The officer who had the command of the town guard happened, however, to be acquainted with Lovat, and he interposed his aid on this occasion. He listened to the account which Lovat gave of the business which had brought him to Edinburgh. The Provost was next gained over to the opinion, that it would be wrong to oppose any obstruction to one who had his Majesty"s pa.s.sport: he ordered Lord Lovat to be set at liberty; and in order to give some colour of justice to this act, he declared that the information must have been wrong, it being laid against Captain Fraser,--whereas, the person taken appeared to be Captain Brown.
Lovat was once more in safety: he changed his lodgings, however; and, as soon as possible, set sail for Inverness. Again danger, in another form, r.e.t.a.r.ded his arrival among his clan. A storm arose, the ship was obliged to put into the nearest harbour, and Lord Lovat was driven into Fraserburgh, which happened to be within a few miles of the abode of his old enemy and rival Lord Saltoun.
Mr. Forbes, one of the Culloden family, was now fortunately for Lord Lovat, with him on his Majesty"s service. After some consultation together, he and Lovat decided to make themselves known to Mr. Baillie, town-clerk of Fraserburgh: they did so, were kindly received, and provided with horses to convey them to Culloden House, the seat of the future Lord President of Scotland, Duncan Forbes. Here they arrived in November, after incurring great risks from the Jacobite troops, who were patroling in parties over the country.[199]
Culloden House, famed in history, was inhabited by a race whose views, conduct, and personal character present a singular contrast, with those of Lord Lovat, or with those of other adventurers in political life. The head of the family was, at the period of the first insurrection, John Forbes, a worthy representative of an honourable, consistent, and spirited family. The younger brother of John Forbes was the celebrated Duncan Forbes, a man whose toleration of Lord Lovat, not to say countenance of that compound of violence and duplicity, seems to be the only incomprehensible portion of his lofty and beautiful character.
"Duncan Forbes was born," observes a modern writer, "of parents who transmitted their estate to his elder brother, and to all their children an hereditary aversion to the house of Stuart, which they appear to have resisted from the very commencement of the civil wars, and upon the true grounds on which that resistance ought to have been made."[200] By a singular fortune the hereditary estates of Culloden and Ferintosh had been ravaged, the year after the Revolution, by the soldiers of Buchan and Cannon, on account of the Jacobite principles of the owners. A liberal compensation was made in the form of a perpetual grant of a liberty to distil into spirits the grain of the Barony of Ferintosh,--a name which has become almost as famous as that of Culloden. It was the subsequent fate of Culloden to witness on its Moors the total destruction of that cause which its owners had so long resisted and deprecated.
Duncan Forbes, who, during a course of many years, was bound by an inexplicable alliance with Lovat, was at this period about thirty years of age. He had already attained the highest reputation for eloquence, a.s.siduity, and learning at the Scottish bar, and during his frequent opportunities for display before the House of Lords. But it was his personal character, during a period of vacillating principles, and almost of disturbed national reason, which obtained that singular and benignant influence over his fellow-countrymen for which the life of Duncan Forbes is far more remarkable, far more admirable, than for the exercise of his brilliant and varied talents. He had "raised himself,"
observes the same discriminating commentator on his life and correspondence, "to the high station which he afterwards held by the una.s.sisted excellence of a n.o.ble character, by the force of which he had previously won and adorned all the subordinate gradations of office."[201] He adorned this unenvied and unsullied pinnacle of fame by virtues of which the record is enn.o.bling to the mind. "He is,"
observes another writer, "in every situation, so full of honour, of gentleness, of kindness, and intrepidity, that we doubt if there be any one public man in this part of the empire, or of the age that is gone, whose qualities ought to be so strongly recommended to the contemplation of all those who wish to serve their country."
It was in such society as this that Lord Lovat, by a rare fortune, was brought, after his long and disgraceful exile. It was to such a home of virtue, of intelligence, of the purest and best affections, that he was introduced after a long course of contamination in the lowest scenes of French corruption, which had succeeded an equally demoralising initiation into the less graceful vices of the Court of George the First. The inestimable privilege came too late in one sense. Lord Lovat had gained nothing but wariness by the lapse of years; but the benefit to his worldly condition was considerable.
From this time until a few years before the insurrection of 1745, Lord Lovat may be regarded as a jealous partisan of the house of Hanover. No doubt, a general survey of the state of society in Scotland would, independent of his own personal views, have satisfied him that in such a course was the only chance of permanent safety. The wretchedness of the state of things at that period, can scarcely be adequately comprehended by those who live in times when liberty of opinion is universally an understood condition of civilized intercourse.
It is difficult for any person who lives now to carry himself back, by reading or conversation, into the prospects or feelings of the people of Scotland about a hundred years ago. The religious persecutions of the Stuarts had given a darker hue to the old austerity of their Calvinism.
The expectation of change constantly held out by that family divided the nation into two parties, differing on a point which necessarily made each of them rebels in the eyes of the other; and thus the whole kingdom was racked by jealousies, heart-burnings, and suspicions. The removal, by the Union, of all the patronage and show of royalty, spread a gloom and discontent, not only over the lower, but over the higher ranks. The commencement of a strict system of general taxation was new, while the miserable poverty of the country rendered it unproductive and unpopular.
The great families still lorded it over their dependants, and exercised legal jurisdiction within their own domains; by which the general police of the kingdom was crippled, and the grossest legal oppression practised. The remedy adopted for all these evils, which was to abate nothing and to enforce everything under the direction of English counsels or of English men, completed the national wretchedness, and infused its bitterest ingredient into the brim full cup.
The events of the year 1715 present but a feeble exemplification of the truth of this description compared with the annals of 1745, for the first Rebellion was, happily, soon closed.
Lord Lovat did not hesitate long on which side he should enlist himself; and the intelligence that his rival, Mackenzie of Fraserdale, had taken up arms in favour of the Chevalier, decided his course.[202] On the fifth of November he a.s.sembled all those of his clan who were still faithful to him, and who had been warned of his approach by his friends.
He was received among them with exclamations of joy; and, hearing that a body of Mackintoshes, a Jacobite clan, were marching to reinforce Sir John Mackenzie, who commanded the castle at Inverness, he marched forward with his adherents to intercept them, and to prevent their joining what he then called "the rebel garrison."
The citadel of Inverness, built in 1657 by Oliver Cromwell, and called Oliver"s Fort, stood on the east bank of the river Ness, and was a regular pentagon, with bastions, ramparts, and a moat; the standard of the Protectorate, with the word "Emmanuel" inscribed upon it, had formerly been displayed upon its ramparts. It was calculated to hold two thousand men, and was washed on one side by the river. As a fortress it had many inconveniencies; approaches to it were easy, and the town afforded a quarter for an enemy"s army. In 1662 it had been partly dismantled by Charles the Second, because it was the relic of usurpation, and const.i.tuted a check upon the adjacent Highlanders, who were then considered loyal.[203] It is said by one who saw it after the Restoration to have been a very superb work, and it was one of the regular places for the deposition of arms at the time of the Rebellion of 1715. Subsequently it was much augmented and enlarged, and bore, until its destruction after the battle of Culloden, the name of Fort George, an appellation now transferred to its modern successor on the promontory of Ardesseil.
It was against this important fortress that Lord Lovat now marched with as much zeal and intrepidity as if he had been fighting in the cause of that family for whom his ancestors had suffered. He proceeded straight to Inverness, and placing himself on the west side of the town despatched a party of troops to prevent any supply of arms or provisions from approaching the castle by the Firth. Forbes of Culloden lay to the east, and the Grants, to the number of eight hundred, to the south side of the town. Sir John Mackenzie finding himself thus invested on all sides, took advantage of a spring tide that came up to the town and made the river navigable, to escape with all his troops; and Lord Lovat immediately gained possession of the citadel. The fame of this inglorious triumph has, however, been divided between Lovat and Hugh Rose of Kilravock,[204] whose brother, in pursuing the Jacobite guard to the Tolbooth, was shot through the body. But whoever really deserved the laurel, Lord Lovat profited largely by his dishonest exertions in a cause which he began life by disliking, and ended by abjuring.
On the thirteenth of November Lord Lovat was joined by the Earl of Sutherland; and, leaving a garrison in Inverness, the two n.o.blemen marched into the territory of the Earl of Seaforth, where they intimidated the natives into submission. Lord Lovat also despatched a friend to Perth, where the main portion of the Jacobite army lay, to claim the submission of his clansmen, who were led by his rival, Mackenzie of Fraserdale. They complied with his summons to the number of four hundred, and Lovat, after entering Murray and Strathspey, and exacting obedience to the King"s troops in these districts, prepared to attack Lord Seaforth, who was threatening to invest Inverness. But Duncan Forbes, who was then serving with the army, restrained the ardour of his neighbour, and hostilities were terminated in the North without further bloodshed.[205]
Lord Lovat was quickly repaid for his exertions. From George the First he received three letters of thanks, and an invitation to go to Court; and in March, 1716, a remission of the sentence of death which had been pa.s.sed upon him, received the royal signature. He was appointed governor of Inverness, with a free company of Highlanders. What, perhaps, still more gratified his natural thirst for vengeance was the fate of his rival, the husband of Amelia Lovat, Mackenzie of Fraserdale, who was attainted of high treason, and whose life-interest in the lands and barony of Lovat were forfeited and escheated to the Crown. To complete the good fortune of Lovat, the King was graciously pleased, in June, 1716, to make him a present of the forfeited lands; and Lovat immediately took possession of the estate, and entered his claim to the honours and dignities which were appended to the lands.[206] It was now that he added another motto to the arms of the Frasers, and struck out the quarterings of the Bisset family, which had been made a plea for his adversary. The ancient Frasers, or Frizells, had for their motto "_Je suis prest_," to which this honour to their house now added the words, "_Sine sanguine victor_," denoting that he had come peaceably to the estate.[207]
He was now the undisputed Lord Lovat; hitherto he had borne, generally, the convenient name of Captain Fraser, given to him in his military capacity; and it appears, in spite of all his boastings, that he had scarcely been called by any other t.i.tle at the French Court than that of Fraser of Beaufort. He had now an admirable opportunity of obliterating the remembrance of his past life, and of conciliating good opinion by the consistency and regulation of his present conduct. Notwithstanding his crimes his clansmen turned towards him gladly; his neighbours were willing to a.s.sist him in the support of his honours, and he enjoyed what he had never before experienced, the confidence of his Sovereign.
Lord Lovat began his season of prosperity by litigations, which lasted between twelve and fourteen years. His first aim was to set aside the pretensions of Hugh Fraser, the son of Mackenzie of Fraserdale, who claimed the t.i.tle of Lord Lovat after his father"s death; and also, by virtue of settlements, a.s.serted rights to the estate. The contest was finally decided by the House of Lords in favour of Lord Lovat"s enjoying the honours and lands during his life, the fee remaining with Fraserdale, who died in 1755.
Vexatious and expensive suits occupied the period between 1715 and 1732, when they were brought to a final conclusion.
Lovat now a.s.sumed a state corresponding to his station, and suitable to the turn of his mind for display. Not only the lands, heritages, tenements, annual rents, &c., of the unfortunate Mackenzie of Fraserdale were bestowed on him for his services in suppressing what in the deed of gift was termed "the late unnatural rebellion in the north of Scotland;"
but also the "goods, jewels, gear, utensils and _domecills_, horses, sheep, cattle, corn," and, in short, whatsoever had belonged to the Mackenzies, together with five hundred pounds of money, which had fallen into the King"s hands. It was, indeed, some time before all this could be accomplished, as the correspondence between Lord Lovat and his friend Duncan Forbes sufficiently shows.
"Inverness, the 5th March, 1716.
"My Dearest General,[208]
"I send you the inclosed letter from the name of Macleod, which I hope you will make good use of; for it"s most certain, I keep"d the M"Leods at home, which was considerable service done to the Government. The Earle went off from Cullodin to Cromarty last night; and tho" he got a kind letter from Marlbrugh, congratulating him on his glorious actions, yet he was obliged to own to General Wightman, that his Lordship would have got nothing done in the North without my dear General and me. I wish he may do us the same justice at Court: if not, I am sure, if I live, I will inform the King in person of all that pa.s.sed here since the Rebellion. The Earle"s creatures openly speak of the Duke of Argyle"s being recalled. I could not bear it. You know my too great vivacity on that head. I was really sick with it, and could not sleep well since. I expect impatiently a letter from you to determinal my going to London, or my stay here, where I am very well with General Wightman, but always much mortified to see myself the servant of all, without a post or character. I go to-morrow to Castle Grant to take my leave of my dear Alister Dow. Your brother is to follow and to go with Alister to London this week. I find the Duke was gone before you could be at London. I hope, my dear General, you will take a start to London to serve his Grace, and do something for your poor old corporal; and, if you suffer Glengarry, Frazerdale, or the Chisholm, to be pardoned, I will never carry a musquet any more under your command, though I should be obliged to go to Affrick. However, you know how obedient I am to my General"s orders. You forgot to give the order, signed by you and the other depicts, to meddle with Frazerdale"s estate for the King"s service. I intreat you send it me, for ---- is afraid to meddle without authority. Adieu, mon aimable General; vous savez que je vous aime tendrement; et que je suis mille fois plus a vous qu"a moy-meme pour la vie.
"LOVAT."
In another letter, he observes--"The King has been pleased, this very day, to give me a gift of all Fraserdale"s escheat." Still, however, one thing was wanting; the rapacious Lovat had not obtained his former enemy"s plate; General Wightman had taken possession of it as from the person with whom it was deposited; and he was celebrated for his unwillingness to part with what he had gained. At last, however, the greediness of Lovat was appeased if not satisfied by a present from General Cadogan of the plate which he had taken, belonging to Fraserdale; and by a compromise with General Wightman, Lovat paying the General one-half of the value of the plate which was worth only one hundred and fifty pounds. Thus were the remains of the unhappy Jacobites parcelled out among these military plunderers.
During this year, the avocations of Lord Lovat"s turbulent leisure were pleasingly varied by the cares of a love suit. The young lady who was persuaded to link her fate to his, was Margaret, the fourth daughter of Ludovick Grant, of Grant; she is said to have been young and beautiful.
But several obstacles r.e.t.a.r.ded for awhile her union with Lord Lovat. In the first place, he was not wholly unmarried to the Dowager of Lovat, who was still alive. The family of Athole had, it is true, annulled that marriage, yet there were still legal doubts and difficulties in the way of a fresh bond. Lord Lovat was now, however, according to his own report to his "dearest General" at Culloden, in high favour with King George and the Prince of Wales; and to them he broached the subject of his marriage.
"I had a private audience of King George this day; and I can tell you, dear General, that no man ever spoke freer language to his Majesty or to the Prince than I did." "They still behave to me like kind brothers; and I spoke to them both of my marriage, they approve of it mightily, and my Lord Islay brother of the Duke [of Argyle], is to make the proposition to the King; and, so that I believe it will do, with that agreement that my two great friends wish and desire it."[209]
He could, however, do nothing except in a sinister manner; nor was there ever one motive which sprang from a right source. Again he thus addresses Duncan Forbes:--
"I spoke to the Duke and my Lord Islay about my marriage, and told them that one of my greatest motifs to that design, was to secure them the joint interest of the North." This must have been a pleasing consideration for the young lady, but that which follows is scarcely less promising and agreeable.
"They [the Duke and Lord Islay] are both to speak of it to the King; but Islay desired me to write to you, to know if there would be any fear of a poursuit of adherence from that other person [the Dowager Lady Lovat], which is a chimirical business, and tender fear for me in my dear Islay.
But when I told him that the lady denyed, before the Justice Court, that I had anything to do with her, and that the pretended marriage is declared nul (which Islay says should be done by the Commissarys only), yet, when I told him that the witnesses were all dead who were at the pretended marriage, he was satisfyed that they could make nothing of it, though they would endeavour it."[210]
This letter, which shows in too clear colours how unscrupulous even men of reputed honour, such as Lord Islay, were on some points in those days, seems to have removed all obstacles; and, during the following year (1717), Lord Lovat was united to Margaret Grant. Her father was the head of a numerous and powerful clan, and this marriage tended greatly to increase the influence of Lord Lovat among the Highlanders. Two children, a son and a daughter, were the result of this union.
Prosperity once more shone upon the chieftain of the Frasers; and he now restored to his home, Castle Downie, all the baronial state which must so well have accorded with that ancient structure. The famous Sergeant Macleod, in his Memoirs, gives a graphic account of his reception at Castle Downie by Lord Lovat, where the old soldier repaired to seek a commission in the celebrated Highland company, afterwards called the Highland Watch.[211]
"At three o"clock," says the biographer of Macleod,[212] "on a summer"s morning, he set out on foot from Edinburgh; and about the same hour, on the second day thereafter, he stood on the green of Castle Downie, Lord Lovat"s residence, about five or six miles beyond Inverness; having performed in forty-eight hours a journey of a hundred miles and upwards, and the greater part of it through a mountainous country. His sustenance on this march was bread and cheese, with an onion, all which he carried in his pocket, and a dram of whiskey at each of the three great stages on the road,--and at Falkland, the half-way house between Edinburgh, by the way of Kinghorn and Perth. He never went to bed during the whole of this journey; though he slept once or twice for an hour or two together, in the open air, on the road side.
"By the time he arrived at Lord Lovat"s park the sun had risen upwards of an hour, and shone pleasantly, according to the remark of our hero, well pleased to find himself in this spot, on the walls of Castle Downie, and those of the ancient abbey of Beaulieu in the near neighbourhood. Between the hours of five and six Lord Lovat appeared walking about in his hall, in a morning dress, and at the same time a servant flung open the great folding doors, and all the outer doors and windows of the house. It is about this time that many of the great families of the present day go to bed.
"As Macleod walked up and down on the lawn before the house, he was soon observed by Lord Lovat who immediately went out, and, bowing to the Sergeant with great courtesy, invited him to come in. Lovat was a fine-looking tall man, and had something very insinuating in his manners and address. He lived in the fullness of hospitality, being more solicitous, according to the genius of the feudal times, to retain and multiply adherents than to acc.u.mulate wealth by the improvement of his estate. As scarcely any fortune, and certainly not _his_ fortune, was adequate to the extent of his views, he was obliged to regulate his unbounded hospitality by rules of prudent economy. As his s.p.a.cious hall was crowded by kindred visitors, neighbours, va.s.sals, and tenants of all ranks, the table, that extended from one end of it nearly to the other, was covered at different places with different kinds of meat and drink--though of each kind there was always great abundance. At the head of the table the lords and lairds pledged his Lordship in claret, and sometimes champagne; the tacksmen, or demiwa.s.sals, drank port or whiskey-punch; tenants, or common husbandmen, refreshed themselves with strong beer; and below the utmost extent of the table, at the door, and sometimes without the door of the hall, you might see a mult.i.tude of Frasers, without shoes or bonnets, regaling themselves with bread and onions, with a little cheese, perhaps, and small beer. Yet amidst the whole of the aristocratic inequality, Lord Lovat had the address to keep all his guests in perfectly good humour. "Cousin," he would say to such and such a tacksman or demiwa.s.sal, "I told my pantry lads to hand you some claret, but they tell me you like port or punch best." In like manner to the beer drinkers he would say, "Gentlemen, there is what you please at your service; but I send you ale because I understand you like ale." Everybody was thus well pleased; and none were so ill bred as to gainsay what had been reported to his Lordship.
"This introduction was followed by still further condescension on the part of Lord Lovat. He looked at the veteran who had served in Lord Orkney"s regiment, under Marlborough, at Ramilies and Malplaquet, with approbation.
""I know," said his Lordship, "without your telling me, that you have come to enlist in the Highland Watch; for a thousand men like you I would give an estate." Donald Macleod then, at Lovat"s request, related his history and pedigree,--that subject which most delights the heart of a Highlander. Lord Lovat clasped him in his arms, and kissed him, and then led him into an adjoining bedchamber, where Lady Lovat then lay, to whom he introduced the Sergeant. Lady Lovat raised herself in her bed, called for a bottle of brandy, and drank prosperity to Lord Lovat, to the Highland Watch, and to Donald Macleod. "It is superfluous to say,"
adds the Sergeant, "that in this toast the lady was pledged by the gentlemen.""
In contradiction to this attractive account of Lord Lovat"s splendour and hospitality we must quote a very different description, given by the astronomer Ferguson. Lord Lovat"s abode, according to his account, boasted, indeed, a numerous feudal retinue within its walls, but presented little or no comfort. It was a rude tower with only four apartments in it, and none of these s.p.a.cious. Lord Lovat"s own room served at once as his place for constant residence, his room for receiving company, and his bedchamber. Lady Lovat"s bedchamber was allotted to her for all these purposes also. The domestics and a herd of retainers were lodged in the four lower rooms of the tower, a quant.i.ty of straw const.i.tuting their bed-furniture. Sometimes above four hundred persons were thus huddled together here; the power which their savage and ungrateful chieftain exercised over them was despotic; and Ferguson himself had occasionally the pleasurable sight of some half dozen of them hung up by the heels for hours, on a few trees near the house.[213]
The pretended loyalty of the chief to the exiled family const.i.tuted a strong bond of union between Lovat and his followers; and having them once under his command, "that indefinable magic by which he all his life swayed those who neither loved nor esteemed him," to borrow Mrs. Grant"s expression, caused them afterwards to follow his desperate fortunes. "He resembled, in this respect," says the same admirable writer, "David when in the cave of Adullam, for every one that was discontented, and every one that was in debt, literally resorted to him." Lovat, once settled in the abode of his ancestors, did all that he could do to efface the memory of the past, and to redeem the good opinion of his neighbours.
One thing he alone left undone,--he did not amend his life. Crafty, vindictive, gross, tyrannical, few men ever continued long such a career with impunity.
He was long distrusted by the good of both parties; by the one he was regarded as a spy of Government, by the other as one whose Jacobite loyalty was only a pretext to win the affections of the honest and simple Highlanders. Yet, at last, he succeeded in obtaining influence, partly by his real talents, partly by his artifices and knowledge of character. "When one considers," observes Mrs. Grant, "that his appearance was disgusting and repulsive, his manners, except when he had some deep part to play, grossly familiar, and meanly cajoling, and that he was not only stained with crimes, but well known to possess no one amiable quality but fort.i.tude, which he certainly displayed in the last extremity, his influence over others is to be regarded as inexplicable."
Although the most valuable possessions of his family were on the Aird, the chief centre of his popularity was in Stratheric, a wild hilly district between Inverness and Fort Augustus. There he was beloved by the common people, who looked upon him as a patriot, and there he made it his chief study to secure their affections, often going unlooked for to spend the day and night with his tenants there, and banishing reserve, he indulged in a peculiar strain of jocularity perfectly suited to his audience. His conversation, composed of ludicrous fancies and blandishments, was often intermingled with sound practical advice and displays of good sense. The following curious account of his table deportment, and ordinary mode of living, is from the pen of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who was well acquainted with those who had personally known Lord Lovat.
"If he met a boy on the road, he was sure to ask whom he belonged to, and tell him of his consequence and felicity in belonging to the memorable clan of Fraser, and if he said his name was Simon to give him half-a-crown, at that time no small gift in Stratheric; but the old women, of all others, were those he was at most pains to win, even in the lowest ranks. He never was unprovided with snuff and flattery, both which he dealt liberally among them, listened patiently to their old stories, and told them others of the King of France, and King James, by which they were quite captivated, and concluded by entreating that they impress their children with attachment and duty to their chief, and they would not fail to come to his funeral and a.s.sist in the coranach _keir_.
At Castle Downie he always kept an open table to which all comers were welcome, for of all his visitors he contrived to make some use;--from the n.o.bleman and general by whose interest he could provide for some of his followers, and by that means strengthen his interest with the rest, to the idle hanger-on whose excursions might procure the fish and game which he was barely suffered to eat a part of at his patron"s table.
Never was there a mixture of society so miscellaneous as was there a.s.sembled. From an affectation of loyalty to his new masters Lovat paid a great court to the military stationed in the North; such of the n.o.bility in that quarter as were not in the sunshine, received his advances as from a man who enjoyed court favour, and he failed not to bend to his own purposes every new connection he formed. In the mean time the greatest profusion appeared at table while the meanest parsimony reigned through the household. The servants who attended had little if any wages; their reward was to be recommended to better service afterwards; and meantime they had no other food allowed to them but what they carried off on the plates: the consequence was, that you durst not quit your knife and fork for a moment, your plate was s.n.a.t.c.hed while you looked another way; if you were not very diligent, you might fare as ill amidst abundance as the Governor of Barataria. A surly guest once cut the fingers of one of these harpies when s.n.a.t.c.hing his favourite morsel away untasted. I have heard a military gentleman who occasionally dined at Castle Downie describe those extraordinary repasts. There was a very long table loaded with a great variety of dishes, some of the most luxurious, others of the plainest--nay, coa.r.s.est kind: these were very oddly arranged; at the head were all the dainties of the season, well dressed and neatly sent in; about the middle appeared good substantial dishes, roasted mutton, plain pudding and such like. At the bottom coa.r.s.e pieces of beef, sheeps" heads, haggiss, and other national but inelegant dishes, were served in a slovenly manner in great pewter platters; at the head of the table were placed guests of distinction, to whom alone the dainties were offered; the middle was occupied by gentlemen of his own tribe, who well knew their allotment, and were satisfied with the share a.s.signed to them. At the foot of the table sat hungry retainers, the younger sons of younger brothers, who had at some remote period branched out from the family; for which reason he always addressed them by the t.i.tle of "cousin."
This, and a place, however low, at his table, so flattered these hopeless hangers-on, that they were as ready to do Lovat"s bidding "in the earth or in the air" as the spirits are to obey the command of Prospero."
"The contents of his sideboard were as oddly a.s.sorted as those of his table, and served the same purpose. He began,--"My lord, here is excellent venison, here turbot, &c.: call for any wine you please; there is excellent claret and champagne on the sideboard. Pray, now, Dunballock or Killbockie, help yourselves to what is before you; there are port and lisbon, strong ale and porter, excellent in their kind;"
then calling to the other end of the table,--"Pray, dear cousin, help yourself and my other cousins to that fine beef and cabbage; there is whiskey-punch and excellent table-beer." His conversation, like his table, was varied to suit the character of every guest. The retainers soon retired, and Lovat (on whom drink made no impression) found means to unlock every other mind, and keep his own designs impenetrably secret; while the ludicrous and careless air of his discourse helped to put people off their guard; and searchless cunning and boundless ambition were hid under the mask of careless hilarity."
But darker deeds even than these diversified the pursuits of a man who had quitted the prisons of Angouleme and of Saumur only to wreak, upon his own faithful and trusting clansmen, or his neighbours, as well as his foes, the vindictive cruelty of a nature utterly depraved, not softened even by kindness, still less chastened by a long series of misfortunes.
Lovat"s re-establishment at the head of his clan seems to have intoxicated him, and the display of his power to have risen into a ruling pa.s.sion. Above all, he boasted of it to Duncan Forbes, whose endurance of this wretched ally"s correspondence lasted until the pretended friendship was succeeded by avowed treachery to the Government to which he had professed such grat.i.tude, and to the King and Prince whom he was wont to call "the bravest fellows in the world."[214]