Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/361

 appointed by the king to the general assembly at Perth on 5 Aug. 1618, when sanction was given to the obnoxious 'five articles' introducing various ceremonial and episcopal observances (, vii. 304). He was also the king's commissioner to a conference between the bishops and presbyterian ministers at St. Andrews in August 1619 (ib. p. 397). At the parliament held at Edinburgh in July 1621 he was chosen by the bishops one of the lords of the articles (ib. p. 490); and after the sanction by parliament of the five articles of the Perth assembly he the same night hastened to London with the news (ib. p. 506). Chiefly on account of his zeal in carrying out the ecclesiastical policy of the king, he was, by patent of 16 Aug., raised to the dignity of Viscount Stormont, to him and heirs male of his body. On 19 May 1623 he was named one of a commission to sit in Edinburgh twice a week for the hearing of grievances (ib. p. 576). He died 27 Aug. 1631, and was buried at Scone, where a sumptuous monument was erected to his memory. Scot of Scotstarvet says that 'albeit an ignorant man, yet he was bold, and got great business effectuated' (Staggering State, p. 114).

Stormont had, on 20 July 1625, been served heir male and entire of Sir Andrew Murray of Balvaird, the son of his brother, and on 26 Oct. of the same year made a settlement of the lordship of Scone and other estates to certain relatives of the name of Murray. As by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of David Beton or Bethune of Creich, Fifeshire, he had no issue, he secured the succession of his titles to Sir Mungo Murray, son of the Earl of Tullibardine, who had married his niece Anne, eldest daughter of Sir Andrew Murray of Arngask, and to the heirs male of his body, failing whom to John, first earl of Annandale, and his heirs male, with remainder to his own heirs male. To preserve his family of Balvaird in the line of heirs male he adopted his cousin-german's son, Sir Andrew Murray (afterwards created Lord Balvaird), minister of Abdie, Fifeshire, son of David Murray of Balgonie, and settled on him the fee of the estate of Balvaird.

[Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland; James Melville's Diary (Bannatyne Club or Wodrow Society); Scot's Staggering State of Scottish Statesmen; Reg. P. C. Scotl.; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. reign of James I; Douglas's Scots' Peerage (ed. Wood), ii. 541.]

 MURRAY, DAVID, second (1727–1796), diplomatist and statesman, was eldest son of David, sixth viscount Stormont, by Anne, only daughter of John Stewart of Innernylie. Born on 9 Oct. 1727, he was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated 28 May 1744 and graduated B.A. in 1748. In the latter year, by the death of his father, 23 July, he succeeded to the viscounty of Stormont. He entered the diplomatic service, and was attaché at the British embassy, Paris, in 1751, when he contributed to the ‘Epicedia Oxoniensia, in obitum Celsissimi et Desideratissimi Frederici Principis Walliæ’ (Oxford, fol.), an English elegy of more than ordinary merit (cf. English Poems on the Death of his Royal Highness frederick Prince of Wales, Edinburgh, 1751, 12mo).

Accredited envoy extraordinary to the court of Saxony, Stormont arrived at Dresden early in 1756. On the invasion of the electorate by Frederic the Great in the following September, he made of his own initiative a fruitless attempt to mediate between the belli erents. The elector took refuge in his Polish kingdom, and during the rest of the war Stormont resided with the court at Warsaw, where on 16 Aug. 1759 he married Henrietta Frederica, daughter of Henry Count Bunau of the elector’s 'privy council. On 28 April 1761 he was nominated plenipotentiary at the intended congress of Augsburg. On the failure of that project he was recalled to the United Kingdom, was elected a representative peer of Scotland, and on 20 July 1763 was sworn of the privy council. During the next nine years Stormont was envoy extraordinary at the imperial court, where he enjoyed much of the confidence of Maria Theresa and the Emperor Joseph. The death of Lady Stormont in the prime of life, 16 March 1766, weighed so heavily on his mind that, after burying her heart in the family vault at Scone, he sought relief in Italian travel. At Rome, in the spring of 1768, he became intimate with Winckelmann, who calls him (Briefe, ed. Forster, zweiter Band, S. 326) ‘the most learned person of his rank whom I have yet known,’ and praises his unusual accomplishment in Greek. On his return to Vienna the same year he was invested (30 Nov.) with the order of the Thistle. Transferred to the French court in August 1772, he remained at Paris until March 1778, when, hostilities being imminent, he was recalled. The same year he was appointed lord-justice general of Scotland. Notwithstanding his absence from the kingdom, he had retained his seat in the House of Lords at the general elections of 1768 and 17 74, and he was re-elected in 1780, 1784, and 1790. On 27 Oct. 1779 he entered the cabinet as secretary of state