DUNMORE, Earl of,
a title in the peerage of Scotland, conferred in 1686, on Lord Charles
Murray, second son of John, first marquis of Athol, by Lady Amelia
Stanley, daughter of the seventh earl of Derby. Being lieutenant-colonel
of General Dalziel’s regiment of horse (now the Scots Greys) on the
death of Dalziel, he succeeded him in the command. Subsequently he was
master of the horse to the princess (afterwards queen) Anne. On the
accession of her father, James the Seventh, he was appointed to the same
office under his queen, Mary, and by that infatuated monarch he was
created, August 6, 1686, earl of Dunmore, Viscount Fincastle, and Lord
Murray of Blair, Moulin, and Tillemot. At the Revolution he was deprived
of all his offices, and in 1692 was committed to prison, with the earl
of Middleton, for a supposed plot in favour of the abdicated monarch.
During the remainder of King William’s reign he lived in retirement in
the country, but soon after the accession of Queen Anne, he was, on
February 4, 1703, sworn a member of the privy council of Scotland. He
was a steady supporter of the Union, and in 1707 was appointed captain
of the castle of Blackness. He died in 1710. He had four sons and three
daughters.
As the eldest
son, James, Viscount Fincastle, had predeceased his father in 1706, the
second son, John, became second earl. He entered the army as an ensign
in March 1704, and fought at the battle of Blenheim, on 13th
August following. He was appointed colonel of the 3d foot guards, 10th
October 1713, when only twenty-eight years old. At the capture of Vigo
in 1719, he served as brigadier-general under Lord Cobham, and in July
1731, he became one of the lords of the bedchamber to King George the
Second. In 1739 he attained the rank of lieutenant-general, and in 1743
he served under the earl of Stair at the battle of Dettingen. On 22d
June, 1745, he was appointed governor of Plymouth, and the same year was
promoted to be full general. He was elected a representative peer of
Scotland in four successive parliaments. He died, unmarried, 18th
April, 1752.
His youngest
brother, William, succeeded as third earl. When the Hon. William Murray
of Taymount, he engaged in the rebellion of 1745, but in the end of
April 1746, he surrendered himself to a justice of peace of Forfarshire,
and being sent to London, he was arraigned for high treason at the court
held at St. Margaret’s, Southwark, when he pleaded guilty, and received
his majesty’s pardon. He married his cousin, Catherine, the daughter of
his uncle Lord William Murray, (who became Lord Nairn by marrying the
heiress of that family,) and had three sons and four daughters. He died
1st December 1756.
His eldest
son, John, fourth earl, for some time an officer in the army, was
appointed governor of New York in December 1769, and in the following
year, of Virginia. He remained there till the commencement of the
Revolutionary war in 1775, when he was obliged first to retire on board
a ship of war in James’ river, and finally to quit the coast in August
1776. He was a representative peer of Scotland from 1761 to 1784. In
1787 he was appointed captain-general and governor-in-chief of the
Bahama islands, where he resided for several years. He married Lady
Charlotte Stewart, daughter of Alexander earl of Galloway, and had three
sons and four daughters.
The fate of
the Lady Augusta Murray, the second daughter, was very remarkable. She
married at Rome, on April 4, 1793, (the nuptials being solemnized by a
protestant clergyman,) the prince Augustus Frederick, afterwards duke of
Sussex, then under age, the sixth son and ninth child of George the
Third, and on their arrival in England they were remarried, at the
parish church of St. George’s, Hanover Square, London, December 5th
of the same year. As this marriage took place in defiance of the Royal
Marriage act, passed in 1772, which prohibits the descendants of George
the Second from marrying without permission from the sovereign, the king
directed a suit to be instituted in Doctors commons, to dissolve it, and
by a decree of the prerogative court it was declared null and void in
August 1794. A son and a daughter were the fruits of this union, to whom
was given the name of D’Este, as descended, through their father, from
the ancient princes of the house of Este. The son, Colonel Sir Augustus
Frederick d’Este, K.C.H., born 13th January 1794, died,
unmarried, in December 1848. The daughter, Ellen Augusta, Mademoiselle
D’Este, born August 11, 1801, became in 1845 the second wife of the
first Lord Truro (then Sir Thomas Wilde), lord chancellor of England
from January 1850 to February 1852. On 15th October 1806, her
mother, Lady Augusta, on her separation from the duke of Sussex,
received the royal license to assume the surname of De Ameland, by which
she was ever afterwards known. In a letter written in 1811, her ladyship
thus expressed herself to a friend: “Had I believed the sentence of the
ecclesiastical court to be any thing but a stretch of power, my girl
would not have been born. Lord Thurlow told me my marriage was good
abroad – religion taught me it was good at home, and not one decree of
any powerful enemy could make me believe otherwise, nor ever will. By
refusing me a subsistence they have forced me to take a name – not the
duke of Sussex’s – but they have not made me believe that I had no right
to his. My children and myself were to starve, or I was to obey, and I
obeyed; but I am not convinced. Therefore, pray don’t call this ‘an act
of mutual consent,’ or say, ‘the question is at rest.’ The moment my son
wishes it, I am ready to declare that it was debt, imprisonment,
arrestation (force like this in short) which obliged me to seem to give
up my claims, and not my conviction of their fallacy.” It appears that
one of the results of the duke’s marriage with Lady Augusta was a
reduction of his own income of eighteen thousand a-year to thirteen
thousand, in order to make a provision for his wife, in which object he
received no assistance from parliament. Her children, by a decree of the
lord chancellor, were placed under the sole guardianship of Earl Moira.
Lady Augusta died 5th March 1830.
Lady Virginia
Murray, the youngest daughter of the fourth earl, was born in Virginia
(now one of the united states of North America), when her father was
governor of that colony, and at the request of the council and assembly,
was named after it. The fourth earl died in March 1809.
His eldest
son, George, fifth earl, born at Edinburgh 30th April 1762,
married in August 1803, his cousin, Lady Susan Hamilton, third daughter
of the ninth duke of Hamilton, by whom he had three sons; Alexander
Edward, sixth earl; the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, C.B., minister
plenipotentiary to the Swiss Confederation; and Henry Anthony, commander
R.N., unmarried. His lordship was created a peer of the United Kingdom
in 1831, as Baron Dunmore of Dunmore in the forest of Athol, Perthshire,
and died 12th November 1836.
His eldest
son, Alexander Edward, sixth earl, born 1st June 1804,
married 27th September 1836, Lady Catherine, daughter of the
eleventh earl of Pembroke, and had, with two daughters, a son, Charles
Adolphus, his heir. His lordship, who was a captain in the army, died 15th
July 1845, and was succeeded by his son, Charles Adolphus, seventh earl
of Dunmore, who was born 24th March, 1841.
