On his arrival in France, lord Lovat found the earl of Middleton and the exiled queen, as much opposed to him and his projects as ever, but he continued his assiduities with the French courtiers, who informed him, that he might expect very soon to be the first of the Scottish nobility, since he would be called on to head the insurrection not only as a general officer to king James, but as a general officer in the army of France; every thing necessary for the success of the expedition, land forces, a squadron of ships, arms, and ammunition, being already prepared, and nothing remaining to be done but the form of carrying it through the privy council, which a day or two would accomplish. In a day or two it was proposed in the council, when the king himself declared, that, though he had the highest opinion of the excellence of the proposed plan, the queen of England had positively refused to sign commissions for her subjects to engage in it, and therefore, for the present it was necessary to lay it aside. This was a sad blow to the hopes of Lovat; and being always fond of letter-writing, he wrote a letter to the queen, in which he told her, that she had at one blow overturned a project which he had sacrificed his property and exposed his life to bring to perfection; and he affirmed, that, so long as her majesty followed implicitly the advice of the people who were at the head of the English parliament, Jesus Christ would come in the clouds before her son would be restored; and he concluded by saying, that, for his own part, he would never draw a sword for the royal cause, so long as the regency was in her majesty's hands.
In consequence of this letter, lord Lovat was at the queen's instance imprisoned thirty-two days in a dark dungeon, three years in the castle of Angouleme, and seven years in the city of Saumur. In the meantime the project was not abandoned. Colonel Hooke succeeded to the part that Lovat had played or attempted to play. A large armament, under admiral Forbin, was fitted out in the year 1708, and in which James himself embarked, and had a sight of the Scottish shore, when meeting with admiral Byng and afterwards encountering a violent storm, the whole was driven back upon the French coast, with great loss. In this expedition the friends of Lovat had requested James to employ him, and they had received the most determined refusal, which finally, with the failure of the expedition, cut off all his hopes from that quarter. What added greatly to the bitterness of his reflections, the heiress of Lovat was now married to Mr Alexander Mackenzie, (son of lord Prestonhall,) who had assumed the title of Fraserdale, with the estate of Lovat settled on him for life, with remainder to the heirs of the marriage, who were to bear the name of Fraser, and of which there were already more than one. Thus circumstanced, he confessed, that he " would not merely have inlisted himself in the party of the house of Hanover, which was called to the crown of Scotland, England, and Ireland, by all the states of the kingdom, but with any foreign prince in the universe, who would have assisted him in the attainment of his just and laudable design of re-establishing his family, and proclaiming to all Scotland the barbarous cruelty of the court of St Germains." In this state of mind he formed the resolution of escaping from Saumur, in company with some English prisoners, and throwing himself at the feet of the dukes of Marlborough and Argyle, entreating them to interpose in his favour with queen Anne. This design circumstances prevented him from executing; but he transmitted on various occasions, letters to the duke of Argyle and others of his friends, upon whom he supposed he could depend, stating the determination he had come to, and requesting their good offices to effect his reconciliation with the queen. Some of these letters were returned to the court of St Germains, shown to the court of France, and nearly occasioned his being shut up in the Bastile for life. He
