To get my mind off Brexit, I recently read “The Last Highlander, Scotland’s most notorious Clan Chief, Rebel and Double Agent” by Sarah Fraser.

 It is it life story of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, who was beheaded for treason at the age of 80 in 1746.

Fraser was a Gaelic speaking chief of the Fraser clan which occupied a huge territory in the vicinity of Inverness.

His first allegiance was to the Fraser clan, and to the Clan system.

 After that his allegiance was to Scotland.

Subject to these two primary allegiances, he switched his loyalty from the Jacobite Kings to the Hanoverians, and then back again.

 He spent time in the Jacobite Court in France, and  died a Jacobite.

 But he was on the Hanoverian side in 1715 when the first Jacobite rebellion took place in Scotland, then on the Jacobite side in 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlies raised his standard.

At various times Lovat was gaoled by both dynasties.

 When not in gaol, he lived and entertained extravagantly, to keep up his status as a Chief. He had a complicated private life, to put it mildly.

Sarah Fraser’s book tells an exciting story well.

For an Irish reader, it shows how the Gaelic clan system survived in Scotland up til 1745, 130 years after it had been destroyed in Ireland, by the Ulster Plantation and the Flight of the Earls.

Print Entry