bted solely to
the bounty of a kinsman, administered through Governor Williamson, for
subsistence. At length, early in the year 1747, upon preferring a
petition to the House of Lords, these grievances were in a great measure
redressed. Yet the unhappy prisoner had sustained many hardships. Among
others the legal plunder of his strong box, containing the sum of seven
hundred pounds, and of many valuables.[252]

After much deliberation on the part of the Crown lawyers, Lord Lovat was
impeached of high treason. "We learn," says Mr. Anderson, "from Lord
Mansfield's speech in the Sutherland cause, that much deliberation was
necessary. It was foreseen that his Lordship would have recourse to art.
If he was tried as a commoner he might claim to be a peer; if tried as a
peer he might claim to be a commoner. Everything was fully considered;
the true solid ground upon which he was tried as a peer, was the
presumption in favour of the heirs male."[253]

On Monday, the ninth of March, the proceedings were commenced against
Lord Lovat; and a renewal took place of that scene which Horace Walpole
declared to be "most solemn and fine;--a coronation is a puppet-show,
and all the splendour of it idle; but this sight at once feasted the
eyes, and engaged all one's passions."

Lord Lovat was now dragged forth to play the last scene of his eventful
life. His size had by this time become enormous, so that when he had
first entered the Tower it was jestingly said that the doors must be
enlarged to receive him. He could neither walk nor ride, as he was
almost helpless; he was deaf, purblind, eighty years of age, ignorant of
English law, and it was therefore not a matter of surprise that the
high-born tribes, who thronged to his trial, were disappointed in the
brilliancy of his parts, and in the readiness of his wit. "I see little
of parts in him," observes Walpole, "nor attribute much to that cunning
for which he is so famous; it might catch wild Highlanders." Singular,
indeed, must have been the contrast between Lord Lovat and the polished
assembly around him: the Lord High Steward, Hardwicke, comely, and
endowed with a fine voice, but "curiously searching for occasions to bow
to the Minister, Henry Pelham," and asking at all hands what he was to
do. The rude Highland clansmen, vassals of Lord Lovat's, but witnesses
against him; above all, the blot and scourge of the Jacobite cause,
Murray of Broughton, who was the chief witness against the