Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/41

Rh rumours of an invasion should subside, when he should certainly surrender it into his hands.

Had Lovat been left to himself, this answer would most probably have been altogether satisfactory; but it did not satisfy Simon nor his friends lord Tarbat and Alexander Mackenzie, sou to the earl of Seaforth, both of whom were at that time in London, and were of service to Beaufort in persuading lord Lovat that lord Murray had been all along, his mortal enemy. By the advice of all three, Lovat sent back to lord Murray two commissions, that of captain and lieutenant-colonel, which he held under him, expressing, at the same time, in strong language, his resentment of his treachery, and his fixed resolution never more to see him nor any individual of his family, excepting his own wife. At the same time that the poor old man was thus eager in casting off his old friends, he was equally warm in his attachment to the new. "Impressed with the tender affection of the laird of Beaufort, and the resolution he manifested never to leave him, he declared that he regarded him as his own son;" and as he had executed, at his marriage, some papers which might perhaps be prejudicial to the claims of this said adopted son, he obliged him to send for an attorney, and made a universal bequest to him of all his estates, in case he died without male issue. This affectionate conduct on the part of lord Lovat, deeply, according to his own account of the matter, affected our hero, who pretended "that he would for ever consider him as his father." In consequence of so much anxious business, so much chagrin and disappointment, with a pretty reasonable attendance on taverns, lord Lovat fell sick; but after convalescing a little, was brought on his way home as far as Edinburgh by his affectionate Simon, where he left him, proceeding by the way of Dunkeld to meet with his wife. He had not been many days at Dunkeld when he again fell sick, and retired to an inn at Perth, where he was again waited on by Simon of Beaufort, and, in a state of distraction, died in his arms the morning after his arrival.

Though, as we have seen, the subject of this memoir had got a deed executed by a London attorney under the direction of his cousin, the late lord Lovat, constituting him heir to the estate, it was judged by him the more prudent method to put forward his father, as the nearest male heir, to take possession of the estate, with the honours, contenting himself with the title of master of Lovat. No sooner, however, had he assumed this title than he was questioned on the subject by his colonel, now lord Tullibardine, who made him the offer of a regiment, with other preferments, which should be to him an ample provision for life, provided he would execute a formal surrender of his claim to that dignity. This produced a violent altercation between them, which ended in the master of Lovat throwing up his commission, which he bade his lordship, if he pleased, bestow upon his own footman. Through the friendship of Sir Thomas Livingston, however, he received another company in the regiment of Macgill, and his father having taken possession of the estate and the honours of Lovat, without much apparent opposition, he must have been, in some degree, satisfied with his good fortune. In order, however, to secure it, and to render his claims in every respect unexceptionable, he made love to the heiress of his cousin, the late lord Lovat, and had succeeded in persuading her to marry him, without the knowledge of her friends, when one of his agents betrayed trust, and she was carried out of his way by the marquis of Athol, after the day of the marriage had actually been appointed.

The marquis of Athol, late lord Tullibardine, probably aware that he had an adversary of no common activity to deal with, lost no time in concluding a match for the heiress with lord Salton, or Fraser, whom he also took measures