Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/226

 hood; and ceremonious formality was associated with unsavoury pleasantries and indecorous orgies. The territory of Lovat had in 1704 been erected into a regality, and as in addition to this he was appointed sheriff of Inverness, he found considerable scope for the exercise of his remarkable talents in augmenting his influence in the north of Scotland. In 1724 he addressed to the king a ‘Memorial concerning the State of the Highlands’ (printed in App. to Letters, 5th ed. ii. 254) recommending the establishment of independent highland companies commanded by the chiefs, and when his recommendation was adopted he was appointed to the command of one of the companies. Lovat always professed a special friendship for the Argyll family, whose interests he pretended to represent in the northern regions; but even as early as 1719 this friendship did not prevent him from writing to Seaforth, promising to join him on behalf of the Pretender (State Trials, xviii. 586). The government having obtained information of his intentions, he went to London to make explanations, meantime giving instructions to his clan to take up arms on the side of the government. His mission to London so successfully dissipated the doubts regarding his fidelity, that King George agreed to be godfather to his child, Colonel William Grant of Ballindalloch being appointed to act as his proxy. This barren honour was perhaps less than Lovat had expected, for his communications with the Jacobite party were soon resumed. He was the first to join the association formed about 1737 to invite the chevalier to land in Scotland, a patent for a dukedom being the price by which his services were won. The government became suspicious, and deprived him both of his command of the highland regiment and of his office as sheriff. The humiliation stung him to the quick. He himself said that if Kouli Khan had landed in Britain he thought ‘that would have justified him to have joined him with his clan, and he would have done it.’ At the same time Lovat modified his desire for vengeance by a keen regard to other advantages, and when the Pretender actually arrived in Lochaber manifested no special enthusiasm for his cause. The friendly correspondence he continued to keep up with Duncan Forbes of Culloden (see Culloden Papers) was no doubt chiefly meant to delude the government, but it is evident that he also wished to avoid committing himself irrevocably to the Pretender till the success of the enterprise became more certain. It was not till after the battle of Prestonpans on 21 Sept. 1745 that he ‘threw off the mask’ so far as to send round the fiery cross to summon his followers, but even then his friendly communications did not cease with Duncan Forbes, to whom he explained that his son had joined the Pretender contrary to his wishes, and that ‘nothing ever grieved his soul so much’ as his son's resolution to join the prince. It was impossible to believe such protestations. Lord Loudoun therefore on 11 Dec. marched to Castle Downie, and seizing Lovat brought him to Inverness as a hostage for the clan's fidelity, but on 2 Jan. he made his escape. He now wrote to his son that nothing ever made him ‘speak so much as a fair word’ to President Forbes, except to save himself from prison (State Trials, xviii. 771), and that his chief desire now was that his son ‘should make a figure in the prince's army;’ but at the same time he asked him to take measures to secure the patent of the dukedom, stating that if it was refused he must keep to his oath that he would never draw sword till that was done. The northward retreat of the prince's forces had already begun. Desirous to back out of the enterprise even at the eleventh hour, Lovat now sent a message to his son desiring him to come home, professedly that he might raise more troops; but such a shallow pretext did not for a moment deceive the son, who advised his father ‘not to lose on both sides’ (ib. p. 764). After the disaster of 10 April 1746 at Culloden, the one half of the highland army retreated by Gortuleg, where Lovat was then staying at the house of one of the gentlemen of his clan. He was anxiously awaiting news of the result of the struggle, when the ‘wild and desolate vale below him was suddenly filled with horsemen riding furiously towards the castle.’ A lady who was there at the time as a child records that the sudden appearance of the confused multitude in the plain below her seemed to her a vision of the fairies, and that, in accordance with highland tradition, she strove to refrain from moving her eyelid lest the vision should disappear. Driven to bay, Lovat now vainly advised the prince to make one resolute stand, telling him that his great ancestor Robert Bruce after losing eleven battles won Scotland by the twelfth. The prince in the morning fled westwards, and Lovat sought a retreat he had prepared for himself on Loch Muilly. On the way thither he is said to have witnessed from a hill-top the blaze of Castle Downie, set fire to by the soldiers of Cumberland. He had boasted of his retreat that he ‘would make a hundred good men defend it against all the forces that King George can have in Scotland’ (Letter to his son in State Trials, xviii. 759), but he left this retreat for another seventy miles further off, in the lake of