to the Highlands an immediate necessity, in which the prince was compelled to acquiesce; his resentment was such that he gave ear to groundless suggestions that Murray was a traitor, which the latter’s failure to capture his brother’s stronghold of Blair Castle did nothing to refute.
In April 1746 the Jacobite army was in the neighbourhood of Inverness, and the prince decided to give battle to the duke of Cumberland. Charles took up a position on the left bank of the Nairn river at Culloden Moor, rejecting Lord George’s Murray advice to select a much stronger position on the opposite bank. The battle of Culloden, where the Stuart cause was ruined, was fought on the 16th of April 1746. On the following day the duke of Cumberland intimated to his troops that “the public orders of the rebels yesterday was to give us no quarter”; Hanoverian news-sheets printed what purported to be copies of such an order, and the historian James Ray and other contemporary writers gave further currency to a calumny that has been repeated by modern authorities. Original copies of Lord George Murray’s “orders at Culloden” are in existence, one of which is among Cumberland’s own papers, while another was in the possession of Lord Hardwicke, the judge who tried the Jacobite peers in 1746, and they contain no injunction to refuse quarter. After the defeat Murray conducted a remnant of the Jacobite army to Ruthven, and prepared to organize further resistance. Prince Charles, however, had determined to abandon the enterprise, and at Ruthven Lord George received an order dismissing him from the prince’s service, to which he replied in a letter upbraiding Charles for his distrust and mismanagement. Charles’s belief in the general’s treachery was shared by several leading Jacobites, but there appears no ground for the suspicion. From the moment he threw in his lot with the exiled prince’s cause Lord George Murray never deviated in his loyalty and devotion, and his generalship was deserving of the highest praise; but the discipline he enforced and jealousy of his authority made enemies of some of those to whom Charles was more inclined to listen than to the general who gave him sound but unwelcome advice.
Murray escaped to the continent in December 1746, and was graciously received in Rome by the Old Pretender, who granted him a pension; but in the following year when he went to Paris Charles Edward refused to see him. Lord George lived at various places abroad until his death, which occurred at Medemblik in Holland on the 11th of October 1760. He married in 1728 Amelia, daughter and heiress of James Murray of Strowan and Glencarse, by whom he had three sons and two daughters. His eldest son. John became 3rd duke of Atholl in 1764; the two younger sons became lieutenant-general and vice-admiral respectively in the British service.
See A Military History of Perthshire, ed. by the marchioness of Tullibardine (2 vols., London, 1908), containing a memoir of Lord George Murray and a facsimile copy of his orders at Culloden; The Atholl Chronicles, ed. by the duke of Atholl (privately printed); The Chevalier James de Johnstone, Memoirs of the Rebellion in 1745 (3rd ed., London, 1822); James Ray, Compleat Historie of the Rebellion, 1745–1746 (London, 1754); Robert Patten, History of the late Rebellion (2nd ed., London, 1717); Memoirs of Sir John Murray of Broughton, ed. by R. F. Bell (Edinburgh, 1898; Andrew Henderson, History of the Rebellion, 1745–1746 (2nd ed., London, 1748) (R. J. M.)
MURRAY, JAMES (c. 1719–1794), British governor of Canada,
was a younger son of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank
(d. 1736). Having entered the British army, he served with the
15th Foot in the West Indies, the Netherlands and Brittany, and
became lieutenant-colonel of this regiment by purchase in 1751.
In 1757 he led his men to North America to take part in the
war against France. He commanded a brigade at the siege of
Louisburg, was one of Wolfe’s three brigadiers in the expedition
against Quebec, and commanded the left wing of the army in
the famous battle in September 1759. After the British victory
and the capture of the city, Murray was left in command of
Quebec; having strengthened its fortifications and taken
measures to improve the morale of his men, he defended it in
April and May 1760 against the attacks of the French, who were
soon compelled to raise the siege. The British troops had been
decimated by disease, and it was only a remnant that Murray
now led to join General Amherst at Montreal, and to be present
when the last batch of French troops in Canada surrendered.
In October 1760 he was appointed governor of Quebec, and he
became governor of Canada after this country had been formally
ceded to Great Britain in 1763. In this year he quelled a
dangerous mutiny, and soon afterwards his alleged partiality for
the interests of the French Canadians gave offence to the British
settlers; they asked for his recall, and in 1766 he retired from his
post. After an inquiry in the House of Lords, he was exonerated
from the charges which had been brought against him. In
1774 Murray was sent to Minorca as governor, and in 1781,
while he was in charge of this island, he was besieged in Fort
St Philip by a large force of French and Spaniards. After a
stubborn resistance, which lasted nearly seven months, he was
obliged to surrender the place; and on his return to England
he was tried by a court-martial, at the instance of Sir William
Draper, who had served under him in Minorca as lieutenant-governor.
He was acquitted and he became a general in 1783.
He died on the 18th of June 1794. Murray’s only son was
James Patrick Murray (1782–1834), a major-general and member
of parliament.
MURRAY, SIR JAMES AUGUSTUS HENRY (1837–),
British lexicographer, was born at Denholm, near Hawick,
Roxburghshire, and after a local elementary education proceeded
to Edinburgh, and thence to the university of London, where
he graduated B.A. in 1873. Sir James Murray, who received
honorary degrees from several universities, both British and
foreign, was engaged in scholastic work for thirty years, from
1855 to 1885, chiefly at Hawick and Mill Hill. During this time
his reputation as a philologist was increasing, and he was
assistant examiner in English at the University of London from
1875 to 1879 and president of the Philological Society of London
from 1878 to 1880, and again from 1882 to 1884. It was in
connexion with this society that he undertook the chief work
of his life, the editing of the New English Dictionary, based on
materials collected by the society. These materials, which had
accumulated since 1857, when the society first projected the
publication of a dictionary on philological principles, amounted
to an enormous quantity, of which an idea may be formed from
the fact that Dr Furnivall sent in “some ton and three-quarters
of materials which had accumulated under his roof.” After
negotiations extending over a considerable period, the contracts
between the society, the delegates of the Clarendon Press, and
the editor, were signed on the 1st of March 1879, and Murray
began the examination and arrangement of the raw material,
and the still more troublesome work of re-animating and maintaining
the enthusiasm of “readers.” In 1885 he removed from
Mill Hill to Oxford, where his Scriptorium came to rank among
the institutions of the University city. The first volume of
the dictionary was printed at the Clarendon Press, Oxford,
in 1888. A full account of its beginning and the manner of
working up the materials will be found in Murray’s presidential
address to the Philological Society in 1879, while reports of
its progress are given in the addresses by himself and other
presidents in subsequent years. In addition to his work as a
philologist, Murray was a frequent contributor to the transactions
of the various antiquarian and archaeological societies of
which he is a member; and he wrote the article on the English
language for this Encyclopaedia. In 1885 he received the
honorary degree of M.A. from Balliol College; he was an original
fellow of the British Academy, and in 1908 he was knighted.
MURRAY (or Moray), JAMES STUART, Earl of (c. 1531–1570), regent of Scotland, was an illegitimate son of James V. of Scotland by Margaret Erskine, daughter of John Erskine, earl of Mar. In 1538 he was appointed prior of the abbey of St Andrews in order that James V. might obtain possession of its funds. Educated at St Andrews University, he attacked, in September 1549, an English force which had made a descent on the Fife coast, and routed it with great slaughter. In addition to the priory of St Andrews, he received those also of Pittenweem and Mâcon in France, but manifested no vocation
