Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/15

 When Montrose did land, in April 1650, Strachan made good his words. By Leslie's orders he advanced with two troops to Tain, and was there joined by three other troops, making 230 horse in all, and by thirty-six musketeers and four hundred men of the Ross and Monro clans. On 27 April he moved west, along the south side of the Kyle of Sutherland, near the head of which Montrose was encamped, in Carbisdale, with 1,200 foot (of which 450 men were Danes or Germans), but only forty horse. By the advice of Andrew Monro, Strachan, when he was near the enemy, hid the bulk of his force, and showed only a single troop. This confirmed the statement made by Robert Monro to Montrose, that there was only one troop of horse in Ross-shire, and Montrose drew up his men on open ground south of the Culrain burn, instead of seeking shelter on the wooded heights behind. About 5 P.M. Strachan burst upon him with two troops, the rest following close in support and reserve. Montrose's men were routed and two-thirds of them killed or taken, and he himself hardly escaped for the time. After giving thanks to God on the field, the victors returned with their prisoners to Tain, and Strachan went south to receive his reward. He and Halkett (the second in command) each received 1000l. sterling and a gold chain, with the thanks of the parliament. He had been hit by a bullet in the fight, but it was stopped by his belt and buff-coat.

He was in such favour with the kirk that they contributed one hundred thousand marks to raise a regiment for him, the best in the army which Leslie led against Cromwell. He was in the action at Musselburgh on 30 July, and in the battle of Dunbar, the loss of which he attributed to Leslie. He tendered his resignation rather than serve under Leslie any longer, and, to get over the difficulty, he was sent with Ker and Halkett to command the horse newly raised in the western counties. He corresponded with Cromwell, to whom he was much less hostile than he was to the king and the malignants; and it was the fear that Strachan would seize him and hand him over to the English that led Charles II to make his temporary flight from Perth in October.

Strachan joined in the remonstrance drawn up at Dumfries on 17 Oct. against fighting for the king unless he abandoned the malignants; and he and his associates sent a set of queries to Cromwell, to which the latter replied (, Letter 151). On 1 Dec. the western troops under Ker encountered Lambert at Hamilton, and were beaten; but before this Strachan had separated himself from them, and after it he joined Cromwell, and is said to have helped to bring about the surrender of Edinburgh Castle. He was excommunicated at Perth on 12 Jan. 1651; in April he was declared a traitor and his goods were forfeited. Wodrow says (on the authority of his wife's uncle, who had married Strachan's sister) that he took the excommunication so much to heart that ‘he sickened and died within a while.’ He adds that Cromwell offered Strachan the command of the forces to be left in Scotland, but he declined it (Analecta, ii. 86).

[Gardiner's Commonwealth and Protectorate, vol. i.; Murdoch and Simpson's edition of Wishart's Memoirs of Montrose; Balfour's Historical Works, vol. iv.; Baillie's Letters, ii. 349, &c.; Carlyle's Cromwell Letters, &c.; Nicholl's Diary of Public Transactions in Scotland; Row's Life of Robert Blair.]  STRACHAN, JOHN (d. 1777), captain in the navy, was the descendant of a younger branch of the family of Strachan of Thornton in Kincardineshire. His uncle, Thomas Strachan, having served with distinction in the armies of the Emperor Leopold I, was created a baronet by James II in May 1685. Dying without issue, he was succeeded by his younger brother, Patrick Strachan, M.D., physician to Greenwich Hospital. John, the elder son of this Patrick, by his wife, a daughter of Captain Gregory, R.N., entered the navy, and was promoted lieutenant in January 1746–7. In 1755 he was appointed second lieutenant of the St. George, then Lord Hawke's flagship, and in the following year, when the Antelope took out her ‘cargo of courage’ to Gibraltar, Strachan, with the other officers of the St. George, accompanied Hawke. At Gibraltar he was appointed to command the Fortune sloop, and on 9 Sept. 1756 was posted into the Experiment, of 20 guns and 160 men, in which, on 8 July 1757, off Alicante, he captured the French privateer Télémaque, of 20 guns and 460 men [see ]. After the action the Experiment and her prize anchored near a Spanish fort, the governor of which claimed the French ship as having been in Spanish waters when she struck. Strachan, however, took the Télémaque to Gibraltar, and was shortly afterwards moved to the Sapphire, of 32 guns, in which, in the following year, he was sent to England, and in 1759 was attached to the grand fleet under Sir Edward (afterwards Lord) Hawke [q. v.], and was with 