nd he
little knew, when he counselled that monarch to pardon Lovat, what a
partisan of the Jacobite cause he was thus restoring to society.

His mediation was effectual, perhaps owing to a dislike which had arisen
in the mind of William against the Athole family; and a pardon was
procured for Lord Lovat. The affair was concluded at Loo, whither Lovat
followed the King from England. "He is a bold man," the Monarch is said
to have observed to Carstairs, "to come so far under sentence of death."
The pardon was unlimited, and that it might comprise the offence against
Lady Athole, it was now "a complete and ample pardon for every
imaginable crime." The royal seal was appended to it, and there remained
only to get that of Scotland also affixed.

Lovat entrusted the management of that delicate and difficult matter to
a cousin, a Simon Fraser also, by whose treachery it was suppressed; and
Lord Seafield caused another pardon to pass the great seal, in which the
treason against King William was alone specified; and other offences
were left unpardoned. Upon this, Lord Lovat cited the Marquis of Athole
before the Lords Justiciary in Edinburgh to answer before them for a
false accusation: but on the very day of supporting his charge, as the
biographer of his family relates, his patron the Duke of Argyle was
informed that the judges had been corrupted, and that "certain death
would be the result if he appeared."[164] This statement is taken from
Lord Lovat's own complication of falsehoods, his incomparably audacious
"Manifesto." Notwithstanding that Lovat had appeared with a retinue of a
hundred armed gentlemen, "as honorable as himself," with the intention
of intimidating the judges;--in spite of the Duke of Argyle's powerful
influence, the friends of the outlawed nobleman counselled him again to
retreat to England, and to suffer judgment to go by default. The Duke of
Argyle, he says, would not lose sight of him till he had seen him on
horseback, and had ordered his own best horse to be brought round to the
door. There was no remedy for what was called by Lord Lovat's friends,
the "rascality" of the judges:--and again this unworthy Highlander was
driven from his own country to seek safety in the land wherein his
offences had received their pardon. The inflexibility of the justiciary
lords, or their known integrity, form a fine incident in history; for
the Scottish nation was at this period, ridden by Court faction, and
broken dow