In June or July 1692, at Fraserburgh, the crack of pistol-shots rang out over a public spectacle that Lord Fraser would have no need to recount himself for it to haunt him. The market cross drew together voices, toasts, and tavern bravado. A man cried three ceremonial calls, then proclaimed King James and the Prince of Wales. Lord Fraser stood upon the monument beside the others. At his trial, one witness swore he was there; another, that he drank there. The decisive question was far narrower: what, precisely, did he proclaim, and what did the witnesses truly hear?
The prosecution placed the scene at the very heart of a contest for sovereignty. James II had lost his crown; William and Mary now reigned. The indictment did not merely charge Fraser with raising his glass to a fallen monarch. It depicted a ceremony devised, according to the Crown, to disavow William’s title, reassert that of James and his son, and incite the populace to take up arms. The proclamation, it was alleged, had been thrice repeated. Insults were said to have been hurled at William, weapons discharged from the steps of the cross, and townsfolk compelled to drink. The penalty demanded was death and the forfeiture of his estates.
Yet the record soon severed the observed scene from the construction placed upon it. Thomas Piper, a weaver, saw Fraser quit the house of John Hay, the vintner, and make for the cross. He heard someone shout three “Oyezes,” and thereafter proclaim James and the Prince. He did not point to Fraser as the man who uttered the formula. He saw the peer upon the cross, near the proclaimer, and then heard the company drink and the pistols discharge. This distinction, minute amid the tumult, became the frontier between mere presence and the overt act charged.
John Wood corroborated several particulars without further identifying the speaker. He saw Fraser and other gentlemen mount the cross; a servant proclaimed James and the Prince, and two pistol-shots resounded. Wood carried wine to the gathering. He did not describe an amorphous crowd: someone was required to hold the horses while the gentlemen occupied the monument; another brought the glasses. The pageant had its witnesses, its helpers, and its props. Yet the judicial narrative did not permit every subordinate role to be forged into proof of a wider conspiracy.
Henry Finlayson brought forward another, far more perilous detail for Fraser. He saw the lord and his companions drink healths; the servants informed him that they toasted James and the Prince of Wales. Fraser and another gentleman pressed their swords against his breast to force him to drink. The witness was no mere spectator: he claimed to have been coerced. John Hay, the vintner, confirmed that he heard Fraser drink to the health of the two pretenders and heard shots fired. The peer’s presence and his assent to the toast rested upon several depositions, even while the precise words of the proclamation remained in dispute.
Alexander Robertson threw open his window upon hearing the uproar. He beheld a man clad in red call thrice upon the assembly and proclaim James as lawful king. Fraser stood upon the cross; the words he next made out were “Burgar,” “The Hague,” and “Orange.” Here again, Robertson did not pretend to have heard the whole accusatory speech. James Hardie, a servant to Hay, saw a footman make the calls and begin the toast. He heard a threat uttered against those who refused to drink, saw Fraser join in the toast, and heard the pistol-fire. James Scot, for his part, ascribed to Fraser curses against those who declined the glass.
The trial opened upon a point of legal relevancy. The court found the indictment sufficiently relevant to warrant the penalties it portended. The Lord Advocate protested in advance against any verdict of acquittal that he might deem erroneous; Fraser maintained that such a procedure was itself an injustice. Certain peers and men of quality summoned as jurors failed to appear: seven peers and eight gentlemen were fined one hundred merks apiece for their default.
Lord Bargeny presided over the assize. The jurors returned their findings point by point. Unanimously, they found it not proven that Fraser had himself proclaimed James and the Prince, nor that he had caused the proclamation to be made. They found, however, that he was present. By a majority, they found it proven that a proclamation had indeed been made at Fraserburgh, yet not in the precise terms of the indictment: it was not established that it had declared the two pretenders lawful sovereign and legal successor of the realm.
The verdict did not deny the scene; it contracted its legal import. The jurors found that Fraser had drunk to the health of James and the Prince of Wales. They rejected the charges that he had cursed King William, drunk to his confusion, uttered the scurrilous reproaches recited in the libel, or forced the inhabitants to share the toast. They found that pistols had been fired, without establishing that Fraser had commanded it. A cluster of noisy, seditious acts remained proven around him, yet the tribunal declined to weld them into a single treasonable design.
Four jurors demanded that their dissent be entered upon the record: they held the proclamation proven in the very terms of the libel. Their protest was duly minuted alongside the majority verdict.
On May 16, 1693, the court sentenced Lord Fraser to pay a fine of two hundred pounds sterling. The Crown had demanded his life and his estates; the judgment delivered was a pecuniary penalty, the jury having cast out the essential pillars of the charge of treason. The decree leaves a singularly vivid image: at the foot of the cross, a servant proclaims, the wine circulates, and the firearms crack. Fraser was found present and partaking in the toast, yet cleared of having spoken the proclamation or commanded the gunfire.
A genealogical note by Borrow adds that the title of Fraser, conferred under Charles I, was destined to expire with the accused, who died leaving no male issue.