Don’t Lose Your Head

Use It Instead

You might remember when I wrote  a fan piece about Lord Lovat’s piper Bill Millen who piped the boys ashore on D Day in 1944, but today I am writing about one of Lovat’s more notorious ancestors Simon Fraser the  11th Lord Lovat who was the last men ever  beheaded in Britain, who lost his head the year after the failed uprising of 1745.

Game of Thrones?

Simon Fraser was a bit of a laddie and was born in 1667. His life reads like an extract from the colourful and dark Game of Thrones. Unable to marry the heir to the title of lord Lovat he forced his affections , and I mean forced, onto the heir’s mother Amelia and married her under duress.  Rightly accused of the rapine he fled to France and affected the Jacobite cause – the aim of which was to restore the Stuarts to the British thrones.  Just to keep things rolling here  he spied on the Jacobites for the English and when found out by the French was again exiled for life, this time from France.

Second Chance

Luckily the Frasers liked him more than their current lord and he became the 11th Lord Lovat, for services rendered to the English crown after the failure of the 1715 rising  and he remarried on the sly and had five kids, securing the family hold on the title. But some 30 years later when Bonnie Prince Charlie landed and after a deal of havering he declared for the Stuarts only to see the majority of the clan’s men folk slaughtered at Culloden and himself caught and tried for treason.

Collapsing Stand Gave Him One Last Laugh

He was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered, but because of his age he was given the less horrendous sentence of beheading by the king. It was a real crowd pleaser and thousands thronged the streets of London to see the execution, but Simon Fraser went laughing to the executioner’s block when he found out that a wooden stand erected to give a better view of the execution had collapsed and nine rubberneckers had died.  Thus Fraser was the last man to be beheaded in Britain.

Keep your Head


As you might expect in a blog there will be a raft of puns and sales lines about our lovely stuff, but I know you better. You’ll keep your head, and you’ll need no second chance to take advantage of our bargains. Our customers are almost never in revolt about our prices and even if you are living in exile we can send them to you. And what should we send? Why not the lovely national emblem itself: the Thistle. The Thistle Range is on half price offer and it won’t separate too much of your cash from your body.

 

https://www.jamespirie.com/royal-scot-crystal/wine-suites/scottish-thistle.html