Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/52

308 cularly for the zeal and activity lie showed in suppressing the late unnatural rebellion in the north of Scotland, and for his known affection to his majesty's person and government, giving, granting, and disponing the escheat of all goods, gear, debts and sums of money, jewels, gold, silver, coined or uncoined, utensils and domecills, horse, nolt, sheep, corns, cattle, bonds, obligations, contracts, decreets, sentences, compromitts, and all other goods and gear escheatable, which belonged to Alexander Mackenzie of Fraserdale, together with the said Alexander Mackenzie his life-rent escheat of all lands, heritages, tenements, annual rents, tacks, steadings, rooms, possessions, as also five hundred pounds of sterling money, fallen in the king's hands by the said sentence, &c.

This was certainly an abundant reward, though Lovat had been a much better man, and his services more ample than they really were. It was nothing more, however, than he expected, and it excited no gratitude, nor did it yield any thing like content. Fraserdale's plate he had attempted to secure, but it fell into the hands of general Wightman; who, it was at the time remarked, had a happy knack of keeping what he got. However, he engaged to return it, Lovat paying him the one half in money, the whole being only valued at £150, sterling. In the month of April, he was, on his own request allowed to come to London, to look after all those great affairs that were then going on; and his mode of writing about them gives a curious view of a worldly man's morality: "I want," he says to his friend Duncan Forbes, "but a gift of the escheat to make me easy. But if it does not do, you must find some pretence or other that will give me a title to keep possession, either by the tailie my lord provost has, or by buying off some creditors; in short, you must make a man of it one way or other." He was also at this time on the eve of his marriage with Margaret Grant, daughter of Ludovick Grant, of Grant ; and his moral feeling on this subject is equally interesting to that which regarded the estate of Lovett: "I spake to the duke, and my lord Ilay, about my marriage, and told them, that one of my greatest motives to the design, was to secure the joint interest of the north. They are both fully for it, and Argyle is to speak of it, and propose it to the king. But Ilay desired me to write to you, to know if there would be any fear of a pursuit of adherence from the other person, (the dowager of Lovat) which is a chimerical business, and tender fear for me in my dear Ilay. But when I told him that the lady denied before the justice court, that I had any thing to do with her, and that the pretended marriage had been declared null, which Ilay says should be done by the commissaries only; yet when I told him, that the minister and witnesses were all dead, who had been at the pretended marriage, he was satisfied they could make nothing of it, though they would endeavour it. However, I entreat you, write to me or Mr Stewart a line on this head, to satisfy my lord Hay's scruple." This puts an end to all doubt respecting the rape charged upon his lordship, of which he had often before, and did often again declare, that he was as innocent as the child unborn. All was now, however, forgiven; the duke of Argyle wrote in his favour to the Grants, recommending the match, and in the course of the next year he obtained the young lady for his bride.

Lovat might now have been, if worldly success could make any man so, a very happy man. He had been, for many years, an exile and a prisoner, proscribed at home and abroad, and alike odious to both parties in the state, and both claimants of the crown. He had ventured home at the hazard of his life, had obtained the grace of the reigning prince, the countenance of all his friends, possession of the inheritance of his fathers, two honourable commissions among his countrymen, a young and beautiful wife, and a handsome pension; yet he was the same as before, querulous and discontented.