Even then, broken down by
disease and old age, carried on a litter and unable to move without
assistance, his mental resources did not fail; and in a conference with
several of the Jacobite leaders he proposed that they should raise a
body of three thousand men, which would be enough to make their
mountains impregnable, and at length force the government to give them
advantageous terms. The project was not carried out, and Lovat, after
enduring incredible hardships in his wanderings, was at last arrested on
an island in Loch Morar. He was conveyed in a litter to London, and
after a trial of five days sentence of death was pronounced on the 19th
of March 1747. His execution took place on the 9th of April. His conduct
to the last was dignified and even cheerful. Just before submitting his
head to the block he repeated the line from Horace--
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
His son SIMON FRASER, Master of Lovat (1726-1782) (not to be confused
with another Simon Fraser who saw somewhat similar service and was
killed in 1777 at the battle of Saratoga), was a soldier, who at the
beginning of the Seven Years' War raised a corps of Fraser Highlanders
for the English service, and at the outbreak of the American War of
Independence raised another regiment which took a prominent part in it.
He fought under Wolfe in Canada, and also in Portugal, and rose to be a
British major-general. The family estates were restored to him, but the
title was not revived till 1837. On his death without issue, and also of
his successor, his half-brother Archibald Campbell Fraser (1736-1815),
the Lovat estates passed to the Frasers of Strichen, Aberdeenshire. The
16th Baron Lovat (b. 1871) raised a corps of mounted infantry (Lovat's
Scouts) in the Boer war of 1899-1902.
See _Memoirs of Lord Lovat_ (1746 and 1767); J. Hill Burton, _Life of
Simon, Lord Lovat_ (1847); J. Anderson, _Account of the Family of
Frizell or Fraser_ (Edinburgh, 1825); A. Mackenzie, _History of the
Frasers of Lovat_ (Inverness, 1896); Mrs A. T. Thomson, _Memoirs of
the Jacobites_ (1845-6); and W. C. Mackenzie, _Simon Fraser, Lord
Lovat_ (1908).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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