Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/223

 his coffin, and to several statements made by himself, he was born about 1667. His birthplace was probably a small house in Tanich, Ross-shire, then occupied by his father, who suffered imprisonment for joining the expedition of Dundee in 1689; the next year served under General Buchan, and in 1696 joined with Lord Drummond and other noblemen in an attempt to surprise Edinburgh Castle (Memoirs, 1797, p. 211; letter to the Duke of Perth 9 Feb. 1704 in Correspondence of Nathaniel Hooke, i. 86). Simon was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, where, as would appear from his love of classical quotation and allusion, he acquired some proficiency in his studies. Indeed, he curiously united the peculiarities of a wild highland chief with those of a cultivated gentleman. When he had just taken the degree of M.A. in 1683, and was about to ‘enter upon the science of civil law,’ his studies were interrupted by the proposal that he should accept a commission in the regiment of Lord Murray, afterwards duke of Atholl. The proposal was, he states, extremely distasteful to him, and only assented to on the assurance that the design of Lord Murray in accepting the regiment was treacherously to aid King James with it ‘in a descent he had promised to make during the ensuing summer.’ In 1696 he accompanied Lord Murray (who in July was created Earl of Tullibardine) and his cousin, Lord Lovat, to London. He there so ingratiated himself with his cousin, whom he describes as of ‘contracted understanding,’ that Lord Lovat made a universal bequest to him of all his estates in case he should die without male issue, an opportune arrangement, for Lovat died very shortly after his return from London. By a deed made on 20 March it was found that the estates had been settled for life on Simon Fraser's father, Thomas Fraser of Beaufort, Simon having consoled himself for his filial piety in effecting this arrangement by securing for himself meanwhile a grant of five thousand merks Scots. The father thereupon assumed the title of Lord Lovat, and Simon styled himself Master of Lovat. Emilia, eldest daughter of the tenth lord, assumed, however, the title of Baroness of Lovat, and as she had the support of her mother's brother, the Earl of Tullibardine, lord high commissioner of Scotland, Simon prudently resolved to end the dispute by marrying the heiress. He attempted to get her into his hands, but the clansman who had been entrusted with conveying her, for whatever reason, failed to complete his commission, and brought her back to her mother. A treaty was then entered into for her marriage with the Master of Saltoun, whereupon Fraser raised a number of his followers, and falling in with Lords Saltoun and Tullibardine after they had left Castle Downie, captured them near Inverness, and conveyed them prisoners to the island of Aigas. He then invested Castle Downie, of which he soon obtained possession, and, finding the daughter had been removed beyond his reach, resolved, possibly rather from a sudden impulse of vengeance than from interested motives, to compel the mother to marry him instead. In the middle of the night he introduced into her chamber a clergyman, Robert Monroe of Abertarf, and the marriage was performed by force, the bagpipes being blown up to stifle the lady's cries (State Trials, xiv. 356). For some time afterwards the lady, whom he also removed to the island of Aigas, remained in a state of utter physical and mental prostration; but Fraser is said to have ultimately won her affection. At first he gave out that it was the lady herself who sent for the minister, and it has also been stated that she sent for a second minister; but in subsequent years, when he found it impossible to reap any benefit from the marriage, Lovat deemed it more convenient to treat the whole matter as a practical joke of his own, without legal validity. The Earl of Tullibardine at once took measures for punishing the outrage committed on his sister. Letters of ‘intercommuning’ and of fire and sword were issued against Fraser and his followers; proceedings were taken against him and his father and others in the court of justiciary, which ended on 6 Sept. 1698 in their being found guilty of high treason, and condemned to be executed as traitors (ib. xiv. 350–78). Simon removed his father to Skye, where he died in the castle of Dunvegan in 1699, when the son assumed the title of Lord Lovat. For some time he wandered with a band of trusty followers among the wilds of the northern highlands, eluding every effort to capture him, and occasionally inflicting severe losses on his pursuers. By cleverly working on the jealousy of the Duke of Argyll towards the rival house of Atholl he induced Argyll in the autumn of 1700 to intervene to procure him a pardon from King William. On Argyll's recommendation he took a journey to London, but King William was then on the continent, and Lovat utilised the opportunity to run over to France, where he paid two visits to the exiled court at St. Germain. His reason for doing so, he unblushingly states, was to dissipate the calumnies against the sincerity of his Jacobitism disseminated by the Marquis of Atholl, and he asserts that he was so successful that James promised when he came into power ‘to exterminate that perfidious and traitorous family’ (Memoirs, 103). He