The Last Highlander: Scotland’s Most Notorious Clan Chief, Rebel & Double Agent

FOUR

‘No borrowed chief!’, 1696–97

‘Men must either be pampered or crushed’

– MACHIAVELLI

There was no time to lose. Under feudalism, Atholl–Murray interest in the Frasers died with the late chief. Therefore, ‘my father did take upon him the title of Lord Lovat, and possessed himself of the estates’, wrote Simon.

Captain Simon Fraser, now the Master of Lovat, returned to his regiment. He had precedent and history and the desire of much of his clan on his side. He possessed youth, determination, righteous indignation, courage and acute financial need to power the claims of his birthright. This might not be enough. But Simon had already asserted the cause of the thousands of the ordinary Fraser clansmen, and of their chief, more vigorously in a couple of years than the Fraser chiefs had in a couple of generations.

As soon as he had the chance, Tullibardine came for Captain Fraser. Manipulating the Privy Council, Tullibardine obtained the gift of his niece, nine-year-old Amelia, ‘in a trustee’s name’, though the child had a mother and close Fraser kin, and did not need an externally appointed guardian. As trustee, he would manage her clan and choose her husband. It was his duty to make the most advantageous match possible for her. This was usually the male heir.

Simon returned to command the guard at Holyroodhouse. Late one night Tullibardine arrived. Simon heard a shout from the guard, saw the flaring of torches, and watched the Earl clatter into the palace courtyard, calling for light and ‘a bottle’. He then summoned Simon to join him. ‘Having drunk to a good pitch,’ Tullibardine ‘took a paper out of his pocket and called for pen and ink’. He wanted Simon to sign a retraction of his claims. Simon must know, he said, how he entertained an ‘extreme friendship’ for him, a mere ‘Cadet of the family of Lovat, but of no Manner of Estate’. Tullibardine was aware of the ‘meanness’ of his situation, he told Simon, who sat there stony-faced. However, ‘I am told you have assumed the title of Master of Lovat, and that you have sent the opinions of [legal] counsel to your father, recommending him to take possession of the property of my late brother-in-law.’ Tullibardine ended on an accusatory note.

Simon put down his drink and forced himself to be civil. Of course his father Thomas, Lord Lovat, enjoyed his inheritance: the honours and estates of his late great nephew. Why would Simon consult lawyers about a natural course of events, and send results north?

Tullibardine too had gone to the law. His lawyers agreed Thomas had a right to the title. They would all call the old fellow ‘Thomas, Lord Lovat’. Why not? However, under the terms of Hugh and Amelia’s marriage contract, ratified and signed by the late Lord Lovat, the property and estates belonged to his ward and niece, Amelia.

Simon countered: he either had ‘a just right to the succession, or … had not’. It was quite simple. ‘If he had no right, it was to little purpose to’ renounce his claim to nothing. ‘But, if he had a right, he would not renounce it for the revenues of Scotland.’ It was his birthright.

Tullibardine convulsed with ‘violent passion’. He had always known Simon ‘for an obstinate, insolent rascal’, he raged. ‘I do not know what should hinder me from cutting off your ears and throwing you into a dungeon, and bringing you to the gallows, as your treasons against the government so richly deserve!’ Tullibardine referred to Simon’s treasonable letters on the death of the Queen, which were now in his hands.

Although he felt awed by ‘his formidable person, in the midst of his state and authority’, Simon knew he had to stay calm. He stuck his hat on his head. He was off. ‘As for the paltry company I command in your regiment … it is the greatest disgrace to which I was ever subject to be under your command, and now, if you please,’ he said, jerking his head towards a lackey in the corner, ‘you may give it to your footman.’ And out he strode, shaking with emotion. Simon resigned from Tullibardine’s regiment.

The next day Tullibardine sent to the King the letters Simon had written on Queen Mary’s death. Tullibardine demanded that young Beaufort be arrested, court-martialled and hung for high treason. William consulted the commander-in-chief of his Scottish forces, Sir Thomas Livingstone. Men much more highly placed than young Simon Fraser could be compromised by their ambivalent stance to his rule, he counselled the King. William would be advised not to reagitate feelings that had led to the plotting in Scotland the previous summer.

The King ordered Livingstone to cashier Simon Fraser. Livingstone obeyed but told his Majesty that he suspected ‘the Viceroy’ was abusing his public position in a private vendetta against Simon Fraser in his and old Atholl’s lust to acquire the Lovat estates. It was a view Simon had keenly encouraged. Tullibardine’s growing number of enemies believed that ‘if the Secretary of State could turn out and in officers at their pleasure, upon their private pique, no officer in the army was sure of his commission’. With this sort of reportage, Simon cleverly and noisily drew attention to the Murrays’ pursuit of him and his clan. Men such as Archibald Campbell, the 10th Earl of Argyll, were keen to ally themselves to Simon, to prove that Tullibardine was too eager to use the tools of public office to build his personal power base. By favouring him so completely, it looked as if King William was colluding in the schemes of the Atholl Murrays to extend their territorial and political power in Scotland.

Argyll murmured to William Carstares, a Presbyterian minister and one of the King’s most trusted confidants, that Tullibardine’s activities around Inverness threatened national security. If ‘Tullibardine be allowed to go on … it may occasion a deal of bloodshed; for if one begin, all the Highlands will in ten days fly together in arms … I am most particularly concerned in Highland affairs,’ he said. Simon Fraser had called on the right man to help him. The Frasers were historically ‘sword vassals’ of the Campbells. It meant that in exchange for protection by the bigger clan, the Frasers brought out their men to fight Campbell battles. To bring down Tullibardine’s over-mighty schemes to dominate Scottish politics, men who otherwise supported William’s rule would go into opposition.

Tullibardine did not meet with this growing barrage of criticism calmly. He was, said a contemporary, ‘endowed with good natural parts, tho’ by reason of his proud, imperious, haughty passionate temper, he was no ways capable to be the leading man of a party. He much affected popularity,’ but his ‘kindest addresses were never taking: he was selfish to a great degree, and his vanity and ambition extended so far, that he could not suffer an equal. He was reputed very brave, but hot and headstrong.’ He would destroy Simon Fraser.

At the end of the summer, Simon left Edinburgh. Scottish law had not been able to solve his problems and Simon struggled to see how the traditional path – a clan feud – might be avoided. Everyone feared a feud, ‘for Highland feuds never die’, as the Reverend James Fraser counselled him. If it came to a feud he could not see how he might expect to win. Over the last two decades the Murrays had amassed a regiment and a militia force of their own. Tullibardine, as King’s High Commissioner, enjoyed huge power over the courts and Parliament. If Simon provoked the Murrays, they would surely attack. In the end the solution seemed obvious. The two sides must be brought together. He and the heiress, young Amelia, must be contracted to marry. This was the path of peace.

In April 1697, Simon headed to Castle Dounie to negotiate with Hugh’s widow for the hand, at puberty, of the heiress Amelia. Tullibardine reacted immediately. He ordered the girl to be whisked from her mother, the dowager Lady Lovat, and be taken to his Perthshire stronghold, Blair Castle. Simon meanwhile moved into Castle Dounie itself and sent his father to a safehouse on the Lovat Stratherrick estates.

When Simon said of his kin that ‘the Highland clans did not consider themselves as bound by the letter of the law, like the inhabitants of the low country’ around Inverness, ‘but to a man would regard it as their honour and their boast, to cut the throat, or blow out the brains of anyone … who should dare to disturb the repose of their laird’, he had his Stratherrick clansmen in mind. High above Loch Ness, Stratherrick concealed itself and its people behind the trees and rocks scaling the steep slopes along the south shore of the loch. Fertile fields around lairds’ houses nurtured cattle and rigs of corn in a sea of moorland wilderness. The Frasers who lived there existed in accordance with the values of the clan system. Financially, they depended on a traditional chief of the sort Simon desired to be. The elderly Lord Lovat would be safe among these men.

From Dounie, the dowager Lady Lovat complained to her family: ‘Young Beaufort is still here and does not intend to go from this place till his own time. They are more obdurate than ever, and delude the people extremely.’ Simon, the chief’s son, felt that the chief’s son living in the chief’s stronghold was not delusional. The widow of a dead chief had to make room for the living one, or move to a dower house.

‘The neighbourhood are all knaves, and for him,’ the Marquis of Atholl growled when he read his daughter’s letters. It maddened him that they had failed to kill young Beaufort in Edinburgh when they had the chance. After seizing Amelia, Atholl wrote to the Fraser lairds advising them to trust him rather than rally to ‘Captain Fraser’. The old Marquis ‘would find out a true Fraser and a man of handsome fortune that would support their whole name’. This was a dangerous time for the Murrays. Removing young Amelia gave them possession of a serious claimant to the inheritance, but it removed her from the objects of her claim.

Simon was dismayed to find that some Fraser lairds from the rich low-lying country around Inverness were hesitating to enlist for him. Others, such as Robert Fraser and his brother – both lawyers – had thrown over the ties of clanship in order to advance themselves. Even they advised the Murrays it was a step too far not to bring in a Fraser as chief and suggested they could find an alternative within the impoverished Saltoun Frasers from along the coast towards Aberdeen. Simon cursed the two lawyers like an Old Testament prophet. ‘Robert, the prime author of these misfortunes, died under the visible judgement of God,’ he wrote. Robert’s brother ‘may yet be overtaken with the just punishment of his crimes’, he added hopefully.

The response Atholl received from the Highland lairds was unequivocal. They ‘would have no borrowed chief!’ Moreover, if Saltoun ‘dared to enter their country in hostility to Thomas, Lord Lovat … his head should answer the infringement … We have put on a full resolution to defend our lands, possessions, goods, lives, wives, children, liberties and privileges of free subjects which lie at the stake against all invading and insulting avaricious ambition and oppression pro aris et focis contra omnes mortalles.’ The judicial phrasing in Latin (suggesting Simon’s hand in it) sealed the threat of an old-fashioned Celtic clan feud.

The letter left Lord Saltoun windy about his venture into Lovat territories to arrange a marriage between his son and Amelia Lovat. He wrote to Simon, claiming disingenuously that he only desired to help arbitrate in the Murray–Fraser dispute. Simon thanked him, and suggested they meet. Lord Saltoun agreed.

At the end of September 1697, Saltoun and Lady Lovat’s youngest brother, Lord Mungo Murray, rode to Beauly. They looked forward to their time at Castle Dounie working out the details of a pre-nuptial agreement. They would hunt, dance and feast. The intention was then to go back via the Murray stronghold and celebrate the contract by letting the young people meet. Simon, meanwhile, hoped to dissuade Lord Saltoun from acting as go-between for Tullibardine’s schemes.

At daybreak, Simon and his lairds set out to rendezvous with Saltoun from the Stratherrick estates, where he had been enlisting gentlemen to his cause. As their party crossed the River Ness and headed west towards Dounie, ‘the inhabitants, observing their alert and spirited appearance lifted up their hands to heaven, and prayed God to prosper their enterprise’, Simon wrote. Dollery, Tullibardine’s recruiting agent, confirmed their support. ‘It is certain the generality of the country about Inverness favours’ Simon, Thomas and their followers, he told his master. ‘In the very town of Inverness I hear they call the young rogue the Master of Lovat.’ Even the professional classes were coming over to Simon’s side.

The party rode on with confidence. The Beauly Firth sparkled on the right as they entered the woods of Bunchrew, about three miles out of Inverness. Suddenly, one of Simon’s lairds noticed a group of ‘running footmen’ scampering out of the woods. These runners accompanied gentlemen of any standing, holding their stirrups as they mounted and dismounted; opening gates in their path; fording rivers and burns and leading the gentleman’s horse to steady its progress. Simon was shocked to see that they were followed by the Lords Saltoun and Mungo Murray and their tail of armed followers. Saltoun was very chatty, apparently ‘in great hopes to have his son [become] Lord Lovat when the girl was ripe’. Seeing and hearing all this, Simon erupted. He and Saltoun had arranged to meet that day to prevent this very thing. He, Simon, was the obvious candidate for young Amelia’s hand. The Lords were reneging on their agreement on every count.

Simon’s reaction was phrased in the clan rhetoric of pride and ‘face’: such ‘an affront was too atrocious … not to exact satisfaction for it, or perish in the attempt’, Simon later wrote. William of Errochit, a Stratherrick laird, shot forward and levelled a carabine at Saltoun and Mungo: ‘Stop, traitor, you shall pay with your hide your irruption into this country in hostility to our laird!’ The party skidded to a halt. Simon cantered up to Mungo Murray, yelling at him, ‘Fire traitor, or I will blow out your brains!’ Mungo dropped his reins and threw up his hands. ‘My dear Simon,’ he retorted. ‘Is this the termination of our long and tender friendship?’

Simon looked at him along his pistol. ‘You are a base coward, and deserve no quarter,’ he replied, ‘but I give you your life.’

Simon’s men moved among the group and disarmed them all, ‘without the smallest resistance from any individual’, except Lord Saltoun’s valet de chambre, who only gave up his weapon after Simon ‘struck him a blow on the head with the flat side of his sword’. The two Lords and their company of gentlemen were rounded up and taken to Fanellan, two miles from Castle Dounie, where Simon ordered the party to be locked up. A gallows was erected outside Lord Saltoun’s cell window. The unhappy noble sat alone in a tiny room and, in between the sawing and banging, listened to his fate being discussed. The door of Saltoun’s cell opened and another of Simon’s lairds, Major Fraser of Castleleathers, entered, swathed in plaid from top to toe, his face as red as his tartan. Taunting him, Castleleathers instructed his Lordship ‘to prepare himself for another world … He had but two days to live.’ The pro-Murray Frasers who had called Saltoun in to their country were then made to cast dice, ‘to know whose fate it was to hang with him’. This was ritualised violence, a tool in old-fashioned clan diplomacy; a display of seriousness of intent.

Lord Saltoun did not react well, Castleleathers recorded. As the effect of the news sank in, ‘the poor gentleman, finding this a hard pill to digest, contracted a bloody flux, of which he almost dyed’. Saltoun passed out cold, crashing to the floor. ‘Upon his recovery he begged his life, the gallows having stood all the time beneath his window – and 500 men waiting on in arms.’

Not wanting the death of a nobleman on his hands, Simon released them all immediately, though not before pressing his sword under Saltoun’s and Mungo Murray’s chins and making them swear never to come back to Fraser country. Happy to agree to anything, the nobles touched the tip of his weapon, swore the oath and fled.

The kidnapping had started out as what most Highland Scots recognised as a clan raid – a wild spree by the young bloods of one clan against another. However, the Murrays went to court to move the insult into quite another quarter. They declared the Frasers had risen in ‘open and manifest Rebellion’. This was a capital charge. The Murrays demanded legal endorsement – a ‘Commission of Fire and Sword’ – to send in soldiers to arrest the Beaufort Frasers and devastate their lands. The court had to distinguish between the private and public offence in all this. The government had an interest in rather than a monopoly on violence as a tool of justice in North Britain. Representatives of the Crown knew Tullibardine was trying to use Scottish law against a kindred he himself was provoking into a clan feud. The Privy Council in Edinburgh hesitated.

To Simon the kidnapping and high jinx was a Highland, private matter, between the Master of Lovat and the Murrays. He did not see himself as being in rebellion against the Crown. It might all have been diffused, had British justice not been even more vexed by what Simon did next.

FIVE

‘The Grand Fornicator of the Aird’, 1697–99

‘The Lady not yielding willingly, there was some harsh measures taken …’

– MAJOR FRASER OF CASTLELEATHERS

Simon did not stop to think. He did not know what would happen or leave enough time to scheme at every twist and turn. On 15 October, days after freeing Lord Saltoun, his Frasers galloped over the hill from Fanellan. Runners fanned out across the slopes around them, like the clan’s hunting dogs, and fell on Castle Dounie. Simon ordered a guard to be placed on all the avenues to the castle ‘to prevent the Dowager from sending to her father’, or brother. Simon made Lady Amelia pen a soothing note to Colonel Hill, the officer in charge of the government barracks at Fort William. ‘We are still in hopes to take away this riot friendly,’ she reassured him.

Meanwhile, the Sheriff of Inverness-shire did what was required to mollify the victims and rein in the aggressively exuberant Fraser youth. Simon and his associates would appear before him to answer for the kidnapping of Lords Saltoun and Murray. Simon travelled to Inverness, accompanied by his father, where he was rebuked by the Sheriff for letting things get out of hand, told to quieten down and dismissed. The Sheriff Court did not care to consider the issue of Simon’s occupation of Castle Dounie. Impatient heirs often bumped against a dowager trying to hang on in the old family home. Besides, Lady Amelia seemed cross, not terrified.

In Fort William, Colonel Hill relaxed. Brigadier Alexander Grant, the Sheriff of Inverness-shire, was a competent man and chief of Clan Grant, friends and neighbours of the Frasers for hundreds of years. Grant was a follower of the Earl of Argyll and ‘is judged competent for the Riot’, Colonel Hill assured Tullibardine. ‘I conclude there will be no more trouble about that affair,’ Hill said, turning his mind back to organising supplies. The campaigning season was drawing to an end, and his troops needed to winter in at the garrison.

Tullibardine threw Hill’s reply aside and composed a cold note. Hill should not act as if the feuding Frasers and Murrays were just two barbaric clans locked into a territorial dispute. ‘Not only on the public account, but also on mine,’ he said – as if Scotland and the Murrays were mirrors of each other. The colonel must use government troops to quell this ‘uprising against the King’. He must send a ‘strong party of the King’s soldiers amongst them … to apprehend the Beauforts … which,’ Tullibardine gritted his teeth, ‘I wish you had sent on the first account.’

At Dounie, Simon had thought of another way to settle the feud, as audacious as the first. If he could not have Amelia the daughter, he would have Amelia the mother. Then he would have both of them. He walked through to Lady Lovat’s chambers. She loved and esteemed him. They had known each other most of their lives. They must marry. Lady Lovat refused. ‘He urged the more, fearing that troops’ from the Atholl Murrays ‘would march against him’. Still she would not yield.

Simon considered for a moment, then shouted for a couple of men and despatched them to Inverness. They returned after dark. In their wake, they towed an inebriated Episcopal minister on a pony, the Reverend Robert Munro of Abertarff, a ‘poor, sordid fellow’.

‘The Lady not yielding willingly,’ Fraser of Castleleathers noted with foreboding, ‘there was some harsh measures taken, a parson sent for, and the bagpipe blown up.’ Too late, Lady Amelia realised how vulnerable she was. Two men hauled her, in tears, before Reverend Munro, Simon taking his position grim-faced by her side. The deafening groan of the pipes bounced off the walls of the small room. The minister kept his head down, and pronounced Amelia and Simon man and wife.

An overwrought Amelia was dismissed to her maids. Simon joined his men to drink the health of bride and groom, and the settlement of their troubles. The clan was safe. The Master of Lovat sent a man to Stratherrick to tell his father the news.