Clan Fraser in Canada

SIMON, LORD LOVAT.
BEHEADED ON TOWER HILL.
No Fraser chief has achieved more notoriety than
Simon, the fourteenth Lord Lovat. His enemies avenged
themselves for the failure of their nefarious plots against him
by supplying, at a cheap rate, the charcoal with which preju-
diced historians have blackened his memory. But while
his fate is still held up as a warning to evil doers, it
has been proved, beyond peradventure, that his character has
been much maligned, and that he appears rather as a man of
inexhaustible resources, availing himself of whatever means
lay nearest to his hand to extricate himself from enormous
difficulties and to attain objects which, though of personal
advantage to himself and Clan, were as honorable as they
were just, and wholly in keeping with the customs of his day.
His efforts to secure the chiefship and the honors of his
house, and to extend the power of the Clan, were genuinely
patriotic. His Lordship certainly was a man of learning
and ability. He was an admirable letter writer, and passages
in his correspondence show that he had wonderful facility in
writing and a capital style.
The picture here given is from a mezzo-tint in possession
of Mr. B. Homer Dixon, from a painting of Lord Lovat,
by David Le Clerc, a Swiss who was in England in
1 7 15 and 17 16. The picture which is supposed to have been
taken in 171 5, when Lord Lovat was about forty-eight years
old, is marked : "Le Clare, pinxt. J. Simon, fecit."
Although armour had been disused before Lord Lovat's
time, it was the fashion at that period for gentlemen to be
painted in armour. The mezzo-tint is very rare.