religion the hermit of Loretto, near Musselburgh. After he had seen the triumph of the protestant faith in 1559-60, he was nominated a member of queen Mary's privy council. Zeal for the same religion afterwards induced him
to join in the insurrection raised against the queen's authority by the earl of Murray. After her marriage to Bothwell, he was one of the most active of the associated lords by whom she was dethroned. At Carberry, where he had an important command, when the French ambassador came from the queen, promising them forgiveness if they would disperse, he answered, with his characteristic spirit, that " they came not to ask pardon for any offence they had done, but to grant pardon to those who had offended." After the queen had been consigned to Lochleven, he entered her chapel at Holyrood House with his domestics, and destroyed the whole of the images and other furniture. This he did from the impulse of his own mind, and without consulting any of his friends. In the whole of the subsequent proceedings for establishing the protestant cause under a regency, he took a zealous part. His lordship died in 1574, and w r as succeeded by his son William, the sixth earl.
CUNNINGHAM, Alexander, the historian, was born in the year 1654, in the county of Selkirk, and parish of Ettrick, of which his father was minister. Having acquired the elementary branches of learning at home, he, according to the prevailing custom among Scottish gentlemen of that period, proceeded to Holland to finish his education, and it is believed that it was there that he made those friends, among the English refugees at the Hague, who afterwards contributed so powerfully to the advancement of his fortunes. He came over to England with the prince of Orange in 1688, and was honoured with the intimacy of the leading men by whom the revolution was accomplished, move especially with that of the earls of Sunderland and Argyle. After his return to Britain he was employed as tutor and travelling companion to the earl of Hyndford, and also to that nobleman's brother, the honourable Mr William Carmichael, who was solicitor-general of Scotland in the reign of queen Anne. Mr Cunningham was afterwards travelling companion to lord Lome, better known under the title of John the great duke of Argyle.
While Mr Cunningham was travelling on the continent with lord Lome, he was employed by the administration in transmitting secret intelligence on the most important subjects, and he was also intrusted by the confederate generals of the allied army to make representations to the British court. When in Holland in 1703, along with lord Lome, he met the celebrated Addison, and was received in the most gracious manner by the elector and the princess Sophia. It is supposed that it is to the knowledge of military affairs, acquired through his intimacy with lord Lome, that the description of battles, and the other operations of war contained in Mr Cunningham's history, owe that lucid distinctness for which they are so remarkable. During the year 1710, he travelled on the continent with lord Lonsdale.
Through the interest and friendship of Argyle and Sunderland, and of Sir Robert Walpole, Mr Cunningham, on the accession of George I, was sent as British envoy to the republic of Venice, where he remained from the year 1715 to 1720. His despatches from Venice have been collected and arranged by Mr Astle. For many years after Mr Cunningham's return from Italy, he passed his life in studious retirement in London. In 1735, he was visited by lord Hyndford, to whose father he had been tutor, who found him a very infirm old man, sitting in a great arm chair, habited in a night-gown. He is believed to have lived until the year 1737, and to have been buried in the vicars' chancel of St Mai-tin's church, where an Alexander Cunningham lies interred, who died on the 15th May, 1737, in the 83d year of his age, which
