MURRAY, Archibald (c.1630-1700), of Blackbarony, Peeblesshire.

The Murrays of Blackbarony claimed to be descended from Roger de Moravia, who held Fala in the barony of Heriot from the Douglases in the fourteenth century, and by the early seventeenth century the family was one of the most prosperous in Peeblesshire.13Hist. of Peeblesshire, ii. 476. The first Sir Archibald Murray had been commissioner for the shire in the conventions and Parliaments of 1617 and 1625, and was created a baronet of Nova Scotia by Charles I in 1628.14Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 521; CB. His son, Sir Alexander, who succeeded in 1629, was a Covenanter, serving as commissioner for the shire in the Scottish Parliament of 1639-41 and on the committee of war between 1643 and 1648, but became an enthusiastic supporter of Cromwellian rule soon after 1651.15Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 521. In 1652 Sir Alexander was appointed sheriff of Peeblesshire, and he was active in the shire administration thereafter: in September 1654 he was one of the commissioners appointed to regulate the assessments; he was the first convenor of the commission of the peace when it sat in January 1656; and he oversaw the parliamentary elections for the shires of Peebles and Selkirk throughout the decade.16NRS, JP3/2/1, p. 1; C219/45, unfol.; A. and O.; Hist. of Peeblesshire, ii. 463, 620.

The laird of Blackbarony was the dominant influence on the early career of his eldest son, Archibald Murray. Murray entered public life only the in the summer of 1657, as assessment commissioner for Peeblesshire, and in October of that year he was granted a pass to travel throughout Scotland.17A. and O.; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 9 Oct. 1657. There can be little doubt that he was put forward for election as MP for the shires of Peebles and Selkirk in the 1659 Parliament by his father, who presided as sheriff of Peeblesshire.18J. Nicoll, Diary of Public Transactions (Edinburgh, 1836), 221. The election itself seems to have gone smoothly, but Murray then declined to take his seat at Westminster. George Monck* told John Thurloe* on 17 February 1659 that the reason for Murray’s demur was financial – ‘the country will not give him so much money as he expects; and so he is not like to go’ – but it seems unlikely that Murray’s attendance was dependent on the meagre expenses routinely offered by Scottish constituencies to their MPs.19TSP vii. 616-7. It is also curious that two days later Monck issued a pass to Murray, described as ‘commissioner of Parliament for Selkirk and Peebles shires’, to travel to London.20Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLIX, f. 33v. What lay behind the last-minute change of plan is unclear, but the most likely explanations are that Monck belatedly put pressure on Blackbarony to withdraw his son, or that the radical Protesters of Selkirkshire had indeed refused to fund Murray, in very public protest against his unpopular father.21Cf. P. Little, ‘Scottish Representation in the Protectorate Parliaments: the case of the Shires’, PH xxxi. 322. Whatever the reason, it is clear that Murray did not ‘go up’ to Parliament, and a new writ was issued, allowing Monck to secure the election of his preferred candidate, Judge advocate Henry Whalley*, who had taken his seat by the middle of March.22TSP vii. 617; Burton’s Diary, iv. 154-5.

Murray’s absence from the third protectorate Parliament was perhaps a blessing in disguise. Without the taint of Cromwellian collaboration, after the Restoration he was repeatedly chosen as commissioner for Peeblesshire in the conventions and Scottish Parliaments from the 1660s until the 1690s; he married a daughter of the royalist Earl Marischal in the early 1660s; and later in the decade he began to be more active in national politics as lord of the articles (in 1669) and (from 1689) as privy councillor and master of the works. Murray’s earlier lack of commitment may also have helped him to resist pressure from Edinburgh to persecute the Covenanters, even though, as lieutenant-colonel of the Peeblesshire militia, he was expected to be at the forefront of attempts to stamp out seditious conventicles. And in the early 1680s he was able to mount a challenge to Charles II over the remodelling of the Scottish militia without losing office or being suspected of sedition himself.23Hist. of Peeblesshire, ii. 463-5; Parliaments of Scot. ii. 522; Scots Peerage, vi. 60. Murray succeeded to the baronetcy in 1671. When he died in 1700, he was succeeded by his son, Sir Alexander, and on the latter’s death without female heirs in 1742, the baronetcy passed to a cadet branch of the family, the Murrays of Spittlehaugh.24Hist. of Peeblesshire, ii. 476.