David Murray (poet)
Sir David Murray of Gorthy (1567–1629) was an officer in the household of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, in England from 1603 to 1612, and poet.
Family background
A member of the Scottish Murray family, David's father, Robert Murray, was the Laird of Abercairney, near Crieff; his mother was Katherine Murray, a daughter of William Murray of Tullibardine. David had an older brother, William, and younger brothers, Mungo Murray of Craigie, John Minister of Dunfermline and Leith, Andrew, Quintigern, and James. His two sisters were Nicola(s), who married Robert Douglas of Spott Lord Belhaven, who had been Prince Henry's Stable Master, and Anne, who married William Moncrieff of Moncrieff.
William Murray, David's elder brother, was brought up at
David left no heirs; Mungo's sons are known by the name 'Moray', the eldest was the soldier and mathematician Robert Moray, and a younger son, William Moray of Dreghorn, Master of Works in Scotland to Charles II.[2]
Servant of Prince Henry
David was educated at St Salvator's College at
His portrait was painted in 1603 and is now displayed in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.[6]
Courtier in London
After the
He was knighted as Sir David Murray of Gorthy at
When
Murray installed a model of a ship made by Phineas Pett for the Prince in a private room in the long gallery at
In Scotland, David's younger brother, John, Minister of Leith, was imprisoned in
While Prince Henry was in his final illness and delirious, according to the account of
In the summer of 1615, David Murray received part payment of the sum of £10,022 fourteen shillings threepence halfpenny owed to him for his expenses as keeper of the Prince's wardrobe and privy purse.[22]
David Murray's poetry
John Smethwick published Murray's volume of poetry, the Tragicall Death of Sophonisba, by David Murray, Scoto-Brittaine, London (1611), together with twenty-six sonnets to fair Coelia or Caelia. [23] The work was prefaced by two sonnets comparing Prince Henry to an eagle, and three sonnets addressed to Murray himself by his cousin John Murray, Michael Drayton and Simon Grahame. The sonnets for "my fair Caelia" were dedicated to Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall. (Preston married Elizabeth Butler, daughter of Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond.)
Murray's sonnets, like those of William Alexander of Menstrie are anglicised in vocabulary and grammar, but some employ an interlinked form used by the Castalian poets who worked for King James in Scotland the 1580s.[24]
Smethick's volume also included the Complaint of the Shepherd Harpalus, a sonnet eulogy for Cecily Wemyss, Lady of Tullibardine, and epitaphs for his cousins David and Adam Murray.[25]
Verses from the Complaint of Harpalus were printed as a
Thomas Kinnear edited Poems by Sir David Murray of Gorthy containing "The tragicall death of Sophonisba and Caelia. Containing certaine sonets, both London 1611", and "A paraphrase of the CIV psalme, Edinburgh 1615" in a new edition published by the Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1823.
Works dedicated to David Murray
John Owen, in the section of his Latin verses Epigrammatum written to Prince Henry and Charles, Duke of York, gave a verse to Sir David Murray of the Prince's inner Chamber (ab interiori thalamis.).[26] Translated the verse is;
Kings Favours to their Favourites impart:
Wise Kings to those alone of best desert:
Our King in this excels: For, Favours he
Daigns soley to worthy men, to Thee, like Thee.[27]
The surviving accounts kept by Murray for the Prince include payments to writers and compilers of library catalogues. The poet Michael Drayton was given £10 as a yearly payment.[28] A number of published authors included dedications to Murray in their works. The Scottish churchman William Couper dedicated his Preparative for the New Passover, London (1607), to David Murray of the Prince's bedchamber. The Stoic Joseph Hall, a chaplain of Prince Henry, offered Murray his sixth essay in his Epistles, (1608), concerning miracles, including the capture of Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby.[29] Henry Peacham dedicated an emblem of 'Hercules and the apples of the Hesperides' in Minerva Britanna (1612) to the Scottish knight.[30] The calligrapher Esther Inglis made him a manuscript of the poems of Guy de Faur.[31] The Lincolnshire preacher Thomas Granger included Murray in the 'epistle dedicatory', 1 January 1621, for his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, London (1621).
Another of the Prince's chaplains, Daniel Price dedicated to Murray the publication of the sermon preached following the death of Prince Henry.[32] Patrick Gordon dedicated his volume of Latin hexameters in commemoration of Prince Henry, Neptunus Brittanicus Corydonis, de Luctuouso Henrici, John Budge (1615), with a verse to Murray.[33] The anonymous collection of 19 sonnets, Great Brittans Mourning Garment, London (1612), was dedicated to "Sir David Murray, and to the other nobly descended, and honourably minded followers of the late deceased Prince Henry."[34]
References
- ^ Taylor, John, The Pennyles Pilgimage, 1618, (reprint n.d), pp. 38, 45, 48
- ^ Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, 1580-93, Edinburgh (1888), p. 717 no. 2102: Letters from Lady Kennedy Bannatyne Club (1828), p. 66 n: Burke, John, A Genealogical and Heraldic History, vol.1 (), pp. 621–622.
- ^ Thomson, J. M., ed., Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, 1593–1608 (SRS, 1984), nos. 222, 1326
- ^ Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. 3 (London, 1808), p. 453, BL Harl. 6986 item 36.
- ^ Register of the Privy Council, vol. 6 (Edinburgh, 1884), p. 409.
- ^ 'Notice of the portrait of David Murray, 1603', in Adversaria of the Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1867), pp. 34–38: Maria Hayward, Stuart Style (Yale, 2020), p. 70: Portrait on Art UK
- ^ Manolo Guerci, London's Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand (Yale, 2021), p. 82.
- ^ Nicholls, John (1828), Progresses of King James I, vol. 1, London, p. 427
- ^ Some of these payments were printed in: Peter Cunningham, Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels (Malone Society, 1842), pp. x–xviii
- ^ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 17 (London, 1938), p. 364.
- ^ Nicholls (1828), p. 517.
- ^ Nicholls (1828), p. 563 (Nicholls' footnote is incorrect).
- ^ W. G. Perrin, Autobiography of Phineas Pett, (Naval Records Society, 1916), p. 31.
- ^ Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer during the Reign of James I (London, 1836), p. 103.
- ^ HMC Salisbury Cecil, 1609–1612, vol. 21 (HMSO, 1970), p. 39.
- ^ David Masson, Register of the Privy Council, vol. 8 (Edinburgh, 1887), pp. 563–564.
- ^ Thomas Birch, Life of Prince Henry (London, 1760), 320–22, citing BL Cotton Titus B.VII
- ^ Katherine Watson, & Charles Avery, 'Medici and Stuart: A Grand Ducal Gift of 'Giovanni Bologna' Bronzes for Henry Prince of Wales (1612)', Burlington Magazine, 115:845 (August 1973), p. 501.
- ^ Charles Cornwallis, A Discourse of the most illustrious Prince Henry, written in 1626 (London, 1641): reprinted in Birch (1760) and in Nicholls' Progresses.
- ^ David M. Bergeron, The Duke of Lennox, 1574-1624: A Jacobean Courtier's Life (Edinburgh, 2022), p. 97.
- ^ Thomas Birch, Life of Prince Henry (London, 1760), pp. 354–56, 528.
- ^ Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer during the Reign of James I (London, 1836), pp. 14–15.
- ^ Bayne 1891.
- ^ Ross, Ian, 'Sonneteering in Sixteenth-Century Scotland', in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 6, no. 2, University of Texas, (Summer 1964), pp. 255–268
- ^ Murray, David, Tragicall Death of Sophonisba, John Smethwick, London (1611): (John Murray was minister of Leith and Dunfermline.)
- ^ Owen, John, Epigrammatum, ad Henricum, et ad Carolum, London (3th[clarification needed] ed., 1622), Libri tres, liber primus, or 5th book, no. 33, (Latin).
- ^ John Owen's Epigrams, 'Philological Museum', University of California, Dana F. Sutton
- ^ Parsons, Leila, 'Prince Henry (1594–1612) as a Patron of Literature', in The Modern Language Review, vol. 47, no. 4 (Oct. 1952), pp. 503–507, citing PRO SRD James I, LVII, no. 87 Henry's Privy Purse book 1609/10, and PRO Audit Office 1/2021./2.
- ^ Hall, Joseph, Epistles, vol. 1, London (1608), pp. 53–54
- ^ Strong, Roy, Henry, Prince of Wales, Thames & Hudson, (1986), pp. 28–29, 50, 188, 199, 263 (index): Peacham, Henry, Minerva Britanna, London (1612) p. 36
- ^ see external links
- ^ Price, Daniel, Tears shed over Abner, (1613), in Sprituall Odours to the Memory of Prince Henry, Oxford (1613).
- ^ Nicholls, Progresses of King James, vol. 4 (1828), p. 1085
- ^ Great Brittans Mourning Garment, Arthur Johnson, (1612), on website ENGLISH POETRY 1579–1830
- Attribution
Bayne, Thomas Wilson (1891). Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney (eds.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 25. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
. InSources
- Poems of Sir David Murray of Gorthy, Bannatyne Club (1823) reprint of the Sophonisba (1611)
- S. M. Dunnigan, 'Murray, Sir David, of Gorthy (1567–1629)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 login required.
External links
- Engraved portrait of David Murray, 1603, in Specimen Catalogue (1852), pp. 10–11.
- 1629 broadside ballad version of Murray's Harpalus, in British Library, from University of California website.
- 1674 broadside ballad version of Murray's Harpalus, in Glasgow UniversityLibrary, from University of California website.
- David Murray sonnets from Caelia in the Glasgow University online anthology
- British Library catalagoue entry for manuscript poems of Guy de Faur, 1614 Archived 25 April 2023 at the Wayback Machine written for Murray by Esther Inglis