Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/227

 Morar on the western coast. As he possessed the only boat on the lake, he felt pretty secure in his hiding-place, but the sailors from a man-of-war towed a boat over the peninsula separating the lake from the sea, and launched it on the lake. Lovat was discovered in the hollow of a tree, his legs muffled in flannel betraying his presence. He was carried in a litter to Fort William and thence by easy stages to London. At St. Albans he had an interview in the White Hart with Hogarth, with whom he had a previous acquaintance, and who then had the opportunity of sketching the famous portrait of him, impressions of which were immediately prepared for sale, and were in such demand that the rolling-press was kept at work day and night. On reaching London Lovat was lodged in the Tower. He was tried for high treason before the House of Lords, and, being found guilty on 18 March 1747, was beheaded at the Tower on the 9th of the following April. In accordance with the regulations as to cases of high treason, all help from counsel was denied him except in regard to strictly legal points. Old and infirm, he was thus placed at great disadvantage. Much evidence was admitted against him the legal validity of which was very questionable. He conducted himself with great tact, and the objections he made as well as his set speeches fully bore out his reputation for shrewdness. On the lord high steward putting the question whether he wished to offer anything further, ‘Nothing,’ said Lovat, ‘except to thank your lordship for your goodness to me. God bless you all, and I wish you an eternal farewell. We shall not all meet again in the same place; I am sure of that’ (State Trials, xviii. 840). The story of Lovat's life, and possibly also his great age, attracted an extraordinary crowd to witness his execution. A scaffold fell, causing the deaths of several people, on which Lovat grimly remarked, ‘The more mischief the better sport.’ When on ascending to the place of execution he saw the immense crowds beneath him, ‘Why,’ he said, ‘should there be such a bustle about taking off an old grey head that cannot get up three steps without two men to support it?’ Before placing his head on the block he, with characteristic appropriation of the noblest sentiments, repeated the line from Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori; and in a vein of becoming moralising, he also quoted Ovid: Nam genus et proavos, et quæ non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco. In the paper he delivered to the sheriff he declared that he died ‘a true but unworthy member of the holy catholic apostolic church.’ He had left a codicil to his will that all the pipers from John o' Groat's house to Edinburgh should be invited to play at his funeral; but events having rendered this impossible, he had desired before his execution that he might nevertheless be buried in his tomb at Kirkhill, that ‘some good old highland women might sing a coronach at his funeral.’ He died in this expectation, but although the body was given to an undertaker for this purpose, ‘leave not being given as was expected, it was again brought back to the Tower and interred near the bodies of the other lords’ (Gent. Mag. xvii. 162).

During the lifetime of the Dowager Countess of Lovat, whom he had forcibly married, Lovat was twice married: first, in 1717, to Margaret, daughter of Ludovic Grant of Grant, by whom he had two sons and two daughters; and secondly, to Primrose Campbell, daughter of John Campbell of Mamore, whom he is said to have induced to accept his addresses by inveigling her into a house in Edinburgh, which he asserted was notoriously one of ill-fame, and threatening to blast her character unless she complied with his wishes. By this lady he had one son. His eldest son by the previous marriage was Simon [see {{sc|Fraser, Simon, 1726–1782]. The second son, Alexander, rose to the rank of brigadier-general. Janet, the eldest daughter, married Macpherson of Clunie; Sybilla, the younger, died unmarried. Archibald Campbell Fraser [q. v.], the son of the second marriage, succeeded to the estates on the death, without issue, of his half-brother Simon in 1782. Archibald survived his five sons, and on his death in 1815, the descendants not merely of Simon, twelfth Lord Lovat, but of Hugh, ninth Lord Lovat, became extinct, the estates and male representation of the family devolving on the Frasers of Strichen, Aberdeenshire. Besides the portrait taken at St. Albans, there is another of Lovat by Hogarth, done at an earlier period. The original St. Albans portrait came into the possession of the Faringtons of Worden, Lancashire (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ii. 59, 191). There is an engraving of Lovat in the prime of life in Mrs. Thomson's ‘Memoirs of the Jacobites.’ The description of Lovat by a correspondent in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ at the time of his trial, tallies closely with the Hogarth likeness: ‘Lord Lovat makes an odd figure, being generally more loaded with clothes than a Dutchman with his ten pair of breeches; he is tall, walks very upright considering his great age, and is tolerably well shaped; he has a large mouth and short nose, with eyes