Graham, James, Marquis Of Montrose

(1612-1650)

   He succeeded to the title in 1624 and was admitted to St. Andrews university in 1627. In 1638 he signed a covenant promising to defend Scotland's Presbyterian religion against attempts by Charles I to impose Anglican forms of worship. He was a brilliant general and won a series of spectacular victories in Scotland for King Charles I during the English Civil Wars. He was the scourge of the Covenanter army when it invaded England to fight for Parliament against the king in 1644. When the Royalist army was defeated at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645, Montrose's men melted away, the small force remaining was routed and Montrose fled with Charles to France. He returned in 1650 and was captured and hanged in the marketplace of Edinburgh. Some of his poems: "I'll Never Love Thee More," "In Praise of Women," "Montrose on His Own Condition," "My Dear and Only Love," "On Himself, Upon Hearing What Was His Sentence," "On the Faithlessness and Venality of the Times," "Sovereignty in Danger," "Speechless Grief," "Sympathy in Love."

   Sources: A Book of Scottish Verse. Maurice Lindsay and R.L. Mackie, eds. St. Martin's Press, 1983. Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. Hugh MacLaen, ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1974. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. ChadwyckHealey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Poems of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose. John Murray, 1938. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk).