Simon Fraser Lovat, lord, a Scottish Jacobite, born near Inverness about 1670, beheaded on Tower hill, London, April 9, 1747. His father, Thomas Eraser, succeeded his grand-nephew in 1696 as Lord Lovat. Simon Eraser was educated at the university of Aberdeen, where he had a reputation for scholarship, and about 1694 accepted a commission in a highland regiment raised by Lord Murray. Upon his father's death in 1699 he became 13th Lord Lovat and chief of the Frasers. For several years he was engaged in a series of unsuccessful attempts to secure the estates of his cousin, the 11th lord, and effected a forced marriage with his widow, in the hope of being acknowledged the head of the house and owner of the estates. Having been outlawed for this offence, he went to France, embraced the cause of James II., and became a Roman Catholic. In 1702 he returned to Scotland as a secret emissary to stir up the highbinders in favor of the pretender; but wishing to gain the favor of the English government, he betrayed the plot to the duke of Queensberry. His treachery became known to the French court, and after his return to France he was sentenced to a confinement of ten years.

The current story that in this interval he took orders and discharged the duties of a priest at the college of St. Omer is not sufficiently substantiated. During his imprisonment the heiress of Lovat, in whose person a decree of the court of session of 1702 vested the family honors and possessions, was married to Mackenzie, Lord Fraserdale; and the object of his ambition being thus apparently removed from his reach, Lovat determined to espouse the Hanoverian cause. In November, 1714, Lovat effected his escape into England, and during the insurrection under the pretender in the succeeding year he put himself at the head of the Frasers, and was instrumental in driving the insurgents out of Inverness. For his loyalty on this occasion he received a full pardon from government. Fraserdale had meanwhile joined the pretender, and, the insurrection being quelled, his estates were declared forfeited, and were subsequently conferred upon Lovat, who by cultivating friendly relations with George I. secured also a portion of the property forfeited by various highland chiefs.

For many years he remained loyal, or seemingly so; but in 1729 he entered into communication with the exiled Stuarts. Subsequent to 1737 he was the head of an association of highland chiefs the object of which was to procure the restoration of the pretender, in whose cause he professed to have expended large sums of money. Nevertheless, when Charles Edward landed in 1745, he avoided committing himself in his favor until some decided success should be achieved by the Jacobites. After the defeat of Sir John Cope at Gladsmuir he sent his son with the Frasers to join the pretender's standard, while he remained at home, intending in case of need to fasten upon his son the responsibility of the treason committed. After the battle of Culloden the evidence of his complicity became so strong, however, that he was compelled to take refuge in a remote part of the highlands, where he led a wandering life, attended by a few devoted clansmen, and "hiding in bogs and hollow trees and caverns." He was at last discovered and conveyed to London, arriving there Aug. 15, 1746. In December he was impeached in the house of lords, and on March 9, 1747, his trial commenced, during which he gave alternate proofs of extraordinary meanness, levity, and courage. He was found guilty and sentenced to .be beheaded.

Upon leaving the bar he exclaimed: "My lords and gentlemen, God Almighty bless you all. I wish you an everlasting farewell, for we shall not all meet in the same place again. I am sure of that." He met his fate with composure and intrepidity, repeating on the scaffold the words: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. His portrait, etched by Hogarth in 1746, represents a man of great obesity, and a heavy, sensual face. He was twice married, and upon his second wife he is said to have exercised the most terrible barbarities. A volume of autobiographical memoirs by him, written originally in French, was published in 1797. The best account of him is contained in the " Memoirs of Lord Lovat and Duncan Forbes," by J. H. Burton (London, 1847).