Letters of Sir Robert Moray to the Earl of Kincardine, 1657–1673 (review)

This book is well-researched and well-documented. It is divided into two main parts: one about the life of Sir Robert Moray, and the second containing the letters of Sir Robert Moray to his friend, Alexander Bruce, the second Earl of Kincardine and grandson of Sir George Bruce of Carnock. Appendix 1 contains miscellaneous letters of Sir Robert Moray. Appendix 2 shows seals of Sir Robert Moray. In appendix 3 there is a concordance of manuscripts and transcripts. The book also contains a glossary, bibliographical notes, and an index. The Kincardine Papers, Moray's contribution to the correspondence between himself and Alexander Bruce between 1657 and 1673 total about 113,000 words — 76,000 of these words (67%) were written in one year and four months (September 1647 to December 1658). Thus Moray wrote about 4,750 words a month to his friend during this period. Although his later letters are of great value, the letters written in these months make the Kincardine Papers of outstanding interest because of their intensity, intimacy, informality, and variety of mood and subject matter.

Robert Moray was born about 1608 or 1609 in Perthshire, Scotland. His father, Sir Mungo, was of gentle or noble lineage and descended from the Morays of Abercairney, while his mother was a Halkett of Pitfirrane. He chose a military career in France. He was largely self-taught. It is believed that he joined the Conpagnie de Gens d'Armes Ecossais, the King of France's Scots Guard, which was revised in 1624. It was an elite unit, and Moray, as a member of the Scottish nobility, had the right background to gain a place in the Guard. This explains the close connection he developed with the French court and Cardinal Richelieu, a dominant figure in the French regime. Moray was a patriotic Scot with Presbyterian beliefs, and Richelieu sent him as an unofficial French agent to report on the situation in Scotland, to encourage the Scottish Covenanters' religious and political grievances to King Charles I, and to generate war. Moray went to Scotland in 1639 and returned to France the next year, having arranged a secret league or alliance between Richelieu and the leading figure among the Covenanters, the Earl of Argyll. As part of the agreement, Argyll's brother was to be appointed colonel of the Scots Guard with Moray as its lieutenant colonel. The Second Bishop's War of 1640 resulted in victory for the Covenanters, who occupied the north of England with Moray serving as Quartermaster General of the Scottish Army of occupations.

In 1641 Moray was honored in Newcastle with membership in the Masonic lodge of Edinburgh (Mary's Chapel). This was the earliest known initiation of a man who was not a stone mason to a Masonic lodge in England. Moray referred to his masonry in letters to Alexander Bruce, the Earl of Lauderdale, and Charles II. In 1643, Moray was knighted by Charles I.

Later the Scots Guard saw military action, and, in the battle of Tuttlingen, Moray was taken prisoner and held in Ingolstadt in Bavaria. There Moray developed intellectual interests including magnetism, observations of the moon and the sun, clocks, and the motion of pendulums. After a fifteen-month imprisonment, his cousin Robert Moray, a merchant in Paris, paid his bond as ransom — this was later reimbursed by the Scottish Parliament as a public debt.

In 1645 the French ambassador, Jan de Montereul, recommended to Cardinal Mazarin that Moray be promoted to colonel of the Scots Guard. Moray got his promotion and the next month undertook a secret, unofficial diplomatic mission. Moray hoped he could get Queen Henrietta Maria, who was in exile in France, to persuade her husband to accept the peace terms proposed by the Scots instead of those proposed by Parliament. He promised the King that if he joined the...