raser, to overrun the
country, to burn, kill, and to destroy the whole clan, without
exception; and, without issuing a citation to Thomas Fraser of Beaufort,
or to his son, to appear--without examining a single witness--a printed
sentence was published against all the Frasers, men and women and
children, and their adherents. Even the sanctuary of churches was not to
be respected: "in a word," says Lord Lovat's Manifesto, "history, sacred
or profane, cannot produce an order so pregnant with such unexampled
cruelty as this sentence, which is carefully preserved in the house of
Lovat, to the eternal confusion and infamy of those who signed it."[153]
The Government which sanctioned the massacre of Glencoe was perfectly
capable of issuing a proclamation which confounded the innocent with the
guilty, and punished before trial.

The Master of Lovat assembled his clan. That simple and faithful people,
trusting in the worth and honour of their leader, swore that they would
never desert him, that they would leave their wives, their children, and
all that they most valued, to live and die with him. An organized
resistance was planned; and the Master of Lovat intreated his father, as
he himself expressed it, with tears, "to retire into the country of his
kinsmen, the Macleods of Rye." The proposal was accepted, and Thomas of
Beaufort, for he never assumed the disputed title of Lord Lovat, took
refuge among that powerful and friendly clan.

The prosecution against the Master of Lovat was, in the mean time,
commenced in the Court of Justiciary; "the only case," so it has been
called, "since the Revolution, in which a person was tried in absence,
before the Court of Justiciary, a proof led, a jury inclosed, a verdict
returned, and sentence pronounced; forfeiting life, estate, honours,
fame, and posterity."[154] None of the parties who were summoned,
appeared. The jury returned a verdict finding the indictment proved, and
the Court adjudged Captain Fraser and the other persons accused, to be
executed as traitors; "their name, fame, memory, and honours, to be
extinct, and their arms to be riven forth and deleted out of the books
of arms; so that their posterity may never have place, nor be able
hereafter to bruite or enjoy any honours, offices, titles, or dignities;
and to have forfeited all their lands, heritages, and possessions
whatsoever."[155]

After this sentence, a severer one than that usually passed in such
cases, the Master