The same devotion was now given to the house of Hanover.  Years earlier Duncan Forbes of Culloden, one of the noblest and wisest Scots of his age, had urged Walpole to call the Highlanders to fight Britain’s battles.  The hint was not then taken but later, Pitt, the greatest war minister Britain has ever had, revived Forbes’s plan.  Some Highland regiments were formed.  The Highland dress that had been proscribed after Culloden as the brand of treason was now given its place in Britain’s battle array:  ever since it has played there its creditable part.  Wolfe called his Highland companions in arms the most manly lot of officers he had ever seen.

The Highland regiment that came with Wolfe to Quebec was known as Fraser’s Highlanders because recruited chiefly from that ancient and powerful Scottish clan.  In the rising of 1745 the Frasers had supported the Stuart cause and they suffered when that cause was lost.  In 1747 the head of the clan, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, an old man of 80, perished on the scaffold for his treason.  The details of Lovat’s career are amazing.  In one aspect he was a wild, half barbarous Highland chieftain, in another one of the polished gentlemen and courtiers of his time.  He was devoured by the ambition to be the most powerful man in Scotland.  In that age others, more reputable than Fraser, found it wise to stand well with both royal houses, but he surpassed them all in tortuous treachery.  In the rising of 1715 he was on the Whig side; in 1745 he was forced at last to come out openly for the Stuarts.  For neither side did he really care:  he was merely serving his own ends.  Considering his deeds it is a wonder that he so long escaped the scaffold.  When he was a young man a certain Baroness Lovat stood in the way of his own claims to be the heir to the title of Lovat; so he offered to marry this lady’s daughter and thus end the dispute.  When his advances were refused he determined to use force and seized Lady Lovat’s residence, Castle Dounie, only to find that the young lady had been spirited away.  He resolved on the spot to marry her mother who was in the castle.  She was a widow of thirty-four, he a man of thirty, so the disparity of age was not great.  Stories of what happened vary, but it is said that in the dead of night a clergyman was brought to Lady Lovat’s chamber and she was forced to go through the form of marriage, the bag-pipes playing in the next room to drown her cries.  The lady was connected with the great house of Atholl who warred on Fraser with fire and sword.  Outlawed, he escaped to the Continent to survive for half a century of intrigue and treason.