The Last Highlander
SCOTLAND’S MOST
NOTORIOUS CLAN CHIEF, REBEL & DOUBLE AGENT
SARAH FRASER
HarperPress
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Published by HarperPress in 2012
Copyright © Sarah Fraser 2012
Sarah Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007229499
Ebook Edition © April 2012 ISBN: 9780007302642 Version: 2018-06-21
For Kim
& For Arabella Vanneck 1959–2011
‘[The soul] demands that we should not live alternately with our opposing tendencies in continual see-saw of passion and disgust, but seek some path on which the tendencies shall no longer oppose, but serve each other to common end … The soul demands unity of purpose, not the dismemberment of man’
– ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
‘A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair’
– NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
List of Illustrations
Maps
Lovat Family Tree
Prologue: Death of a Highland chief
PART ONE: FORMATIVE YEARS, C.1670–1702
ONE: Home, birth, youth, c.1670–94
TWO: To be a fox and a lion, 1685–95
THREE: ‘Nice use of the beast and the man’, 1695–96
FOUR: ‘No borrowed chief!’, 1696–97
FIVE: ‘The Grand Fornicator of the Aird’, 1697–99
SIX: Victory and loss, 1699–1702
PART TWO: AT THE COURT OF THE SUN KING, 1702–15
SEVEN: The Stuart Court of St Germains, 1702
EIGHT: Planning an invasion, 1702–04
NINE: ‘A disposition in Scotland to take up arms’, 1703
TEN: The ‘political sensation’, autumn 1703
ELEVEN: The ‘Scotch plot’ exposed, winter 1703–04
TWELVE: ‘You walk upon glass’, 1704–14
THIRTEEN: The end of exile, 1714
FOURTEEN: A necessary change, 1714–15
FIFTEEN: Return to Scotland, 1715
SIXTEEN: Fighting for the prize, 1715
PART THREE: THE RETURN OF THE CHIEF, 1715–45
SEVENTEEN: Home, 1715–16
EIGHTEEN: The legal battles begin, 1716
NINETEEN: Living like a fox, 1716
TWENTY: ‘What a lion cannot manage, the fox can’, 1717–18
TWENTY-ONE: Matters of life and death, 1718–21
TWENTY-TWO: Networking from Inverness, 1722–24
TWENTY-THREE: Lovat under Wade’s eye, 1725–27
TWENTY-FOUR: Tragedy, 1727–31
TWENTY-FIVE: Kidnapping and election-rigging, 1731–34
TWENTY-SIX: A pyrrhic victory, 1734–39
PART FOUR: LORD LOVAT’S LAMENT, 1739–47
TWENTY-SEVEN: Floating between interests, 1738–43
TWENTY-EIGHT: ‘A foolish and rash undertaking’, 1743–45
TWENTY-NINE: Rebellion, July–December 1745
THIRTY: A quick victory, and long march to defeat, December 1745–June 1746
THIRTY-ONE: The beginning of the end, 1746–47
THIRTY-TWO: Dying like a lion
Picture Section
Footnotes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Notes
Etching of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat after William Hogarth. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
James II and family, 1694, by Pierre Mignard. (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art