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The Last Highlander: Scotland’s Most Notorious Clan Chief, Rebel & Double Agent
Sarah Fraser
Saltire First Scottish Book of the Year 2012The story of the life of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat : a clan chief of the Scottish nobility, rebel and Jacobite conspirator. He became the last British peer to go under the axe, marking a moment in history when the rest of Britain turned decisively away from the Celtic heritage.Lord Lovat was a spy, clan-chief, traitor, polyglot, deserter and philosopher. His wit, ambition and dubious morality thrust him repeatedly into the thick of political intrigue. A treacherous turncoat, and yet a martyr for Bonnie Prince Charlie’s dreams to retake the British throne, Lovat conjured a legend: a man whose loyalty had no home, whose sword had a price, and whose taste for risks led him into pacts with Catholics and Protestants, Scots and Englishmen.The last nobleman to be executed for treason, Lovat was one of Scotland’s most notorious and romantic figures, and this swashbuckling account of his life creates an extraordinary portrayal of a nation in revolt. As Sarah Fraser argues, the defeat at Culloden led directly to the end of traditional Gaelic civilization; to the brutal clearances and ‘pacification’ of the Highlands which followed and the lost civilisations of Scotland that were destroyed after 1745 by English repression.
The Last Highlander
SCOTLAND’S MOST
NOTORIOUS CLAN CHIEF,
REBEL & DOUBLE AGENT
SARAH FRASER
HarperPress
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Published by HarperPress in 2012
Copyright © Sarah Fraser 2012
Sarah Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007229499
Ebook Edition © April 2012 ISBN: 9780007302642
Version: 2018-06-21
Dedication (#u6af4f6a3-feff-551f-b6ae-ed8f155b28de)
For Kim
&
For Arabella Vanneck
1959–2011
Epigraph (#u6af4f6a3-feff-551f-b6ae-ed8f155b28de)
‘[The soul] demands that we should not live alternately with our opposing tendencies in continual see-saw of passion and disgust, but seek some path on which the tendencies shall no longer oppose, but serve each other to common end … The soul demands unity of purpose, not the dismemberment of man’
– ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
‘A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair’
– NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
CONTENTS
Title Page (#u8ba1b0ca-90ef-599b-9dc7-41d732b965b7)
Copyright (#udfecfcc2-c672-5bcf-a3ff-b1acda8a18f7)
Dedication
Epigraph
List of Illustrations
Maps
Lovat Family Tree
Prologue: Death of a Highland chief
PART ONE: FORMATIVE YEARS, C.1670–1702
ONE: Home, birth, youth, c.1670–94
TWO: To be a fox and a lion, 1685–95
THREE: ‘Nice use of the beast and the man’, 1695–96
FOUR: ‘No borrowed chief!’, 1696–97
FIVE: ‘The Grand Fornicator of the Aird’, 1697–99
SIX: Victory and loss, 1699–1702
PART TWO: AT THE COURT OF THE SUN KING, 1702–15
SEVEN: The Stuart Court of St Germains, 1702
EIGHT: Planning an invasion, 1702–04
NINE: ‘A disposition in Scotland to take up arms’, 1703
TEN: The ‘political sensation’, autumn 1703
ELEVEN: The ‘Scotch plot’ exposed, winter 1703–04
TWELVE: ‘You walk upon glass’, 1704–14
THIRTEEN: The end of exile, 1714
FOURTEEN: A necessary change, 1714–15
FIFTEEN: Return to Scotland, 1715
SIXTEEN: Fighting for the prize, 1715
PART THREE: THE RETURN OF THE CHIEF, 1715–45
SEVENTEEN: Home, 1715–16
EIGHTEEN: The legal battles begin, 1716
NINETEEN: Living like a fox, 1716
TWENTY: ‘What a lion cannot manage, the fox can’, 1717–18
TWENTY-ONE: Matters of life and death, 1718–21
TWENTY-TWO: Networking from Inverness, 1722–24
TWENTY-THREE: Lovat under Wade’s eye, 1725–27
TWENTY-FOUR: Tragedy, 1727–31
TWENTY-FIVE: Kidnapping and election-rigging, 1731–34
TWENTY-SIX: A pyrrhic victory, 1734–39
PART FOUR: LORD LOVAT’S LAMENT, 1739–47
TWENTY-SEVEN: Floating between interests, 1738–43
TWENTY-EIGHT: ‘A foolish and rash undertaking’, 1743–45
TWENTY-NINE: Rebellion, July–December 1745
THIRTY: A quick victory, and long march to defeat, December 1745–June 1746
THIRTY-ONE: The beginning of the end, 1746–47
THIRTY-TWO: Dying like a lion
Picture Section
Footnotes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Notes
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
ILLUSTRATIONS (#u6af4f6a3-feff-551f-b6ae-ed8f155b28de)
Etching of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat after William Hogarth. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
James II and family, 1694, by Pierre Mignard. (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Queen Mary II, c. 1685, studio of Willem Wissing. (Kenwood House, London © English Heritage Photo Library/The Bridgeman Art Library)
King William III by Godfried Schalcken. (© The Crown Estate/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, 18th century English School. (© Scottish National Portrait Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Louis XIV in Royal Costume, 1701, by Hyacinthe Rigaud. (© Louvre, Paris/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)
View of Edinburgh by J Slezer (engraved copper plate) produced for D. Browne, London, 1718. (© The British Library Board)
Major James Fraser of Castle Leathers, c. 1720, attributed to John Vanderbank. (Private Collection)
John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, William Aikman. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll, attributed to Allan Ramsay. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
Sir James Grant. Etching by John Kay, 1798. (© The Mary Evans Picture Library)
The death of Colonel Gardiner on the field of Prestonpans. Sir William Allan lithograph by E. Walker. (© The Mary Evans Picture Library)
George II at the Battle of Dettingen by David Morier. (© Private Collection/Arthur Ackerman Ltd/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Field-Marshal George Wade, attributed to Johan van Diest. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
Prince Charles Edward Stuart, by William Mosman. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
The Battle of Culloden, 1746. Coloured engraving published by R. Sayer and J. Bennett, London c. 1780. (© The National Army Museum, London)
