Note 290 — MEMORIAL CONCERNING THE HIGHLANDS WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER MACBEAN, A.M. MINISTER OF INVERNESS

Contrary to what I find is a general impression, the religion of Lord Lovat and his family, as well as his clan, was Protestant. It is true that in his days of outlawry and exile in France, about 1703, Lovat feigned conversion to Romanism, yet from his return to Scotland in ’15, until his capture in ’46, he conformed to the Presbyterian establishment; his bosom friend and crony was the gloomy and dissolute fanatic, James Erskine, Lord Grange. When in hiding after Culloden, along with Bishop Hugh Macdonald, in Loch Morar (see ante, p. 82) Lovat informed the Bishop that he had long been a Catholic in his heart, and wished to be received into the Church. He was preparing to make his confession, but before the rite could be accomplished, the fugitives were dispersed by a party of Campbells and seamen from Ferguson’s ship, and Lord Lovat surrendered a few days later. Though he desired the services of the chaplain of the Sardinian embassy while a prisoner in the Tower, where on one occasion he pronounced himself a Jansenist, and although he declared ‘Je meurs un fils indigne de l’Église Romaine,’ there is no evidence, which I know of, that he ever formally joined that communion.