Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moysie, David
MOYSIE, MOISE, MOYSES, or MOSEY, DAVID (fl. 1590), author of the 'Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, 1577-1603,' was by profession a writer and notary public. The earliest record of him is his notarial attestation of a lease in 1577 (Memoirs, Bannatyne Club, p. xiii). From 1582 he was engaged as a crown servant, first as a clerk of the privy council, 'writing of the effairis' under the superintendence of John Andrew, and giving 'continewale attendance upon his Heines at Court' (Treasurer's Accounts, 1586), and afterwards, about 1596, in the office of Sir John Lindsay of Menmuir, king's secretary. On 3 Aug. 1584 he obtained a grant under the privy seal of 32l. Scots from the mails of certain lands of the kirk of Dunkeld for his son David, 'for his help and sustentatioun at the scolis, and education in vertew and guid lettres.' On the death of his son, soon after, he had the gift ratified in his own favour on 19 Feb. 1584-5. The only other references occur in three letters written to Sir John Lindsay the secretary in 1596—one from Moysie, the others from John Laing and George Young, secretary-deputes, from which it appears that Moysie had been complaining, but to little purpose, of the inadequacy of his annual salary of a hundred merks.
The 'Memoirs,' if devoid of literary merit, are interesting as the record of an eye witness, to whose official habit and opportunities we are indebted for many details not to be learned from the more academic historians of his time. They are extant in two manuscripts, one in the Advocates' Library, the other at Wishaw House. They were printed by Ruddiman (Edinburgh, 1755), and edited for the Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1830).
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