s due punishment.

Lord Lovat had long thrown off the mask of courtesy, and had laid aside
the arts of fawning to which he had had recourse before his claims to
the honours and estates had been fully acknowledged. His tenants now
felt the iron rule of a merciless and necessitous master; for Lord
Lovat's expenditure far exceeded his means and revenue. He raised his
rents, and many of the farmers were forced to quit their farms; but his
_vassals by tenure_ were even more ruinously oppressed by suits of law,
compelling them to make out their titles to their estates; if they
failed in so doing, he insisted on forfeiture or escheate; and, in some
instances, these suits were so expensive that it was almost wiser to
relinquish an estate, than to be plundered in long and anxious
processes.

At last, to prevent their utter ruin, the gentlemen who held lands under
Lord Lovat determined upon resistance; after twenty-seven years of
bondage they resolved to free themselves. They met together, and
unanimously resolved to unite their arms, and to deliver themselves by
their swords; to this extremity were reduced these brave and devoted
adherents, who had blindly rushed into every crime and every danger at
the command of their ungrateful chieftain. Their resolution alarmed the
tyrant; he ordered the suits against his vassals to be stopped, and
excused, as well as he could, and with his usual odious courtesy, the
severities into which he had been led. He was playing a desperate game;
and the adherence of these unhappy dependants was soon to be put to the
test.

His oppression of his stewards and agents was consistent with the rest
of his conduct. They could rarely induce him to settle his accounts; and
if they ventured to ask for sums due to them, he threatened them with
actions at law. He was all powerful, and they were forced to submit. His
inferior servants were treated even still more oppressively. If they
wished to leave his Lordship's service, or asked for their wages, he
alleged some crime against them, which he always found sufficient
witnesses to prove. They were then sent off to the cave of Beauly, a
dismal retreat, about a mile from his castle, where they were confined
until they were reduced to submission. That such enormities should have
been tolerated in a land of liberty, seems almost incredible; but the
slavery of the clans, the poverty and ignorance of the people, the vast
power and influence of the chief, account, i