Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/176

 hall for the training of its future ministers. In February 1742 Moncrieff was unanimously chosen professor of divinity, a position which he filled with great ability and zeal. He was also an active and influential member of the associate presbytery and synod. In 1749 his son was ordained as his colleague and successor in the charge of the congregation at Abernethy. Moncrieff published in 1750 a vindication of the secession church, and in 1756 'England's Alarm, which is also directed to Scotland and Ireland, in several Discourses, which contains a warning against the great Wickedness of these lands/ A little devotional work by him, entitled 'A Drop of Honey from the Rock of Christ,' was published posthumously at Glasgow (1778). He died on 7 Oct. 1761, in the sixty-seventh year of his age and the forty-second of his ministry.

He appears to have been a man of resolution and daring. He was jocularly called 'the lion of the secession church' by his colleagues. With Erskine, William Wilson, and James Fisher he was joint author of the 'judicial testimony' against the church of Scotland, issued in December 1736. His church, since its union with the relief church, forms the united presbyterian church.  MONCRIEFF, JAMES (1744–1793), colonel, military engineer, son of James Moncrieff, esq., of Sauchop in Fifeshire, was born in 1744. He entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich on 11 March 1759, and was appointed practitioner engineer and ensign on 28 Jan. 1762. He joined the expedition under the Earl of Albemarle to capture the Havannah, and disembarked on 7 June 1762. He was appointed ensign in the 100th foot on 10 July. The siege was a long and a difficult one, and the brunt fell upon the engineers. The Moro Castle was captured on 30 July after a struggle of forty-four days, but it was not until 14 Aug. that the Havannah fell into the hands of the British. Moncrieff was severely wounded. He continued to serve in the West Indies, East Florida, and other parts of North America for many years. On the disbandment of his regiment on 18 Nov. 1763 he resigned the ensigncy, and was promoted sub-engineer and lieutenant on 4 Dec. 1770, and engineer extraordinary and captain-lieutenant on 10 June 1776. On 11 Sept. 1776 he was present at the battle of Brandywine and guided the 4th regiment across a ford of the river. In 1777 he constructed a bridge over the river Rariton, near New York, for the passage of the troops: a model of this bridge is in the Royal Military Repository at Woolwich. During 1777 and the following year Moncrieff was actively employed in the American campaign.

In 1779 General Prevost [q. v.] carried the war into Carolina, and Moncrieff distinguished himself in the operations. At the pass of Stono Ferry Colonel Maitland and Moncrieff were strongly posted with the 71st regiment, the Hessians, and some militia, numbering in all some eight hundred men, when they were attacked by five thousand men under Major-general Lincoln, but after a stubborn fight won the day. Moncrieff joined in the pursuit of the flying enemy, and captured an ammunition wagon with his own hand. After the action Prevost was able to establish himself securely in the harbour of Port Royal, which gave him a firm footing in South Carolina, while he covered Georgia and kept open communication with Savannah.

When, on 9 Sept. 1779, Admiral D'Estaing anchored his fleet off the bar of Tybee at the mouth of the Savannah River, the British force was still at Port Royal, but General Prevost and Moncrieff were in Savannah, where only some ten guns were mounted in position. The troops were at once summoned from Port Royal, and by the extraordinary zeal and exertions of Moncrieff guns were landed from ships and taken from store until, in an incredibly short space of time, nearly a hundred pieces of cannon were mounted and a garrison of three thousand men concentrated at Savannah. D'Estaing sent a summons to the towns to surrender on the 9th, but two days later, after Generals Lincoln and Pulawsld had joined D'Estaing's camp, Prevost, having determined to hold out, defied the enemy. Moncrieff lost no time in completing his line of intrenchments with redoubt and batteries. He sank two vessels in the channel, and constructed above the town a boom, which was covered by the guns of the Germaine. He threw up earthworks with a celerity that led the French to declare that the English engineer made his batteries spring up like mushrooms in a night. The forces opposed to the British were much superior in number, the assailants being seven thousand strong; while the garrison, including sailors and every sort of man, did not exceed three thousand. The enemy opened their trenches about the middle of September, and by the 24th had pushed their sap to within three hundred yards of the intrenchments. On that day a sortie was 