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THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS

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SIR ROBERT MORAY

 * Wikipedia
 * Annotations (2)
 * References (9)


WIKIPEDIA

This text was copied from Wikipedia on 3 December 2023 at 4:10AM.

Sir Robert Moray
Born1608 or 1609

birthplace unknown (probably Craigie, Perthshire)
Died1673

London
NationalityScottishCitizenshipScotlandAlma materUniversity of St Andrews
(disputed)
possibly a university in FranceKnown forpersuaded Charles II to grant the Royal
Society a royal charterScientific careerFieldschemistry, magnetism, metallurgy,
mineralogy, natural history, pharmacology, applied technology (fishing,
lumbering, mining, shipbuilding, watermills, windmills)

Sir Robert Moray (alternative spellings: Murrey, Murray) FRS (1608 or 1609 – 4
July 1673) was a Scottish soldier, statesman, diplomat, judge, spy, and natural
philosopher. He was well known to Charles I and Charles II, and to the French
cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. He attended the meeting of the 1660 committee
of 12 on 28 November 1660 that led to the formation of the Royal Society, and
was influential in gaining its Royal Charter and formulating its statutes and
regulations.[1] He was also one of the founders of modern Freemasonry in Great
Britain.


EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Moray was the elder of two sons of a Perthshire laird, Sir Mungo Moray of
Craigie. His grandfather was Robert Moray of Abercairny (near Crieff), and his
mother was a daughter of George Halket of Pitfirran, Dunfermline. An uncle,
David Moray, had been a personal servant of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Some biographers have claimed that Moray attended the University of St Andrews
and continued his university education in France. However, Moray himself wrote
to his friend Alexander Bruce (who probably had attended St Andrews), jocularly
proposing a debate between the two men, in which Moray said he would force Bruce
to "rub up your St Andrews language", and "one may give you your hands full that
was scarcely ever farrer East then Cowper" (Cupar lies several miles to the west
of St Andrews). Moray's name does not appear in the matriculation records of the
university.[2]

In 1633, he joined the Garde Écossaise, a regiment which fought under Colonel
John Hepburn in the army of King Louis XIII of France. Moray became a favourite
of Cardinal Richelieu, who used him as a spy. Richelieu promoted Moray to
Lieutenant Colonel and in 1638 sent him to join the Covenanter army in
Edinburgh.[3] Experienced in military engineering, he was appointed
quartermaster-general in the Scottish Army that invaded England in 1640 in the
Second Bishops' War and took Newcastle upon Tyne.

Several Freemasons who were members of the Lodge of Edinburgh initiated him into
Freemasonry there on 20 May 1641. Although he was initiated into a Scottish
lodge, the event took place south of the border: this is earliest extant record
of a man being initiated into speculative Freemasonry on English soil.[4]
Thereafter, he regularly used the five pointed star, his masonic mark, on his
correspondence.


POLITICAL CAREER

Robert Moray returned to France by 1643 and was captured at Tuttlingen in
November of that year. Upon his release, and upon the death of James Campbell,
1st Earl of Irvine, Moray took over command of the Garde Écossaise.[5]

Moray helped to persuade the Prince of Wales, the future Charles II, to visit
Scotland for his coronation as King of Scots at Scone on 1 January 1651. Charles
then invaded England from Scotland, but was defeated at the Battle of Worcester
in September 1651, and forced to escape to France.

In Scotland, Moray became Lord Justice Clerk, a Privy Councillor, and a Lord of
Session in 1651. He married Sophia Lindsay, daughter of David Lindsay, 1st Lord
Balcarres, but she died in childbirth on 2 January 1653 and the child was
stillborn. Moray joined a Scottish uprising in 1653 which was suppressed by
Cromwell, and Moray returned to the continent in 1654. Moray spent time in
Bruges in 1656, then in Maastricht until 1659, when he joined Charles in Paris.


FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

Following the restoration of Charles II, Moray was one of the founders of the
Royal Society at its first formal meeting on Wednesday 28 November 1660, at the
premises of Gresham College on Bishopsgate, at which Christopher Wren, Gresham
Professor of Astronomy, delivered a lecture. The twelve in attendance were an
interesting mix of four Royalists (William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker,
Alexander Bruce, 2nd Earl of Kincardine, Sir Paul Neile, William Balle) and six
Parliamentarians (John Wilkins, Robert Boyle, Jonathan Goddard, William Petty,
Lawrence Rook, Christopher Wren) and two others with less fixed (or more
flexible) views, Abraham Hill and Moray. Moray was influential in gaining the
new society its Royal Charter and formulating its statutes and regulations.
Moray was the first President of the society which holds its Annual General
Meeting on Saint Andrew's Day (30 November) the Patron Saint of Scotland in
apparent acknowledgement of Moray's importance in the formation of the society.


SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Moray made significant contributions to the observation of tidal phenomena.
Shortly before the restoration of Charles II, he stayed for several weeks in the
remote island of Great Bernera, in the Outer Hebrides, and observed that the
normal semidiurnal tide was there combined with tidal streams between the nearby
islands that exhibited a strong diurnal motion. Moray reported these
"extraordinary tydes" to the Royal Society in 1665, which published them in the
first volume of the Philosophical Transactions.[6] Nearly 200 passed before
Moray's description was confirmed by hydrographic measurements in the Sound of
Harris. It was only in 1968 that the phenomenon was satisfactorily explained in
terms of the theory of "continental shelf waves".[7]

In 1666, Moray published Considerations and Enquiries concerning Tides.[8] There
he advocated careful quantitative observation of tidal phenomena and proposed,
for the first time in the scientific literature, the use of stilling-wells as
tide gauges.[9]


LATER YEARS

Moray became a Privy Councillor again in February 1661, and was later a Lord of
the Exchequer. His younger brother, Sir William Moray, was Master of Works to
Charles II. The King granted him an apartment at the Palace of Whitehall, where
he engaged in chemical experiments. He became a recluse in later life, and, by
the time of his death, he was virtually a pauper. He was buried in Westminster
Abbey[10] at the order of the King. His grave is unmarked, but his name appears
on the stone of Abraham Cowley, near the ashes of Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund
Spenser, in Poets' Corner.[11]

Moray had a range of notable friends: James Gregory, Samuel Pepys, Thomas
Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, John Evelyn and Gilbert Burnet.


LEGACY

Moray's legacy is just beginning to be appreciated in the country of his birth.
In 1969 a masonic lodge of research, Lodge Sir Robert Moray, No.1641,
(Edinburgh, Scotland) was established in his honour.[12]


REFERENCES

 1.  ^ The most complete work on this man remains A. Robertson, The Life of Sir
     Robert Moray (London: Longman, 1922)
 2.  ^ Stevenson, David (1984). "Masonry, symbolism and ethics in the life of
     Sir Robert Moray, FRS" (PDF). Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of
     Scotland. 114: 405–431.
 3.  ^ Steve Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish
     Generals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 (London, 2014), p. 108
 4.  ^ Cooper, Robert L D, (2006) Cracking the Freemasons Code, pp 120-21
 5.  ^ Steve Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish
     Generals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 (London, 2014), p. 161.
 6.  ^ Moray, Robert (1665). "A relation of some extraordinary tydes in the
     West-Isles of Scotland, as it was communicated by Sr. Robert Moray".
     Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 1 (4): 53–55.
     Bibcode:1665RSPT....1...53M. doi:10.1098/rstl.1665.0026.
 7.  ^ Cartwright, David Edgar (1999). Tides: A Scientific History. Cambridge:
     Cambridge University Press. pp. 220–1. ISBN 978-0-521-62145-8.
 8.  ^ Moray, Robert (1665). "Considerations and enquiries concerning tides, by
     Sir Robert Moray; likewise for a further search into Dr. Wallis's newly
     publish't hypothesis". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of
     London. 1 (17): 298–301. Bibcode:1665RSPT....1..298M.
     doi:10.1098/rstl.1665.0113.
 9.  ^ Cartwright, David Edgar (1999). Tides: A Scientific History. Cambridge:
     Cambridge University Press. pp. 53–4. ISBN 978-0-521-62145-8.
 10. ^ 'The Abbey Scientists' Hall, A.R. p12: London; Roger & Robert Nicholson;
     1966
 11. ^ Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol 42, 1930. p 77
 12. ^ Year Book of the Grand Lodge of Antient, Free and Accepted Masons of
     Scotland, 2014. p 209


EXTERNAL LINKS

 * "Sir Robert Moray - Soldier, scientist, spy, freemason and founder of The
   Royal Society", lecture by Dr Robert Lomas at Gresham College, 4 April 2007
 * London Region archives, AIM25
 * Fellow of the month, November 2005 - Sir Robert Moray from the Royal Society
 * The first recorded initiation in England, Grand Lodge of British Columbia and
   Yukon
 * "Murray, Sir Robert" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). 1911.
   p. 42.
 * "Moray, Robert" Entry in 'The Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern European
   Biographical Database (SSNE)' published by St Andrews University




2 ANNOTATIONS


FIRST READING

✹


MICHAEL ROBINSON ON 11 AUG 2007  •  LINK

Per L&M Companion:-

kt. 1643 (?1608-73) Chemist and politician; a founder of the Royal Society and
its first pre-charter President. 'The most universally beloved and esteemed by
men of all sides and sorts of any man I have ever known in my whole life.'
(Burnet)

Robert Lomas 'Sir Robert Moray - Soldier, scientist, spy, freemason and founder
of The Royal Society'
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.as…

✹


DIRK ON 27 JAN 2008  •  LINK

Further links:

http://www.gresham.ac.uk/printtra…
(Michael's link above, but makes easier reading - just click away the print
dialogue!)

http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/se…


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REFERENCES

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1660166116621663166416651666166716681669


1664

 * Aug
   * 10


1665

 * Feb
   * 15
   * 18
 * May
   * 1


1666

 * Jan
   * 28
 * Jul
   * 26


1667

 * Feb
   * 12
   * 16


1669

 * Jan
   * 15



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