Queensberry the affair was betrayed to Atholl by Robert Ferguson, and resulted in Queensberry’s discomfiture. The story is obscure, and is complicated by partisanship on either side; but Lovat was certainly playing a double game. His agility, however, was not remunerative. On returning to Paris suspicions got afloat as to Lovat’s proceedings, and he was imprisoned in the castle of Angoulême. He remained nearly ten years under supervision, till in November 1714 he made his escape to England. For some twenty-five years after this he was chiefly occupied in lawsuits for the recovery of his estates and the re-establishment of his fortune, in both of which objects he was successful. The intervals of his leisure were filled up by Jacobite and Anti-Jacobite intrigues, in which he seems to have alternately, as suited his interests, acted the traitor to both parties. But he so far obtained the confidence of the government as to secure the appointments of sheriff of Inverness and of colonel of an independent company. His disloyal practices, however, soon led to his being suspected; and he was deprived of both his appointments. When the rebellion of 1745 broke out, Lovat acted with characteristic duplicity. He represented to the Jacobites—what was probably in the main true—that though eager for their success his weak health and advanced years prevented him from joining the standard of the prince in person, while to the Lord President Forbes he professed his cordial attachment to the existing state of things, but lamented that his son, in spite of all his remonstrances, had joined the Pretender, and succeeded in taking with him a strong force from the clan of the Frasers. The truth was that the lad was unwilling to go, but was compelled by his father. Lovat’s false professions of fidelity did not long deceive the government, and after the battle of Culloden he was obliged to retreat to the Highlands, after seeing from a distant height his castle of Dounie burnt by the royal army. Even then, broken down by disease and old age, carried on a litter and unable to move without assistance, his mental resources did not fail; and in a conference with several of the Jacobite leaders he proposed that they should raise a body of three thousand men, which would be enough to make their mountains impregnable, and at length force the government to give them advantageous terms. The project was not carried out, and Lovat, after enduring incredible hardships in his wanderings, was at last arrested on an island in Loch Morar. He was conveyed in a litter to London, and after a trial of five days sentence of death was pronounced on the 19th of March 1747. His execution took place on the 9th of April. His conduct to the last was dignified and even cheerful. Just before submitting his head to the block he repeated the line from Horace—
His son Simon Fraser, Master of Lovat (1726–1782) (not to be confused with another Simon Fraser who saw somewhat similar service and was killed in 1777 at the battle of Saratoga), was a soldier, who at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War raised a corps of Fraser Highlanders for the English service, and at the outbreak of the American War of Independence raised another regiment which took a prominent part in it. He fought under Wolfe in Canada, and also in Portugal, and rose to be a British major-general. The family estates were restored to him, but the title was not revived till 1837. On his death without issue, and also of his successor, his half-brother Archibald Campbell Fraser (1736–1815), the Lovat estates passed to the Frasers of Strichen, Aberdeenshire. The 16th Baron Lovat (b. 1871) raised a corps of mounted infantry (Lovat’s Scouts) in the Boer war of 1899–1902.
See Memoirs of Lord Lovat (1746 and 1767); J. Hill Burton, Life of Simon, Lord Lovat (1847); J. Anderson, Account of the Family of Frizell or Fraser (Edinburgh, 1825); A. Mackenzie, History of the Frasers of Lovat (Inverness, 1896); Mrs A. T. Thomson, Memoirs of the Jacobites (1845–6); and W. C. Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat (1908).
LOVE-BIRD, a name somewhat indefinitely bestowed, chiefly
by dealers and their customers, on some of the smaller short-tailed
parrots, from the affection which examples of opposite sexes
exhibit towards each other. By many ornithologists the birds
thus named, brought almost entirely from Africa and South
America, have been retained in a single genus, Psittacula, though
those belonging to the former country were by others separated
as Agapornis. This separation, however, was neither generally
approved nor easily justified, until Garrod (Proc. Zool. Society,
1874, p. 593) assigned good anatomical ground, afforded by the
structure of the carotid artery, for regarding the two groups
as distinct, and thus removed the puzzle presented by the
geographical distribution of the species of Psittacula in a large
sense, though Huxley (op. cit. 1868, p. 319) had suggested one
way of meeting the difficulty. As the genus is now restricted,
only one of the six species of Psittacula enumerated in the
Nomenclator Avium of Sclater and Salvin is known to be found
outside the Neotropical Region, the exception being the Mexican
P. cyanopygia, and not one of the seven recognized by the same
authors as forming the nearly allied genus Urochroma. On the
other hand, of Agapornis, from which the so-called genus Poliopsitta
can scarcely be separated, five if not six species are known,
all belonging to the Ethiopian Region, and all but one, A. cana
(which is indigenous to Madagascar, and thence has been widely
disseminated), are natives of Africa. In this group probably
comes also Psittinus, with a single species from the Malayan
Subregion. One of the birds most commonly called love-birds,
but with no near relationship to any of the above, being a long-tailed
though very small parrot, is the budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus)
now more familiar in Europe than most native birds,
as it is used to “tell fortunes” in the streets, and is bred by
hundreds in aviaries. Its native country is Australia.
(A. N.)
LOVEDALE, a mission station in the Victoria East division of the Cape province, South Africa. It lies 1720 ft. above the sea on the banks of the Tyumie (Chumie) tributary of the Keiskama river, some 2 m. N. of Alice, a town 88 m. N.W. by rail of East London. The station was founded in 1824 by the Glasgow Missionary Society and was named after Dr John Love, one of the leading members of, and at the time secretary to, the society. The site first chosen was in the Ncera valley. But in 1834 the mission buildings were destroyed by the Kaffirs. On rebuilding, the station was removed somewhat farther north to the banks of the Tyumie. In 1846 the work at Lovedale was again interrupted, this time by the War of the Axe (see Cape Colony: History). On this occasion the buildings were converted into a fort and garrisoned by regular troops. Once more, in 1850, the Kaffirs threatened Lovedale and made an attack on the neighbouring Fort Hare,[1] built during the previous war.
Until 1841 the missionaries had devoted themselves almost entirely to evangelistic work; in that year the Lovedale Missionary Institute was founded by the Rev. W. Govan, who, save for brief intervals, continued at its head until 1870. He was then succeeded by the Rev. James Stewart (1831–1905), who had joined the mission in 1867, having previously (1861–1863), and partly in company with David Livingstone, explored the Zambezi regions. To Stewart, who remained at the head of the institute till his death, is due the existing organization at Lovedale. The institute, in addition to its purely church work—in which no sectarian tests are allowed—provides for the education of natives of both sexes in nearly all branches of learning (Stewart discontinued the teaching of Greek and Latin, adopting English as the classic); it also takes European scholars, no colour distinction being allowed in any department of the work. The institute gives technical training in many subjects and maintains various industries, including such diverse enterprises as farming and printing-works. It also maintains a hospital. The school buildings rival in accommodation and completeness those of the schools in large English cities. The sum paid in fees by scholars (of whom fully nine-tenths were Kaffirs) in the period 1841–1908 was £84,000. The educational and industrial methods initiated at Lovedale have been widely adopted by other
- ↑ This fort was named after Colonel John Hare (d. 1846) of the 27th Regiment, from 1838 lieutenant-governor of the eastern provinces and commander of the first division of the field force in the War of the Axe.
