Thursday, April 9th, was the day fixed for Lovat’s execution, and shortly before he arrived on Tower Hill one of the scaffoldings built for the spectators of his execution, and which held nearly a thousand people, suddenly collapsed, eight or ten persons being killed outright, whilst many others had broken legs and arms. Whatever may be thought of the action of the Hanoverian Court in beheading the rebellious Jacobite lords, there is no doubt that a richly-deserved punishment was meted out to Lovat. Forty years before, at the last session of the Scottish Parliament, previous to the union of the two countries, Lord Belhaven had declared in a memorable speech, that Captain Fraser, as Lord Lovat then was, “deserved, if practicable, to have been hanged five several times, in five different places, and upon five different accounts at least, as having been a traitor to the Court of St James’s, a traitor to the Court of St Germains, a traitor to the Court of Versailles, and a traitor to his own country of Scotland; that he deserved to be hanged as a condemned criminal, outlaw, and fugitive, for his treatment of the widow of the late Lord Lovat’s sister. Nay, so hardened was Captain Fraser, that he erected a gallows, and threatened to hang thereon the lady’s brother, and some other gentlemen of quality who accompanied him, in going to rescue her out of that criminal’s cruel hands.” This was in 1706, and to judge by all accounts of Lovat’s career in the next forty years, he deserved to be hanged yet five times more, “if practicable.” [Illustration: _The north west prospect of the Tower of LONDON_ _at the time of Execution of the rebel Lords, in 1746–7 with a particular View of the falling of a Scaffold, whereby above fifty lost their lives and were disabled at the Execution of Lord Lovat_.]