MONTROSE, James Graham, MARQUIS OF, Scotch Royalist general: b. 1612; d. Edinburgh, el May 1650. He was son of the Earl of Montrose, whom he succeeded in that title in 1626, He was educated at Saint Andrew's; joined the opposition to Charles I's attempt to introduce episcopacy into Scotland in 1637, becoming one of the leaders of the Covenant. In 1638-39 he three times overran Aberdeen. In the latter year he was an envoy to the king at Berwick; in 1640 he was the first to cross the Tweed in the Scottish invasion of England. In 1641, being found in secret cor respondence with the king, he was imprisoned by Argyll for five months. In the following year he was offered the command of the Cove nanting army, but declined; and in the fol lowing year definitely turned to the Royalist side, In 1644 he left Oxford disguised as a groom and penetrated to Blair Athol!. He then united the western clans, united by their com mon hatred of Argyll against the Covenanters, and with them he won several victories — at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth — only to be crushed at Philiphaugh (12 September) by David Leslie.
Montrose escaped to Norway. In 1649 he suc ceeded in urging the younger Charles to send him again to Scotland, raised an army at Got tenburg, landed at Orkney, was defeated at Carbisdale in Southerlandshire and afterward was captured, taken to Edinburgh and there drawn and quartered. His loyalty to the Stuart cause is only less remarkable than his own scheme of Scottish independence of ecclesiastical control, an ideal to which he always remained faithful. Montrose was a political poet, whose verse is vigorous. As a general he ranks first among the Scottish Royalists. Consult Buchan, John,
Marquis of Montrose' (London 1913) ; Gardiner, (The Great Civil War' (Vol. II, which is particularly able in its criticism of Montrose's strategy) ; Mowbray, Morris,