When the verdict of guilty was pronounced against him, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, replied with acrimony that he had met with hard usage in his adversity. The Lord High Steward rebuked him for his tone, and then delivered sentence. In Westminster Hall, the aged prisoner had refused to play the part of a feeble dotard: he challenged the veracity of the witnesses until his peers delivered their judgment. A few weeks later, he would mount the scaffold, repeating that he had long learned how to obey a command. Between these two gestures lay the political life of a man who had repeatedly shifted allegiance without ever relinquishing his ambition.
The Jacobite rebellion of 1745 drew to its end upon the field of Culloden. In the ensuing months, the Earls of Kilmarnock and Cromartie, together with Lord Balmerino, were apprehended; Lovat in turn was taken into custody, charged with having advised and aided the Pretender. The first three appeared before the House of Lords in July 1746. Kilmarnock and Cromartie pleaded guilty. Balmerino pleaded not guilty, stood trial, and was condemned. Cromartie, whose wife was burdened with several young children, obtained a pardon following the entreaties of his lady, who appeared before the Princess of Wales with her children clad in mourning. Kilmarnock and Balmerino were beheaded on Tower Hill that August. Borrow records the words and scenes of that day as a striking contrast between the two men: Kilmarnock requested that Balmerino precede him to the block; Balmerino, who scorned to sue for mercy, affirmed his dying allegiance to James Stuart. The fate of Lovat remained to be determined.
Lovat was near eighty years of age and had traversed the avenues of power for decades. Borrow depicts him as scholarly, Catholic, and politically adroit, yet condemns his nature as thoroughly insincere. In his youth, inheritance disputes had intertwined ambition, captivity, and violence. Having sought to wed the heiress of Lovat, Fraser compelled the mother of the young woman—the widow of the previous lord—to marry him instead. The account in the Dictionary of National Biography names him as the coercive husband, whereas Borrow assigns that part to one of his retainers. Such discrepancy cautions against treating the chronicle as an official transcript of record.
His years in France obscure the portrait further. The tradition of the Bastille and the Jesuits of Saint-Omer is not the sole version of his exile: his own memoirs point rather to Angoulême and Saumur. Returning to Scotland, he supported the government during the rising of 1715; yet the legal recognition of his title and estates remained long in dispute. His fidelity was never a straightforward path. In 1745, he was compelled once more to determine what measure of support he would lend to the Jacobite enterprise, and what assurances he would give the Crown.
Lord President Forbes addressed him by letter, urging him to declare for the King’s government. Lovat replied in terms that Borrow interprets as compliance; yet the men he dispatched to swell the rebel ranks were commanded by his own son. This contradiction weighed heavily at his trial. It rested not merely upon the suspicions of an adversary: the case subsequently assembled by the Crown marshaled the testimony of one of his own tenants, that of a former secretary to the Pretender, the depositions of his household servants, and the statements of Highland gentlemen.
Following Culloden, Lovat sought refuge in the western Highlands. Biographical records relate that he was discovered concealed within the hollow of a tree near Loch Morar, and thence conveyed in a litter toward Fort William. This account differs from the domestic arrest related by Borrow. The prisoner was ultimately brought to London and lodged within the Tower. His great age and physical infirmities rendered the journey arduous; yet they could not abate the grave charges marshaled against him by the Crown.
Several indispensable witnesses resided in the north of Scotland. Accordingly, the House of Lords postponed his trial until the following spring. On March 9, 1747, Westminster Hall received Lovat before his peers, with Lord Chancellor Hardwicke presiding as High Steward. On the opening day, the prisoner objected to a witness who was his tenant. Following debate, the Lords permitted the man to testify; he affirmed that Lovat had actively raised resources for the Young Pretender, whose descent upon Scotland had allegedly followed the prisoner’s counsel.
On the morrow, the peers debated the admissibility of John Murray of Broughton, formerly secretary to the Pretender. He was himself under an act of attainder, which, the defense argued, rendered him incompetent to testify. The Attorney General read the record of the attainder and laid before the court the royal pardon granted to Murray. The objection fell away. On the following day, Murray testified that Lovat had supplied men and treasure to the rebels and had instructed two of his sons to assemble his clansmen in arms. Lovat’s servants corroborated that their master had sent money to the Pretender; several Highland gentlemen offered similar testimony.
The defense was heard on the sixth day. Lovat maintained that his accusers were his inveterate enemies, coerced by threats or seduced by subornation. Two Highlanders testified on his behalf, but their assertions carried little weight against the evidence heard by the court. On the seventh day, the peers reconvened in Westminster Hall to deliver their verdict. Lovat complained bitterly of the treatment he had endured; the High Steward reprimanded him for his contumacy and pronounced the judgment of high treason.
Borrow records no petition for royal clemency following the sentence. When Lovat’s friends urged him to sue for mercy, he replied that the poor remnant of his life was not worth the asking. He received the messenger who brought the death warrant, presented him with a bottle of wine, and astonished him, the chronicle notes, by his buoyant spirits. One morning, when the Major of the Tower inquired after his health, he replied that he was preparing himself for a place whither very few majors ever ventured. He practiced the posture of laying his neck upon the block, placing a cushion at the foot of his bed and kneeling before it until he felt assured he could perform his part with dignity.
On the eve of his execution, he jested with his barber, enjoining him not to cut his throat, lest the expectant multitude be cheated of their spectacle. He took his supper, ordered minced veal for his morning repast, smoked his pipe, and retired to rest. On the morrow, he rose before daybreak, prayed, read, and ate with hearty appetite. When the sheriffs arrived to demand his body, Lovat asked for a few moments of devotion. He then proceeded toward the gate; General Williamson invited him to step back for a brief moment into his quarters, an offer Lovat accepted, drinking a glass of wine before entering the governor’s carriage.
Near the scaffold, he informed the sheriff that he might give the signal when he pleased: he had served long in the army and knew how to obey. Surveying the vast concourse, he wondered aloud that such numbers should assemble to see an old head taken off. Laying his hand upon the shoulder of a disheartened friend, he bade him take comfort, declaring that he felt no fear himself. He then presented a purse of gold to the executioner, charging him to perform his office cleanly, jesting that he would take it ill were he to rise again through clumsy workmanship.
He recited a few classical verses, knelt, and dropped his handkerchief. His head was severed with a single stroke and laid within the coffin. Yet the multitude assembled on Tower Hill did not witness merely a decapitation. Shortly before Lovat was led forth from the fortress, one of the timbered galleries collapsed under the press: several spectators were crushed to death on the spot, and many scores were maimed. Thus the chronicle unites in a single morning the doom of the condemned rebel and that of the curious throngs who had flocked to his end. Lovat was beheaded on April 9, 1747; the spectacle which he had met with a jest closed in mourning for the households of the crowd.