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 a house in St. Andrews Square, and he died there 21 Sept. 1774. By his wife Margaret, second daughter of Sir William Cunningham of Caprington, Ayrshire, he had two sons, Sir Robert Murray Keith [q. v.], who is separately noticed, and Sir Basil Keith, who served in the navy, and died governor of Jamaica in Aug. 1777. His daughter, Anne Murray Keith (1736–1818), is introduced under the name of Mrs. Bethune Baliol into the ‘Introduction to the Chronicles of Canongate.’ Scott, writing of her death, said that ‘much tradition, and of the very best kind,’ had died with her; she was known in Edinburgh as ‘Sister Anne.’

A very large number of Keith's letters are preserved among the Addit. MSS. at the British Museum. They give a complete account of his negotiations, and are mostly addressed to the Duke of Newcastle. Some of his letters are printed in ‘Memoirs of Sir Robert Murray Keith,’ 1849, vol. i.

[Mrs. Gillespie Smyth's Memoirs, &c., of Sir Robert Murray Keith, vol. i.; Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 587; Grenville Corresp. i. 421; Carlyle's Collected Works, xxvi. 418, xxvii. 22, xxix. 275; Coxe's Memoirs of the Pelham Administration, i. 452, 465, ii. 118; Coxe's House of Austria, ii. 162, 387; Walpole's Letters, ii. 48, iv. 9, 13; Keith's Corresp.]  KEITH, ROBERT MURRAY (1730–1795), lieutenant-general and diplomatist, born 20 Sept. 1730, was eldest son of Robert Keith (d. 1774) [q. v.], and his wife Margaret, second daughter of Sir William Cunningham, second bart., of Caprington, Ayrshire. With his brother Basil, afterwards Captain Sir Basil Keith, royal navy, lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, he was educated at the high school, Edinburgh, which he described as a bear-garden. In September 1746 he was at an academy in London, learning ‘the great horse, fencing, fortification, French, music, and dancing’ (Memoirs, i. 91). About the same time he obtained a cornetcy in the 6th Inniskilling, then Lord Rothes's dragoons, and was doing duty with that corps at Breda early in 1747, when he accepted a company in a Scottish regiment raised by James Douglas, lord Drumlanrig, for the Scots brigade in the Dutch service. The roll of officers is given in ‘Scots Magazine,’ ix. 350–1. He served with the regiment, in which he was ‘much esteemed for his judgment and politeness,’ until the first reduction of the Scots-Dutch. As one of the juniors of his rank, he was then cast for reduction, but Lord Drumlanrig retained him at the head of his company of grenadiers until the second reduction of the Scots brigade in March 1752, when he was pensioned off (Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 32854, f. 143). Keith appears to have dabbled in poetry and music. A collection of his poems was published long afterwards under the title of ‘The Caledoniad’ (London, 1773, 3 vols. 12mo). One of these pieces, a parody of ‘Barbara Allen,’ is given in the notes to Johnson's ‘Musical Museum’ (ed. 1839), vol. iii. Keith appears to have next entered the service of one of the minor German states (probably Brunswick), where, according to a family tradition, he suffered severe privations owing to the scantiness of the pay and allowances (Memoirs, i. 93). He was on the staff of Lord George Sackville at the battle of Minden (1 Aug. 1759), and carried Sackville's resignation to Prince Ferdinand (ib. i. 99; Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. iii. 79). On 25 Aug. 1759 Keith was appointed major-commandant of three new companies of highlanders. The audit office records show that Keith's highlanders were formed out of a second battalion of the 42nd highlanders at Perth. Three days after they had joined the allied army in Germany, Keith's corps, still raw recruits, supported by the hussars of Luchner, attacked the village of Eybach sword in hand, and routed Beau Frémonte's regiment of dragoons with heavy loss (, vol. ii.) On the recommendation of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, Keith's highlanders were augmented. The regiment was numbered the 87th foot, Keith becoming lieutenant-colonel commandant. Another highland corps, the 88th royal highland volunteers, had been raised by James Campbell of Dunoon, and served with Keith's, their officers being interchangeable, as in the ‘linked’ battalions of recent years. They won great fame in the subsequent campaigns, at Warburg, Zeirenberg, Fellinghausen, Grabenstein, Brunker-Muhl, and elsewhere. Keith was reported to be killed at Kirch-Denkern, to which report Horace Walpole refers more than once (Letters, vol. iii.). At the conclusion of the war the highland corps returned home, receiving a warm welcome on their march through Holland, and from Gravesend to the north. The 87th (Keith's) highlanders was disbanded at Perth in the summer of 1763. Keith remained long on half-pay, passing some of the time in Paris (ib. vol. iii.) In 1769, on the recommendation of General Henry Seymour Conway [q. v.], he was appointed British minister at the court of Saxony. In 1771 he was transferred as envoy extraordinary to Copenhagen, where, in 1772, he distinguished himself by his spirited conduct in rescuing Sophia Matilda of Denmark, the sister of George III. The pro-