Sir Alexander Murray, 3rd Baronet

Sir Alexander Murray, 3rd Baronet (after 1684 – 18 May 1743)[1] was a Scottish baronet and politician. He was a son of Sir David Murray (1659 - 1729) and his first wife, Anne Bruce.

Alexander Murray was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Peeblesshire from 1710 to 1713.[2]

On 16 August 1710 he married Grisell Baillie (1692 - 1759), the elder daughter of Lady Grisell Baillie of Jerviswood and George Baillie. Although this was a love match, it was a disaster. After the couple had lived a few miserable months under her father’s roof, Murray made himself a ‘voluntary outcast’. There was a brief reconciliation in 1711–12, when he was accepted back into the Baillie household, but his behaviour led to a process for separation being instituted against him, and its completion in 1714 seems to have unbalanced him still further.

Murray took up arms in the cause of the Old Pretender in the Jacobite Rising of 1715 and was subsequently imprisoned at Marshalsea until 1717. After his release, he took an interest in the exploitation of mineral deposits on land his father had purchased in Ardnamurchan, ran up substantial debts and lived for a time in France. In 1735, on learning of the death of George Baillie, he returned to Scotland and engaged in correspondence with the Baillie family seeking financial compensation for defamation of character and erasure of the deed of separation.[3]

In 1735, Murray wrote a whimsical proposal for the economic development of the island of St. Kilda.[4]

In Fiction

Sir Alexander Murray of Stanhope features as a character in Andrew Drummond's fantasy novel The Books of the Incarceration of the Lady Grange (2016).

References

  1. Leigh Rayment's list of baronets – Baronetcies beginning with "M" (part 4)
  2. Hayton, D. W. (2002). D. Hayton; E. Cruickshanks; S. Handley (eds.). "MURRAY, Alexander (aft.1684-1743), of Stanhope, Peebles". The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715. Boydell and Brewer. Retrieved 26 June 2014.
  3. Abernethy, Lesley (2020), Lady Grisell Baillie: Mistress of Mellerstain, Matador
  4. Murray, Alexander (1735), A political whim concerning St. Kilda one of the Western Isles of Scotland, written in the year 1735, in the ms. collection 'Murray Papers, Volume 7' ff.169 - 172 at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
Parliament of Great Britain
Preceded by
William Morison
Member of Parliament for Peeblesshire
17101713
Succeeded by
William Morison
Baronetage of Nova Scotia
Preceded by
David Murray
Baronet
(of Stanhope)
1729–1743
Succeeded by
David Murray


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