him by the hand, led him to an adjoining bed-chamber’ to introduce him to Lady Lovat.

Since living at Dounie, Lord Lovat had eased into a role described in the chronicles of his people, one he had first heard while sitting by the fireside at Tomich, listening to the Reverend James and his father. He was chief, the heart of the clan. He organised feasts and games and hunting to bring them all together. He kept a bard, a
seanachie
(a tradition-bearer) and a piper. The ordinary clansmen, the backbone of the Frasers, expected this of him. Many Highlanders believed that if the chief lived well, then so did the clan. His capacity to host, to be prodigal, was identified by the clan with its own well-being. Lovat filled the role to bursting point. He was the one around whom it all revolved, and the one who needed to raise funds to keep it all going.

Mediating between his kin and the larger political and social world, Lovat pressed invitations on fellow gentlemen and titled folk to keep abreast of opinions and loyalties. Exiled for so long, he adored the mingling and planning. His ambition was to form an elite group of Highlanders who could act in concert for their mutual security and prosperity. They should negotiate with Westminster as one body – the Gaels, the clans – to create a greater
dion
: protection of Highland and Scottish interests against Westminster indifference. Even pro-Union Scots like Duncan Forbes did not want to be ruled by London. When George I abolished the position of Scottish Secretary, Duncan celebrated: ‘We shall not be troubled with that nuisance, which we so long have complained of, a Scots Secretary, either at full length or in miniature; if any one Scotsman have absolute power, we are in the same slavery as ever.’ The 1720s were a good time for the Argyll faction, including Duncan and Lovat. The Earl of Ilay rose to be
de facto
minister for Scotland. Walpole had him made Lord Privy Seal.