MELVILLE, ANDREW (1624–1706), soldier of fortune, was born in Scotland in May 1624. His father, John Melville, sprang from a younger branch of the Melville family; his mother was Jane Kelley (Kellie?), her brother being chamberlain to Charles I. Sent to Königsberg university at thirteen to study the languages of northern Europe, Melville escaped to Poland, intending to enter the army, but, seeing no prospect of active employment, he returned to Scotland. There he learned that his parents, ruined by his uncle's debts, had died, and that creditors had seized the entire property. Lord Grey of Werke, who had already taken his brother into his service, promised Andrew a cornetcy, pending which, at the head of other young men also waiting for appointments, he lived by plunder, till captured by peasants and imprisoned for some months. On his release he joined in 1647 the presbyterian troops; but on Charles I being given up he went to France, served with the French army in Flanders, and after a variety of adventures waited on Charles II at Breda, and agreed to join him in Scotland. At the battle of Worcester he was shot in the arm, stripped, and left for dead, but was sheltered for three months by villagers until he recovered from his wounds. He then repaired in disguise to London, and was assisted by a roundhead kinsman (probably George, afterwards earl of Melville) in escaping to Holland. After further privations and perils he joined the Scottish bodyguard of Cardinal de Retz, and next served in the French army. Eventually he linked his fortunes with those of Count Josias Waldeck, with whom he fought for the elector of Brandenburg, the king of Sweden, the elector of Cologne, and the Duke of Celle (Brunswick-Luneburg). The duke sent him to London in 1660 to compliment Charles II on his restoration, and Melville paid a second visit on his own account; but the king, while very affable, professed inability to do anything for him. In 1680 Melville accompanied the Prince of Hanover (afterwards George I) to England, and received the degree of M.D. at Oxford, whither he went with the prince (WOOD, Fasti Oxon. ii. 379). In 1677, retiring from active service, Melville had been appointed drost (governor or commandant) of Gifhorn. Melville died at Gifhorn in 1706. The church, in which he was probably buried, was burnt down in 1744. He had married in Germany, and had a son who predeceased him, also a daughter, Charlotte Sophia Anna (1670–1724), who in 1690 became the wife of Alexander von Schulenburg-Blumberg, a Hanoverian general.
He was author of an autobiography published as ‘Mémoires de M. le Chevalier de Melvill,’ Amsterdam, 1704, with a preface eulogising his valour and protestantism.
[Melville's Mémoires; Hermann Schulze's Geschichtliches aus dem Lüneburgischen, Gifhorn, 1877; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Leipzig, 1885; Oettinger's Dict. des Dates, Leipzig, 1869.]
MELVILLE, DAVID, third Earl of Leven and second Earl of Melville (1660–1728), military commander, third son of George, first earl of Melville [q. v.], by his wife, Lady Catherine Leslie, only daughter of Alexander, lord Balgonie, afterwards second earl of Leven, was born on 5 May 1660. On the death of the second Earl of Leven in 1664 without male issue the title was to devolve, after his daughters, first on the second son of John, duke of Rothes, and after him on the second son of the first Earl of Melville. On the death of Leven's two daughters, successively Countesses of Leven in their own right, the Earl of Melville in 1676 applied, on the ground that Rothes had no male issue, that the earldom should be assigned to his second surviving son, David; but to this Rothes objected, and the objection was sustained by the court of session. On the death, however, of Rothes without male issue on 27 July 1681, David Melville assumed the title.
Although in no degree implicated in the Rye House plot, Leven in 1683 accompanied his father to Holland. In 1685 he entered the service of the elector of Brandenburg as captain of horse, and in September 1687 was appointed colonel. At the court of Berlin he acted as a confidential agent to the Prince of Orange, and arranged the meeting at Cleves between him and the elector of Brandenburg. Subsequently at his own expense he raised a regiment of Scottish refugees in Germany and Holland, of which he was appointed colonel, on 7 Sept. 1688, and with which he accompanied the Prince of Orange to England. The regiment was chosen to garrison Plymouth after its surrender.
Leven was selected by William of Orange to be the bearer of his letter to the Scottish convention in March 1689. He was also em-
