After seizing Amelia, Atholl wrote to the Fraser lairds advising them to trust him rather than rally to ‘Captain Fraser’. The old Marquis ‘would find out a true Fraser and a man of handsome fortune that would support their whole name’. This was a dangerous time for the Murrays. Removing young Amelia gave them possession of a serious claimant to the inheritance, but it removed her from the objects of her claim.
Simon was dismayed to find that some Fraser lairds from the rich low-lying country around Inverness were hesitating to enlist for him. Others, such as Robert Fraser and his brother – both lawyers – had thrown over the ties of clanship in order to advance themselves. Even they advised the Murrays it was a step too far not to bring in a Fraser as chief and suggested they could find an alternative within the impoverished Saltoun Frasers from along the coast towards Aberdeen. Simon cursed the two lawyers like an Old Testament prophet. ‘Robert, the prime author of these misfortunes, died under the visible judgement of God,’ he wrote. Robert’s brother ‘may yet be overtaken with the just punishment of his crimes’, he added hopefully.
The response Atholl received from the Highland lairds was unequivocal. They ‘would have no borrowed chief!’ Moreover, if Saltoun ‘dared to enter their country in hostility to Thomas, Lord Lovat … his head should answer the infringement … We have put on a full resolution to defend our lands, possessions, goods, lives, wives, children, liberties and privileges of free subjects which lie at the stake against all invading and insulting avaricious ambition and oppression pro aris et focis contra omnes mortalles.’ The judicial phrasing in Latin (suggesting Simon’s hand in it) sealed the threat of an old-fashioned Celtic clan feud.
The letter left Lord Saltoun windy about his venture into Lovat territories to arrange a marriage between his son and Amelia Lovat. He wrote to Simon, claiming disingenuously that he only desired to help arbitrate in the Murray–Fraser dispute. Simon thanked him, and suggested they meet. Lord Saltoun agreed.
At the end of September 1697, Saltoun and Lady Lovat’s youngest brother, Lord Mungo Murray, rode to Beauly. They looked forward to their time at Castle Dounie working out the details of a pre-nuptial agreement. They would hunt, dance and feast. The intention was then to go back via the Murray stronghold and celebrate the contract by letting the young people meet. Simon, meanwhile, hoped to dissuade Lord Saltoun from acting as go-between for Tullibardine’s schemes.
At daybreak, Simon and his lairds set out to rendezvous with Saltoun from the Stratherrick estates, where he had been enlisting gentlemen to his cause. As their party crossed the River Ness and headed west towards Dounie, ‘the inhabitants, observing their alert and spirited appearance lifted up their hands to heaven, and prayed God to prosper their enterprise’, Simon wrote. Dollery, Tullibardine’s recruiting agent, confirmed their support. ‘It is certain the generality of the country about Inverness favours’ Simon, Thomas and their followers, he told his master. ‘In the very town of Inverness I hear they call the young rogue the Master of Lovat.’ Even the professional classes were coming over to Simon’s side.
The party rode on with confidence. The Beauly Firth sparkled on the right as they entered the woods of Bunchrew, about three miles out of Inverness. Suddenly, one of Simon’s lairds noticed a group of ‘running footmen’ scampering out of the woods. These runners accompanied gentlemen of any standing, holding their stirrups as they mounted and dismounted; opening gates in their path; fording rivers and burns and leading the gentleman’s horse to steady its progress. Simon was shocked to see that they were followed by the Lords Saltoun and Mungo Murray and their tail of armed followers. Saltoun was very chatty, apparently ‘in great hopes to have his son [become] Lord Lovat when the girl was ripe’. Seeing and hearing all this, Simon erupted. He and Saltoun had arranged to meet that day to prevent this very thing. He, Simon, was the obvious candidate for young Amelia’s hand. The Lords were reneging on their agreement on every count.
Simon’s reaction was phrased in the clan rhetoric of pride and ‘face’: such ‘an affront was too atrocious … not to exact satisfaction for it, or perish in the attempt’, Simon later wrote. William of Errochit, a Stratherrick laird, shot forward and levelled a carabine at Saltoun and Mungo: ‘Stop, traitor, you shall pay with your hide your irruption into this country in hostility to our laird!’ The party skidded to a halt. Simon cantered up to Mungo Murray, yelling at him, ‘Fire traitor, or I will blow out your brains!’ Mungo dropped his reins and threw up his hands. ‘My dear Simon,’ he retorted. ‘Is this the termination of our long and tender friendship?’
Simon looked at him along his pistol. ‘You are a base coward, and deserve no quarter,’ he replied, ‘but I give you your life.’
Simon’s men moved among the group and disarmed them all, ‘without the smallest resistance from any individual’, except Lord Saltoun’s valet de chambre, who only gave up his weapon after Simon ‘struck him a blow on the head with the flat side of his sword’. The two Lords and their company of gentlemen were rounded up and taken to Fanellan, two miles from Castle Dounie, where Simon ordered the party to be locked up. A gallows was erected outside Lord Saltoun’s cell window. The unhappy noble sat alone in a tiny room and, in between the sawing and banging, listened to his fate being discussed. The door of Saltoun’s cell opened and another of Simon’s lairds, Major Fraser of Castleleathers, entered, swathed in plaid from top to toe, his face as red as his tartan. Taunting him, Castleleathers instructed his Lordship ‘to prepare himself for another world … He had but two days to live.’ The pro-Murray Frasers who had called Saltoun in to their country were then made to cast dice, ‘to know whose fate it was to hang with him’. This was ritualised violence, a tool in old-fashioned clan diplomacy; a display of seriousness of intent.
Lord Saltoun did not react well, Castleleathers recorded. As the effect of the news sank in, ‘the poor gentleman, finding this a hard pill to digest, contracted a bloody flux, of which he almost dyed’. Saltoun passed out cold, crashing to the floor. ‘Upon his recovery he begged his life, the gallows having stood all the time beneath his window – and 500 men waiting on in arms.’
Not wanting the death of a nobleman on his hands, Simon released them all immediately, though not before pressing his sword under Saltoun’s and Mungo Murray’s chins and making them swear never to come back to Fraser country. Happy to agree to anything, the nobles touched the tip of his weapon, swore the oath and fled.
The kidnapping had started out as what most Highland Scots recognised as a clan raid – a wild spree by the young bloods of one clan against another. However, the Murrays went to court to move the insult into quite another quarter. They declared the Frasers had risen in ‘open and manifest Rebellion’. This was a capital charge. The Murrays demanded legal endorsement – a ‘Commission of Fire and Sword’ – to send in soldiers to arrest the Beaufort Frasers and devastate their lands. The court had to distinguish between the private and public offence in all this. The government had an interest in rather than a monopoly on violence as a tool of justice in North Britain. Representatives of the Crown knew Tullibardine was trying to use Scottish law against a kindred he himself was provoking into a clan feud. The Privy Council in Edinburgh hesitated.
To Simon the kidnapping and high jinx was a Highland, private matter, between the Master of Lovat and the Murrays. He did not see himself as being in rebellion against the Crown. It might all have been diffused, had British justice not been even more vexed by what Simon did next.
‘The Grand Fornicator of the Aird’, 1697–99
‘The Lady not yielding willingly, there was some harsh measures taken …’
– MAJOR FRASER OF CASTLELEATHERS
Simon did not stop to think. He did not know what would happen or leave enough time to scheme at every twist and turn. On 15 October, days after freeing Lord Saltoun, his Frasers galloped over the hill from Fanellan. Runners fanned out across the slopes around them, like the clan’s hunting dogs,