him, but he stoutly denied them. His ruin was completed, however, by the interception of a letter which he had written to his father. He confessed that the jesuits had sent him to England to seduce people to catholicism. On 13 July 1653 a warrant was issued for his arrest (Cal. State Papers, 1653, p. 428), and he was examined by order of the privy council (ib. pp. 73, 101). His fate is uncertain. On 29 March 1660 a certain Thomas Ramsey received a pass to France (ib. 1659–60, p. 572), but his identity with the catholic agent is doubtful.
[A False Jew, by Th. Welde, C. Sidenham, W. Hammond, Th. Durant; Th. Tellam's Banners of Love Displaied; Confession of Joseph Ben Israel; Examination of Thomas Ramsey, Statement of Christopher Shadforth (British Museum).]
RAMSAY, THOMAS KENNEDY (1826–1886), Canadian judge and jurist, born in Ayr on 2 Sept. 1826, was third son of David Ramsay of Grimmat in the parish of Straiton, Ayrshire, and Edinburgh, writer to the signet. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Kennedy of Kirkmechan House, Ayr; she died in 1878. His father died early, and his mother went to St. John's, Maryhill, where Ramsay began his education under private tutors; later he was trained at a school at St. Andrews, then at Ayr academy, and afterwards in France. In 1847 Ramsay, his mother, and brothers migrated to Canada, and settled on the estate of St. Hugues. After studying law in the office of Meredith, Bethune, & Dunkin, solicitors, he was admitted to the bar in 1852, and soon practised with success. He was also an active contributor to the press; for a time he aided in the management of ‘La Patrie,’ in which he fought the battle of the seigneurs (landed proprietors) with substantial success; later he conducted the ‘Evening Telegraph;’ he also edited the ‘Law Reporter,’ and aided in establishing the ‘Lower Canada Jurist.’ In 1859 he was appointed secretary of the commission for the codification of the civil law of Lower Canada, but in 1862 was superseded by the liberals, who complained that he took part in political meetings. In 1865 he published his ‘Index to Reported Cases,’ and soon afterwards he was appointed crown prosecutor at Montreal; in 1866 he prosecuted the fenian raiders at Sweetsburg. In 1867 he became Q.C., and unsuccessfully contested, for the second time, a seat in the Canadian House of Commons.
In 1870 Ramsay was appointed an assistant justice of the superior court, and in 1873 a puisne judge of the court of queen's bench for the Dominion. His industry was immense, and his devotion to work shortened his life. He spent great pains upon his judgments, invariably writing them out. He was especially well read in Roman law. He wrote various pamphlets on legal subjects, and left in manuscript a ‘Digest of the Decisions of the Court of Appeal.’ His only relaxation he sought in farming on his estate at St. Hugues. He died unmarried on 22 Dec. 1886, and was buried at the Mount Royal cemetery, Montreal.
[Montreal Gazette, 23 and 25 Dec. 1886; Montreal Legal News, 1 Jan. 1887.]
RAMSAY, WILLIAM, of Colluthie, Earl of Fife (fl. 1356–1360), was descended from a Fifeshire family who possessed the lands of Colluthie and Leuchars-Ramsay. On his marriage about 1356 to Isabel, countess of Fife, and daughter of Duncan Macduff, earl of Fife, he was invested with the earldom of Fife by the cinctus of the belt and sword. Either this Sir William Ramsay or possibly Sir William Ramsay of the house of Dalhousie accompanied the Earl of Douglas to France in 1356, and fought against the English under Edward the Black Prince at the battle of Poitiers on 19 Sept. 1356. Ramsay is stated to have succeeded in effecting the escape of Archibald de Douglas, brother of the knight of Liddesdale, who was taken prisoner at the battle, by pretending to rate him soundly for having killed his master and decked himself out in his clothes (Wyntoun, ed. Laing, ii. 496).
On 27 June 1358 a papal dispensation was granted for the marriage of David de Berclay to Elizabeth, countess of Fife. Burnett, in a preface to the ‘Exchequer Rolls of Scotland’ (vol. i. p. clvii), assumes that the lady here referred to was Isabel, Ramsay's wife, and suggests that her marriage with Ramsay must have been dissolved by divorce; but, if so dissolved, it does not seem to have been dissolved at so early a date, for he is mentioned as earl of Fife—a title which he bore in his wife's right—in March 1359–60 (Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, i. 602, 603, 606, 608). It is more probable that Countess Elizabeth was Ramsay's daughter by a former marriage (Complete Peerage, ed. G. E. C., sub ‘Fife’). Ramsay either died or was divorced some time about 1360; for in this year the Countess of Fife married a second husband. The Lord William Ramsay of Colluthie who subsequently appears in numerous entries in the ‘Exchequer Rolls,’ was doubtless Ramsay's son by a former marriage (Exchequer Rolls, i. 609). The line of the Ramsays of Colluthie ended in Eliza-
