in Paris, where he states he was on account of fatigue attacked by a serious illness, which lasted three weeks (ib. 243). Lovat had sent to the queen an account of his mission in Scotland (‘Memorial to the Queen of all that my Lord Lovat did in his Voyage to England and Scotland by her Majesty's orders’ in Macpherson's Original Papers, i. 641–50), but on account of information regarding his procedure brought by Murray he was arrested. His own account is that ‘after spending thirty-two days in a dark and unwholesome dungeon’ he was confined for three years in the castle of Angoulême, and for other seven years had his liberty restricted to the city of Saumur (Memoirs, written by himself, p. 270); but in the short ‘Memoirs of the Life of Lord Lovat,’ published in 1746, and the ‘Life’ erroneously attributed to a Rev. Archibald Arbuthnot, he is stated to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, to have become a curé at St. Omer, acquiring considerable fame as a preacher, and to have been admitted into the order of jesuits.
Meantime Emilia Fraser, the heiress of Lovat, whom Fraser had endeavoured to carry off, was married to Alexander Mackenzie, son of Roderick Mackenzie of Prestonhall, a judge in the court of session, and with the aid of the judge's legal knowledge Mackenzie, in the absence of Lovat, obtained on 2 Dec. 1702 a decree from the court of session for the estate, and his wife for the title, an execution of entail being further made in favour of the issue of the marriage. Mackenzie also got a deed executed 23 Feb. 1706, permitting the heirs, ‘if they should think fit, in place of the surname of Fraser to bear the name of Mackenzie.’ This procedure deeply offended the clan, and after several meetings of the gentlemen had been held they in 1713 despatched Major Fraser of Castle Leathers to France to discover the whereabouts of their chief and bring him home. After a vain attempt to induce the chevalier to sanction Lovat's release, Lovat and the major, with the aid of the jesuits and on the pretence that they were entrusted by the chevalier with a search commission, concerted an escape. Arriving in London, they were arrested in their lodgings in Soho Square, and kept for some time in a sponging-house, but obtained their liberty on Lord Sutherland, Forbes of Culloden, and others, becoming bail for them for 5,000l. Lovat did not, however, proceed northwards till the outbreak of the rebellion in 1715, when, perhaps less from revenge for his treatment by the Jacobites in France than from regard to his personal interests, he resolved to take the side of the government. His defection from the cause of the Pretender was a serious calamity, and if it did not turn the balance against it rendered its defeat much easier than it would otherwise have been. Mar, writing in February 1716, says: ‘Lovat is the life and soul of the party here; the whole country and his name dote on him; all the Frasers have left us since his appearing in the country.’ He completely broke the back of the rebellion in the northern regions of Scotland by the capture of Inverness. His services were so valuable as to obliterate the memory of his former offences, but the rewards he obtained were by no means commensurate with his ambition. On account of a memorial signed by the Earl of Sutherland and others he received on 10 March 1716 a full pardon, and on 23 June was honoured by an audience of the king; but although Mackenzie had been outlawed and attainted for his connection with the rebellion, his lands could not be forfeited without a special act of parliament, and all that Lovat therefore received was a life-rent of the estates. In 1721, when his proxy was produced at an election of a representative Scottish peer, it was protested against on the ground that the peerage was vested in the person of Emilia, baroness of Lovat, by a decree of the court of session. For the same reason his vote was objected to in 1722 and 1727. In 1730 he commenced an action for ‘reducing’ the previous judgment of the court against him, as he had not been a party to the action in which it was decided, and on 30 July the dignity and honours of Lord Fraser of Lovat were declared to belong to him as eldest son of Thomas, lord Fraser of Lovat. The litigation was, however, continued, and it was not till 1733 that a compromise was agreed upon, whereby Hugh Mackenzie, son of the baroness, consented for a money consideration to renounce his claims to the honours and estates of Lovat.
Lovat's romantic adventures appealed to the clan sentiment. Burt also states that he made use of all arts to impress upon his followers ‘how sacred a character that of chief or chieftain was;’ and possibly in this instance he was himself thoroughly convinced of the truth of what he inculcated. At Castle Downie he kept a sort of rude court, and several public tables. ‘His table,’ says Sir Walter Scott, ‘was filled with Frasers, all of whom he called his cousins, but took care that the fare with which they were regaled was adapted, not to the supposed quality, but to the actual importance of his guests’ (Tales of a Grandfather). The manners and customs prevailing at Castle Downie were a reflection of the strange idiosyncrasy of the chief. A wild savagery in modes of punishment flourished along with an ardent sentiment of brother-
