The Last Highlander: Scotland’s Most Notorious Clan Chief, Rebel & Double Agent. Sarah Fraser

muzzle. The presents suggest Lovat made quite an impression on the French King; and a slightly different one on Louis’s maitresse en titre, Madame de Maintenon. She saluted the tall, dashing Highlander as ‘un homme ravissant’, a loaded compliment in the light of his conviction for ‘ravishing a lady of rank in a house of consequence’, but also perhaps an amused allusion to his gift of a beautiful weapon engraved with ‘I am Ready’ on it.

      Lovat retired to his room to prepare for his meetings with Louis’ ministers. The cogitations emerged in another of his memorial letters to the Sun King. ‘What is necessary to carry on a vigorous war?’ Lovat asked rhetorically. His answer was quite specific: 6–7,000 men, including 600 cavalry and 1,200 dragoons, ‘who must have their accoutrements carried along with them’; 18,000 arms, ‘firelocks with bayonets, and not muskets’; also, ammunition for an army of 30,000 men, plus artillery, plus ammunition for three garrisons and artillery for them too, ‘to be a safe retreat in case the army be obliged to winter in that country’. Finally, Lovat required about £40–50,000 cash ‘to gratify those that bring in forces … and to buy provisions’ – there would be no more quartering of troops on poor Highlanders. ‘The sooner this is done,’ Lovat continued, ‘it is certainly the better because of the season of the year and the present commodious weather.’ Spring was campaign time. No one fought through the winter if they could possibly help it. Everything got bogged down in the mud. Men and materiel rotted like turnips.

      Lovat’s invasion plot was born of impatience and ambition: he had been away nearly a year and was increasingly restless to return to the Highlands. Ships with men, war chests and arms must land on the west coast of Scotland, he said, and others on the east. They could sweep through the country gathering men and seizing Edinburgh before the English were properly alerted to the threat. Sir John MacLean looked over the plans. He cavilled. Cousin Lovat had been a bit creative with the figures, he thought. He had rated some of the chiefs at about double the number of troops they could actually bring out. Lovat dismissed his criticisms; the French needed encouragement, he said.

      Lovat could not hope to succeed if he did not involve Mary of Modena, young James and the Earl of Middleton. He petitioned James for gratifications. Lord Lovat ‘expects a letter of thanks from the King for the service of his family wherein he should promise to make him Sheriff of Inverness’. Wherever he was, home was the backcloth against which Lovat stood and spoke. The Sheriffs of the shires dominated both elections and the county law courts. ‘My enemies grow great in the Prince of Denmark’s [Queen Anne’s] government,’ he complained to James, ‘and they accomplish the ruin of my estate and family.’

      Letters from the Highlands told of a worsening situation. At St Germains, Lovat requested a patent for the title of ‘Earl of Inverness’ from the Stuarts, though a duke’s coronet might sit better on him. Above all, he wanted to be restored to his inheritance. In his imagination, he could be the premier duke in Scotland, and unassailable. In reality he was a broke and dispossessed fugitive.

      The young king-in-waiting was all in favour of Lovat’s dashing schemes, but Mary of Modena could not decide what to do. In theory, she would undertake whatever was needed to get the two of them back to the Palace of Whitehall, though she also believed that God would provide, and she must prevent her son exposing himself to danger. The Duc de Saint-Simon observed of James’s mother, ‘for all that she was so pious, loved power, and had been too strict and narrow in his [her son’s] education, either from misguided affection or because she wished to keep him obedient and fearful of her’.

      The Earl of Middleton drifted through the corridors like a cloud, growing blacker and heavier. Rumours reached him that Lovat had been urging the Queen Regent to ‘use all her interest with the King of France to embrace the offers of the Highlanders’. Lovat told her the Highlanders ‘are certainly the strongest party in the three kingdoms to bring home the King or make a diversion for the armies of the Allies by a war in Britain’. Middleton’s view of them as cateran bands was wrong, Lovat explained. ‘The Highlanders’ power and loyalty is so frightful to the usurping government’ of Queen Anne, ‘that those in authority always come to them and make great offers to come into their party’. This was partly true. ‘Management’ by ‘offers’ was a recognised government tactic: ministers bought the loyalty they could not command by affection, or compel by fear. Some impoverished chiefs simply offered themselves and their men to the highest bidder. There was an element of this sort of opportunism in Lovat’s presence at St Germains.

      Lovat counselled Mary of Modena against the policies of ‘a politique party in England who promise to call home the King on conditions’. ‘They are not to be believed, though they write and swear never so much. For knave will be knave still to my certain knowledge.’ This was daring – the ‘knaves’ flirting with restoring James included the Earls of Godolphin, Marlborough and Bolingbroke.

      Middleton argued against Lovat’s plan as soon as he saw details of it. Lovat is ‘full of ambition and enterprise’ and has been ‘gained’ by the French to stir up ‘a civil war in Scotland’, he said to Mary. It was ‘extremely advantageous to France’, since it would draw British troops home, but ‘it would ruin instead of advancing the affairs of the King her son,’ he judged. Lovat challenged Middleton to prove his claim that the English administration had made a ‘promise to call home the King’ on the death of Queen Anne. Middleton could not produce proof. Lovat suggested the Queen Regent set a deadline. If the English ministers refused to fix a term for persuading Anne to nominate her half-brother James as heir, then ‘it was incontestable proof’ they never would. Lovat told Mary ‘that their promises were intended only to amuse and lull asleep the Court of St Germains, as they had successfully done for fifteen years past’.