On This Day In History: Simon Fraser – The Last Man In Britain To Be Executed On Tower Green, London – On Apr 9, 1747

MessageToEagle.com – On April 9, 1747, the Scottish Jacobite Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, becomes the last man in Britain to be publicly beheaded at Tower Hill, London.

The last ever beheading with an axe in the UK was that of the Luddite Jeremiah Brandreth of Derby on 7 November 1817.

Simon Fraser was beheaded because he was fighting on the wrong side at the Battle of Culloden, the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745 and part of a religious civil war in Britain.

Simon Fraser was variously described as ‘the Fox’ or “the most devious man in Scotland.” Those epithets were largely justified and he was certainly one of the Highlands’ most intriguing characters.

Fraser of Lovat Chiefs were dubbed ‘the MacShimi’ (the son of Simon) in recognition of their descent from Sir Simon Fraser, who was killed at the Battle of Halidon Hill, in 1333. The unfortunate, 18th Century incarnation of Simon Fraser was embodied in the seventy-nine year old MacShimi Chief of Clan Fraser of Lovat.

He was the 11th Lord Lovat and a convicted Jacobite rebel.

For the crime of treason, Fraser was beheaded on Tower Green in London on that day.

Like many another so-called Scottish noble family, the Frasers were in fact Norman-French. They originated in Anjou and Normandy and appeared in Scotland for the first time around 1160, during the reign of Malcolm ‘the Maiden’.

The name of Fraser is derived from the French word ‘Fraise’, meaning Strawberry; three flowers of which appear on the Clan’s Coat of Arms.

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