MURRAY, LORD GEORGE (1694-176o), Jacobite general, fifth son of John, 1st duke of Atholl, was born at Hunt ingtower, near Perth, on Oct. 4, 1694. He joined the army in Flanders in 1712 and in 1715 the Jacobite rebels under the earl of Mar. Wounded at the battle of Glenshiel in 1719, he escaped to Rotterdam some months later. In 1724 he returned to Scot land, and on being granted a pardon, settled at Tullibardine until when on the eve of the Jacobite rising the duke of Perth approached him on behalf of the Pretender ; but his attitude was doubtful. He paid his respects to Sir John Cope, the commander of the government troops, and permitted his brother, the duke of Crieff, to appoint him deputy-sheriff of Perthshire. He received a commission in the Jacobite army and the victory at Prestonpans, on Sept. 21, was practically due to his able generalship. After opposing the invasion of England, he prevailed on the prince to march into Cumberland. When Carlisle was lost, he resigned his command, but the dissatisfaction of the army with his successor, the duke of Perth, compelled Charles to reinstate Murray. Obliged to retreat from Derby, his army reached Carlisle safely and in January 1746 entered Stirling.
The prince laid siege to Stirling Castle, while Murray defeated General Hawley near Falkirk ; but the losses of the Jacobites by sickness and desertion, and the approach of Cumberland, made retreat to the Highlands an immediate necessity. The battle of
Culloden, where the Stuart cause was ruined, was fought on the 16th of April 1746. On the following day the duke of Cumber land intimated to his troops that "the public orders of the rebels yesterday was to give us no quarter"; and Hanoverian news sheets printed what purported to be copies of such an order. The original copies of Lord George Murray's "orders at Culloden" which are in existence, contain no injunction to refuse quarter. After the defeat Murray conducted a remnant of the Jacobite army to Ruthven, but Prince Charles had determined to abandon the enterprise, and dismissed Murray from his service. Charles's belief in the general's treachery was shared by several leading Jacobites, but there appears no ground for the suspicion. Murray escaped abroad and died in Holland on Oct. I1, 1760.
See A Military History of Perthshire, ed. by the marchioness of Tullibardine (2 vols., 1908) ; The Atholl Chronicles, ed. by the duke of Atholl (privately printed) ; The Chevalier James de Johnstone, Memoirs of the Rebellion in (3rd ed., 1822) ; J. Ray, Complete History of the Rebellion, 1745-170 (1754) R. Patten, History of the late Rebellion (2nd ed., 1717) ; Memoirs of Sir John Murray of Broughton, ed. by R. F. Bell (Edinburgh, 1898) ; A. Henderson, History of the Rebellion, 1745-1746 (2nd ed., London, 1748) ; W. Duke, Lord George Murray and the Forty-five (1927).