Ossian Collection > History of the Highlands and of the Highland clans > Volume 3

TRIAL OF LORD LOVAT. 359
he might have a larger field for exorcising his faitli.* His body was
deliveretl over to Iiis friends, and interred by tliem on tlie eleventh of
November, at St Giles's-in-thc-fields, near the remains of Iiis brotlier.
A gilt plate was put on his coffin, with tliis inscription, " Carolus Rat-
cliffe, Comes de Derwentwater, decollatus Die 8° Decembris, 1746,
iEtat 53. Requiescat in pace." f
The last scene of this bloody tragedy ended with the trial and exe-
cution of the aged Lord Lovat, who had been confined in the Tower
since the fifteenth of August. He was impeachetl by the house of
commons on the eleventh of December, and was brought to the bar of
the house of peers on the eighteenth, when the articles of impeachment
were read to him.| At his own desire, Messrs Starkie, Forrester, Ford,
and Wilniott, were assigned hira for counsel, and he was appointed to
put in answers to the articles of impeachment on or before the thirteenth
of January. The trial, which was appointed to take place on the
twenty-third of February, was postponed to the fifth, and afterwards to
the ninth of March, on which day it commenced. The articles of im-
peachment were in substance, that he had compassed and imagined
the death of the king, — that he had corresponded with the Pretender,
accepted a commission from hira to be a lieutenant-general of his
forces, and another to be general of the Highlanders, and that he had
accepted a patent from the Pretender, creating him duke of Fraser, —
that he had met with armed traitors, and had raised, and caused to be
raised, great numbers of armed men, the king's subjects, for the service
of the Pretender and his son, and had traitorously levied, and caused to
be levied, a cruel and unnatural war against his majesty, — that he had
written and sent a treasonable letter to the son of the Pi'etender when
• Boysc, p. 176.
f The Chevalier de St George wrote *' Lady Derwentwater" a letter of condolence
on tier husband's execution, which, with the answer, will be found in the Appendix.
The first is taken from the original copy, and the last from the original, both in posses-
sion of his Majesty.
J The laird of Macleod, in a letter to Lord -president Forbes, dated 18th December
1746, says, " I saw unhappy Lcvat to-day. Except for the feebleness of Iiis limbs, his
looks are good. He asked me several general que>tions, and puriicularly about you; —
said he was resigned, and ready to meet his fate, since it was God's will ; — asked after
his children, &C.'' In another letter to the president, written two days thereafter, he again
alludes to his lordship : — *• Lovat behaved well at the bar of the house of peers, and they
B;iy with spirit. Granville atid Bath spuke very strongly with regard to the seizure o(
his estate and effects; and that matter is ordered to be rectified, except in so far as pri-
vate creditors come in the way.'' Sir Andrew Mitchell, however, who was more of a
couriier than Macleod, viewed matters in a ditferent light. In a letter to the president,
ZCth December, 1746, he remarks, " Your lordship will have heard an account of Lord
Lovat's behaviour; and, therefore, I shall not trouble you with the particulars; only, I
must observe, there was neither dignity nor gravity in it: he appeared quite unconcern-
ed ; and what he said was ludicrous and buflbonish ; but his petition for the restoration
of Ins effects, &c. was bold and well worded ; which, however, would have been passed
over without notice, had not Lord Granville bounced, and Lord Bath vapoured, and pro-
cured an order to be entered in the Journals, and have by that acquired to themselves a
sort of popularity, which you know they very mucli wanted. No Scots nobleman spoke
on thi6 oci'^on ; they are prudent and cautious. God bless thetn I" — Cititoden Papers,