Sir Murray

“ On the other hand the ' Quarterly,' in spite of change and competition, fully sustained under Murray's auspices its reputation as an organ of the highest criticism. But perhaps the greatest glory of the firm under the third Murray's direction consists in the admirable series of illustrated books of travels, associated with the names of Miss Bird (Mrs. Bishop) , Dr. Lumholtz, Du Chaillu, Bates, and Yule, whose edition of ' Marco Polo ' was largely due to Murray's enlightened enterprise. ”

“ But Murray's edition of the statutes, with all its imperfections, was habitually quoted in the Scottish courts as an authority until the beginning of this century.
The marriage of Lady Dysart with the Duke of Lauderdale secured Murray for a time in his public offices, and it was supposed that he shared his emoluments with the duchess. When the power of the duke was overthrown Murray was superseded. His name was not included in the commission for the administration of justice appointed in 1681, and his office of lord-clerk-register was given to Sir George Mackenzie [q. v.] ”

“ Oh, well, life was a disappointment anyway, whichever way you turned. Now here was Murray! What a bitter disappointment he was! Just when he might have been a comfort. Of course there was a slight possibility of his being injured somehow, but if he had been able to take a girl to the hospital he couldn’t have been very badly off. No, he was probably off with the fellows somewhere having a good time, or off with his Countess, or his latest fancy! What a son! But he must do his duty as a father, anyhow. So Murray’s new car was smashed! That was probably the reason Murray did not come home. ”

“ Much against his will, Murray was compelled to take part in some of these riotous festivities with the rollicking, hard-drinking Forfarshire lairds, and doubtless he was not sorry to make his escape at length uninjured, if not unscathed, and to return to more congenial society in Edinburgh. His attachment to Miss Elliot ended in an engagement. ”

“ Murray died on 1 Aug. 1907 in London after a long illness, during which he endured much privation. He was buried at Hampstead. A memorial tablet in copper with pewter medallion was unveiled at West Bromwich public library in December 1908. He was twice married. By his first wife, Sophie Harris of Rowley Regis, whom he married in 1871, he had a daughter, who died young; by his second wife, Alice, whom he married about 1879, he had one son, Archibald. Two sons and two daughters were born out of wedlock.
Besides his novels, Murray was author of several rambling volumes of autobiography. ”

“ Murray had been educated with the young Chevalier was untrue; it was by the desire of his mother, Lady Murray, that he first, in 1741, visited both France and Italy, and perfected himself in the language of those countries, then by no means generally attained by Scotchmen.
Mr. Murray had been brought up in the principles of the Episcopal Church, and therefore there was [Pg 11] less reason, than there would have been in the case of a Roman Catholic, to apprehend his being beguiled into an intimate connection with the exiled Stuarts. ”

“ In an instant the vaulted arches of the palace echoed with the flourished cadences of the royal trumpets, the ringing steps of steel-clad men, the tramp of hoofs in the courtyard, the gathering cries of the followers of each fierce baron, succeeding wildly to the soft breathings of minstrelsey and song. At this instant Murray had resolved himself to act, and, with his hand upon the pommel of his sword, slowly but resolutely stepped forward. “Yield thee!” he said, in stern, low tones;347 “yield thee, my lord of Bothwell! ”

“ The treasonable views entertained by Murray and his friends, are involved in no such doubt. In these times, the common mode of effecting a change in the government, was to seize the person of the sovereign; and all historians of credit agree in affirming, that Murray was determined on making the experiment. On Sunday, the first of July, 1565, the Queen was to ride with Darnley and a small train of friends from Perth to the seat of Lord Livingston at Callander, the baptism of one of whose children she had promised to attend. ”

“ Murray had been ill-fitted to withstand the rubs of fortune, it was hardly to be expected that his armour should be stronger or his sword brighter after his twenty years of incarceration from the world. It was, indeed, evident from the first, both to Miss Bellamy and to Gerald, that he would have to be treated in many ways as if he were neither more nor less than a grown-up child. ”

“ It was in the year 1741 that the royal youth, then scarcely nineteen years of age, became acquainted with a man whose qualities of mind, and attractions of manner, exercised a very considerable influence over his destiny; and whose character, pliant, yet bitter, intriguing and perfidious, came afterwards into a painful collision with the haughty overbearing temper, and manly sincerity, of Lord George Murray. ”

“ He was hanged on a gallows, about a quarter of a mile outside the village of Guayave.
Chapter XXX. WEST INDIA LIFE
I remained on the Upper Pearl estate, and found much to interest an inquiring mind. Murray, although there were some good points about him, was not considered trustworthy. In his cups he was quarrelsome and as choleric as a Welshman; and a fondness for liquor was his besetting sin. He was an excellent accountant and an efficient clerk, but could hardly be relied on when a clear head and cool judgment were required. ”

“ He had like to have prevailed at Carlisle, but the council was soon resumed, and continued ever after to be held upon extraordinary emergencies. It was not in this particular only that Murray’s ambition was detrimental to the prince’s affairs. Though he was more jealous of Lord George Murray than of any body, Lord George was not the only person he dreaded as a rival. There were abundance of gentlemen in the army, in no respect inferior to Mr. Murray, but his early favour gave him an opportunity of excluding most of them from the prince’s presence and acquaintance. ”

“ Miss Murray is tall, with a willowy figure, a round, infantile face, with wondering blue eyes, a dimpled chin, a rather wide mouth, but the lips are exquisitely curved and smiling; not a regular beauty, but possessing much piquant loveliness and the peculiar gift of interesting you at once. ”

“ In Murray the spirit of the eighteenth century seemed to meet and harmonize with the spirit of the nineteenth. Enthusiasm, daring, originality, and freedom from conventionality made him eminently a man of his time, and, in a certain sense, he did as much as any of his contemporaries to swell that movement in his profession towards complete individual liberty which had been growing almost from the foundation of the Stationers' Company. ”

“ He lectured through the winter, against his strength, attracting both students and literary men to his room. His health completely gave way in the spring, and he died of consumption at Edinburgh 15 April 1813, leaving his widow and a son and daughter. Mrs. Murray survived about twelve years, supported by a government pension of 80l., which had been granted to her in return for Murray's translation of the Abyssinian letter. ”

“ There Murray laboured with great zeal during the remainder of his life. He was extremely active in opposing Sir George Saville's bill for the removal of certain catholic disabilities, and published 'News from the Pope to the Devil,' 1781, and 'Popery not Christianity,' an evening lecture, besides attacking the catholics in several papers which appeared in the 'Protestant Packet.' He was also strongly opposed to the American war, and delivered many political lectures condemnatory of the administration of Lord North. He died at Newcastle on 28 Jan. ”

“ The man whom Murray most dreaded as a rival was Lord George Murray, the coadjutor with the Duke of Perth in the command of the army; and it soon became no difficult task, not only to persuade Prince Charles, who knew but little personally of Lord George, that that impetuous but honest man was a traitor, but also to inspire the amiable Duke of Perth with suspicions foreign to his generous nature. ”

“ In activity and exertion Lord George Murray has not been surpassed even by the more fortunate, although, perhaps, not greater commanders of modern times. He was indefatigable in business, and any one who desired access to him could see him at any hour, whether at meals or in bed. "On some occasions," he remarks, "I have been waked six times a night, and had either orders to write, or letters to answer every time; for as I mostly commanded a separate body of the army, I had many details that, in a more regular army, would belong to different people." ”

“ The march commenced on the 31st, the division under Murray proceeding by Peebles and Moffat, and the other by Lauder and Kelso. After their union at Beddings in Cumberland, Carlisle was invested, the siege being conducted by the Duke of Perth. On account of the prominence assigned to the duke during the siege, Murray resigned his command, intimating his desire henceforth to serve as a volunteer. Perth thereupon also resigned, and his resignation was accepted, it being understood that Murray, whose skill was necessary to the continuance of the enterprise, should act as general under the prince. ”

“ Lovat temporised, Macleod turned his coat. Here Murray’s MS. breaks off, and he continues the history of the Rising ‘from Moidart to Derby.’
The military part of Murray’s ‘Memorials’ is full of reflections on Charles’s ‘unparalleled good nature and humanity,’ and his strategic skill. Murray had desired to be an aide-de-camp: he clearly thinks himself a good judge of warfare. ”

“ Yes, it is indeed true, that Mr. Murray considered the interests of the people of his charge as his own. Most fondly did he cherish, and perseveringly did he seek, by every possible means, to advance their reputation. He sympathized with the afflicted, and largely partook their sorrows; while, so often as the course of events brought joy to their bosoms, his eye beamed gladness, and his tongue exulted to dwell upon facts, which illumined the hours of his protracted pilgrimage. His voice, at the bed of death, was the herald of consolation. ”

“ It was easy to inflame the minds of persons so situated with false [Pg 16] hopes; and Murray is said to have been indefatigable in the prosecution of his scheme. After a delay of three weeks in Paris, he set off on that memorable undertaking to engage the Clans, which ultimately ended in the insurrection of 1745.
Lord George Murray, meantime, had returned to his native country, where he was presented to George the Second, and solicited, but ineffectually, a commission in the British army. ”

“ Murray's early manhood was the most brilliant portion of his career, but, though he never occupied that position in public life which might have been predicted for him from his early distinction, his connection with the past, his generous patronage of art and letters, his geniality and interest in the welfare of his fellow-citizens, gave him in his later years a peculiar position in Edinburgh society. ”

“ In 1730 Murray paid a short visit to the continent, and on the 23d of November in that year he was called to the bar in Lincoln's-inn hall. Never was lawyer better armed for the battle of life. How he had qualified himself for the practice of his profession we have attempted in our narrow space to show. With a rooted attachment to that profession, with a lofty ambition and noble desire to serve his country, and a consciousness of strength equal to the bravest undertaking; with a mind thoroughly imbued with the literature of Greece and Rome, as well as of his own country ”

“ Hardly less fictitious seems to be the dispute between the Scottish king and a Murray, in relation to the tenure. The Murrays first became connected with Selkirkshire in 1461. John de Moravia then acquired the lands of Philiphaugh, and was afterwards appointed Custos of Newark Castle, and came into possession of Hangingshaw and Lewinshope. All of these are attributed to the Outlaw in the ballad. This John Murray was a contemporary of Boyd, Earl of Arran, and of the forfeited Murray of Traquair, but, with all this, nobody has pitched upon him for the Outlaw ”

“ Murray halted irresolute. If the Scotsman had been of grosser make, Kit would have joined the company of King's men who slept in Wilstrop Wood. It was easy, with the men he had at call, to silence this hot-headed youngster.
"That is your resolve?" he asked slowly.
"D'ye doubt it? Captain Murray, it is a loathsome business enough to pick the pockets of the dead, but to take clothes and all——"
"The Scots had no hand in it, I tell ye. Our lads hae over-muckle care for the dead of either side. ”

“ He bequeathed to his son, John second Marquis of Atholl, and the father of Lord George Murray, as great a share of prosperity and as many sources of self-exultation as ordinarily fall to the lot of one man. To the blood of the Murrays, the marriage with Lady Amelia Stanley had added a connection in kindred with the Houses of Bourbon and Austria, with the Kings of Spain and Duke of Savoy, the Prince of Orange, and most of the crowned heads in Europe. ”

“ Murray has sung of the life and pleasures of its students, of examinations and Gaudeamuses—supper parties—he has sung of the sands, the links, the sea, the towers, and his name and fame are for ever blended with the air of his city of youth and dream. It is not a wide name or a great fame, but it is what he would have desired, and we trust that it may be long-lived and enduring. We are not to wax elegiac, and adopt a tearful tone over one so gallant and so uncomplaining. ”