Though profligate, cruel, treacherous and avaricious, so smooth was Lovat’s address, so profound his knowledge of Scotland, and so strong his hold upon his own clansmen, that he always remained a man to be reckoned with.  Since he served on the Hanoverian side in 1715 George I granted a pardon for his many offences; for his treason in 1745 George II let him go to the block.  His last days in London were like those of a dying saint.  He wrote to his son Simon Fraser, who led Fraser’s Highlanders at Quebec in 1759, a beautiful spiritual letter.  To the Major of the Tower he said he was going to Heaven where, he added, “very few Majors go.”  He was gay on his last morning:—­“I hope to be in heaven by one o’clock or I should not be so merry now,”—­and expressed his pity for those who “must continue to crawl a little longer in this evil world.”  He took what he called an eternal farewell from some of those about him:  “we shall not meet again in the same place; I am sure of that.”  He practised kneeling at the block so that he might do it with dignity on the scaffold.  A great crowd assembled to witness his execution and a platform fell killing several people.  “The more mischief, the better sport,” said Lord Lovat grimly, but he wondered that so many should come to see the taking off of his “old grey head.”  He carefully felt the edge of the executioner’s axe to make sure that it was sharp.

No doubt there was a touch of madness in Lord Lovat but the Fraser clan was devoted to him.  By his treason all his honours and estates were forfeited.  At the time his heir, Simon Fraser, only twenty-one years old, was a prisoner in the Castle of Edinburgh, attainted for high treason.  But so good was his conduct that in 1750 he received a pardon.  Then, a penniless man, he was called to the Scottish Bar.  But another career was in store for him.  Some years later when Pitt formed his design to use the Highlanders in the Seven Years’ War he made Simon Fraser Colonel of a battalion, to be raised on the forfeited estates of his family and from the clan of which he was head.  Success was instantaneous.  Within a few weeks Fraser was at the head of some 1500 men.  They wore the Highland dress, with a sporran of badger’s or otter’s skin and carried musket and broadsword; some of them wore a dirk at their own cost.  Among the officers were no less than five Simon Frasers,[3] three or four each of Alexander Frasers and John Frasers, and a good many other Frasers, among them a young Ensign, Malcolm Fraser, destined to rule one of the seigniories at Malbaie for more than half a century.  Other Scottish names also appear, Macnabs, Chisholms, Macleans, and among them John Nairne who, like Malcolm Fraser, spent the best part of his life at Malbaie.