Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/40

386 raised, and in the meantime to take the oaths to, and receive the pay of king William, was really intended for king- James, who would not fail to be in the country to lay claim to and revive his rights in the course of the succeeding year. No sooner had young Beaufort received this assurance than he led into the regiment a complete company, almost entirely made up of the young gentlemen of his clan. In the course of the succeeding year, lord Murray was, by the favour of king William, appointed secretary of state for Scotland, and, in place of doing any thing for king James, inforced upon every officer in his regiment the oath of abjuration.

Being a young man, at liberty to follow out his education, and in the regular receipt of his pay, Beaufort, it might have been supposed, would have found his situation comfortable, and been, in some measure, content; but his spirit seems to have been naturally restless, and any thing like an under part in the drama of life did not square with his disposition. In the course of the year 1696, a company of lord Murray's regiment being stationed at the castle of Edinburgh, where the earl Marischal, lord Drummond, and other of the Jacobite lords were imprisoned, a visit from the Pretender being at the time expected, Simon, the subject of this narrative, entered into an engagement with the rebel lords to seize upon the castle, and to hold it under the earl Marischal for the French and king James. In this project, which appears not to have been executed, only because the French were unable to make the promised demonstration, Beaufort was to have been assisted by another captain of the same regiment, who seems to have been equally faithless and equally servile with himself.

But while he was thus careful to watch the tides, and to take advantage of every wind that might ruffle the ocean of politics, his eye was steadily fixed upon the estate of Lovat, which, as his cousin Hugh lord Lovat had but one child, a daughter, he had already marked out as his own. For this end he seems to have embraced every opportunity of ingratiating himself with his cousin, who appears to have been a man of a facile and vacillating disposition, and to have been considerably under the influence of lord Murray, his brother-in-law. Of this influence, Simon of Beaufort was perfectly aware, and watched with the utmost assiduity an opportunity to destroy it. This opportunity lord Murray himself afforded him in the affair of the colonelcy of the regiment, which, upon his appointment to the office of secretary, it was expected he would have given up to his brother-in-law, lord Lovat Nor is it at all unlikely that such was originally his lordship's intention; for, in the year 1696, he sent for him to London, apparently with the intention of doing so, after having presented him to the king. Lovat unfortunately carried along with him his cousin, Simon, whose character must, by this time, have been pretty well known to king William, and whose companionship, of course, could be no great recommendation to the royal favour. Lovat was, however, presented to the royal presence, most graciously received, and gratified with a promise of being provided for. As this was all that Lovat expected, he took leave of his majesty, along with lord Murray, leaving no room for William to suppose, for the present at least, that he either wished or had any occasion for a further interview. This his cousin Simon highly resented, telling him that it was a contrivance of lord Murray's to deprive him of an opportunity of soliciting a regiment for himself, and he prevailed with him instantly to demand of lord Murray the reason for which he had brought them at this time to London, at such an enormous expense. Lord Murray frankly told him that it was his design to have resigned to him the command of his regiment, but that the king had positively enjoined him to keep it in his own hands till such time as the