youth, determination, righteous indignation, courage and acute financial need to power the claims of his birthright. This might not be enough. But Simon had already asserted the cause of the thousands of the ordinary Fraser clansmen, and of their chief, more vigorously in a couple of years than the Fraser chiefs had in a couple of generations.
As soon as he had the chance, Tullibardine came for Captain Fraser. Manipulating the Privy Council, Tullibardine obtained the gift of his niece, nine-year-old Amelia, ‘in a trustee’s name’, though the child had a mother and close Fraser kin, and did not need an externally appointed guardian. As trustee, he would manage her clan and choose her husband. It was his duty to make the most advantageous match possible for her. This was usually the male heir.
Simon returned to command the guard at Holyroodhouse. Late one night Tullibardine arrived. Simon heard a shout from the guard, saw the flaring of torches, and watched the Earl clatter into the palace courtyard, calling for light and ‘a bottle’. He then summoned Simon to join him. ‘Having drunk to a good pitch,’ Tullibardine ‘took a paper out of his pocket and called for pen and ink’. He wanted Simon to sign a retraction of his claims. Simon must know, he said, how he entertained an ‘extreme friendship’ for him, a mere ‘Cadet of the family of Lovat, but of no Manner of Estate’. Tullibardine was aware of the ‘meanness’ of his situation, he told Simon, who sat there stony-faced. However, ‘I am told you have assumed the title of Master of Lovat, and that you have sent the opinions of [legal] counsel to your father, recommending him to take possession of the property of my late brother-in-law.’ Tullibardine ended on an accusatory note.
Simon put down his drink and forced himself to be civil. Of course his father Thomas, Lord Lovat, enjoyed his inheritance: the honours and estates of his late great nephew. Why would Simon consult lawyers about a natural course of events, and send results north?
Tullibardine too had gone to the law. His lawyers agreed Thomas had a right to the title. They would all call the old fellow ‘Thomas, Lord Lovat’. Why not? However, under the terms of Hugh and Amelia’s marriage contract, ratified and signed by the late Lord Lovat, the property and estates belonged to his ward and niece, Amelia.
Simon countered: he either had ‘a just right to the succession, or … had not’. It was quite simple. ‘If he had no right, it was to little purpose to’ renounce his claim to nothing. ‘But, if he had a right, he would not renounce it for the revenues of Scotland.’ It was his birthright.
Tullibardine convulsed with ‘violent passion’. He had always known Simon ‘for an obstinate, insolent rascal’, he raged. ‘I do not know what should hinder me from cutting off your ears and throwing you into a dungeon, and bringing you to the gallows, as your treasons against the government so richly deserve!’ Tullibardine referred to Simon’s treasonable letters on the death of the Queen, which were now in his hands.
Although he felt awed by ‘his formidable person, in the midst of his state and authority’, Simon knew he had to stay calm. He stuck his hat on his head. He was off. ‘As for the paltry company I command in your regiment … it is the greatest disgrace to which I was ever subject to be under your command, and now, if you please,’ he said, jerking his head towards a lackey in the corner, ‘you may give it to your footman.’ And out he strode, shaking with emotion. Simon resigned from Tullibardine’s regiment.
The next day Tullibardine sent to the King the letters Simon had written on Queen Mary’s death. Tullibardine demanded that young Beaufort be arrested, court-martialled and hung for high treason. William consulted the commander-in-chief of his Scottish forces, Sir Thomas Livingstone. Men much more highly placed than young Simon Fraser could be compromised by their ambivalent stance to his rule, he counselled the King. William would be advised not to reagitate feelings that had led to the plotting in Scotland the previous summer.
The King ordered Livingstone to cashier Simon Fraser. Livingstone obeyed but told his Majesty that he suspected ‘the Viceroy’ was abusing his public position in a private vendetta against Simon Fraser in his and old Atholl’s lust to acquire the Lovat estates. It was a view Simon had keenly encouraged. Tullibardine’s growing number of enemies believed that ‘if the Secretary of State could turn out and in officers at their pleasure, upon their private pique, no officer in the army was sure of his commission’. With this sort of reportage, Simon cleverly and noisily drew attention to the Murrays’ pursuit of him and his clan. Men such as Archibald Campbell, the 10th Earl of Argyll, were keen to ally themselves to Simon, to prove that Tullibardine was too eager to use the tools of public office to build his personal power base. By favouring him so completely, it looked as if King William was colluding in the schemes of the Atholl Murrays to extend their territorial and political power in Scotland.
Argyll murmured to William Carstares, a Presbyterian minister and one of the King’s most trusted confidants, that Tullibardine’s activities around Inverness threatened national security. If ‘Tullibardine be allowed to go on … it may occasion a deal of bloodshed; for if one begin, all the Highlands will in ten days fly together in arms … I am most particularly concerned in Highland affairs,’ he said. Simon Fraser had called on the right man to help him. The Frasers were historically ‘sword vassals’ of the Campbells. It meant that in exchange for protection by the bigger clan, the Frasers brought out their men to fight Campbell battles. To bring down Tullibardine’s over-mighty schemes to dominate Scottish politics, men who otherwise supported William’s rule would go into opposition.
Tullibardine did not meet with this growing barrage of criticism calmly. He was, said a contemporary, ‘endowed with good natural parts, tho’ by reason of his proud, imperious, haughty passionate temper, he was no ways capable to be the leading man of a party. He much affected popularity,’ but his ‘kindest addresses were never taking: he was selfish to a great degree, and his vanity and ambition extended so far, that he could not suffer an equal. He was reputed very brave, but hot and headstrong.’ He would destroy Simon Fraser.
At the end of the summer, Simon left Edinburgh. Scottish law had not been able to solve his problems and Simon struggled to see how the traditional path – a clan feud – might be avoided. Everyone feared a feud, ‘for Highland feuds never die’, as the Reverend James Fraser counselled him. If it came to a feud he could not see how he might expect to win. Over the last two decades the Murrays had amassed a regiment and a militia force of their own. Tullibardine, as King’s High Commissioner, enjoyed huge power over the courts and Parliament. If Simon provoked the Murrays, they would surely attack. In the end the solution seemed obvious. The two sides must be brought together. He and the heiress, young Amelia, must be contracted to marry. This was the path of peace.
In April 1697, Simon headed to Castle Dounie to negotiate with Hugh’s widow for the hand, at puberty, of the heiress Amelia. Tullibardine reacted immediately. He ordered the girl to be whisked from her mother, the dowager Lady Lovat, and be taken to his Perthshire stronghold, Blair Castle. Simon meanwhile moved into Castle Dounie itself and sent his father to a safehouse on the Lovat Stratherrick estates.
When Simon said of his kin that ‘the Highland clans did not consider themselves as bound by the letter of the law, like the inhabitants of the low country’ around Inverness, ‘but to a man would regard it as their honour and their boast, to cut the throat, or blow out the brains of anyone … who should dare to disturb the repose of their laird’, he had his Stratherrick clansmen in mind. High above Loch Ness, Stratherrick concealed itself and its people behind the trees and rocks scaling the steep slopes along the south shore of the loch. Fertile fields around lairds’ houses nurtured cattle and rigs of corn in a sea of moorland wilderness. The Frasers who lived there existed in accordance with the values of the clan system. Financially, they depended on a traditional chief of the sort Simon desired to be. The elderly Lord Lovat would be safe among these men.
From Dounie, the dowager Lady Lovat complained to her family: ‘Young Beaufort is still here and does not intend to go from this place till his own time. They are more obdurate than ever, and delude the people extremely.’ Simon, the chief’s son, felt that the chief’s son living in the chief’s stronghold was not delusional. The widow of a dead chief had to make room for the living one, or move to a dower house.
‘The neighbourhood are all knaves,