Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Murray, John (d.1510)
MURRAY, JOHN (d. 1510), laird of Falahill, the so-called 'out law' of the old border ballad, was the son of Patrick Murray, sixth of Falahill. The family trace their descent from Archibald de Moravia, who is mentioned in a chartulary of Newbottle in 1280, and swore fealty to Edward I in 1296, and whose son, Roger de Moravia, obtained in 1321 a charter of the lands of Falahill from James, lord Douglas, his superior. The so-called outlaw was included in 1484 in his father's lease of Lewinshop and Hangandschaw (Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, ix. 272). He was undoubtedly for many years on friendly terms with the Scottish kings. In 1489 he received from James II the gift of a horse of twenty angels value (Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, i. 121), and on 9 Feb. 1488-9 the king conceded to him the lands of Greviston in Peebles (Reg. May. Sig. i. 1927). In a grant to him of the lands of Cranston Riddle on 5 Nov. 1497 he is called the king's 'familiaris armigerus' (ib. entry 2379). In 1501 he was made sheriff of Selkirk under Lord Erskine. On 29 Jan. 1508-9 he is mentioned as viscount deputy of Selkirkshire (ib. entry 3295), and on 30 Nov. 1509 he obtained a grant of the hereditary sheriffdom of Selkirk (ib. entry 3388). Besides his estates in Selkirkshire and the Lothians, he possessed a town house in Edinburgh, which he inherited from his uncle, who was rector of Hawick.
According to the ballad Murray had taken possession of Ettrick Forest in Selkirkshire with five hundred men, and declared his intention to hold it 'contrair all kings of Christentie.' When James IV set out against him with a large force, he called to his aid his kinsmen, Murray of Cockpool and Murray of Traquair; but on the approach of the royal force he expressed his willingness to own fealty to the king, on condition that he was made hereditary sheriff of the forest. Although there is no historical record of any expedition against him, not improbably the ballad commemorates some action taken by him to make good his claims to the sheriffdom. 'The tradition of Ettrick Forest,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'bears that the outlaw was a man of prodigious strength, possessing a baton or club, with which he laid lee the country for many miles round, and that he was at length slain by Buccleugh, or some of his clan, at a little mount covered with fir trees, adjoining Newark Castle, and said to have been part of a garden.' As a matter of fact Murray was slain in 1510 by Andrew Ker of Gateschaw and Thomas Scott, brother of Philip Scott of Aidschaw. By his wife Janet Forrester (Exchequer Rolls, x.732, 757), widow of Schaw of Knockhill (ib. p. 727), he had, besides other children, four sons; John, who succeeded him; James, who succeeded John; William, ancestor of the Murrays of Romano; and Patrick, who became laird of Broadmeadows. It was his son John—not he, as usually stated–who was married to Lady Margaret Hepburn, daughter of the first Earl of Bothwell. The grandson of the 'outlaw,' Patrick Murray of Falahill, obtained on 28 Jan. 1528 the lands of Philiphaugh.
[Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot.; Exchequer Rolls of Scotland; Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland; Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; Brown's Hist. of Selkirkshire; Douglas's Baronage of Scotland.]