arms riven at the cross of Edinburgh (Balfour, Annals, iii. 235–7).
On 26 June 1644 Ruthven accompanied the king from Oxford to Worcester, and after the victory of Cropredy Bridge, on the 29th, proceeded with him to the west, and successfully blockaded the army of Essex at Lostwithiel, compelling it to surrender on 2 Sept. He was wounded in the head at the second battle of Newbury on 27 Oct., and while lying exhausted at Donnington Castle, Colonel Urry came to him during the night and sought to persuade him to join the parliamentary party; but his overtures were rejected with scorn. By this time the influence of Ruthven in the king's counsels was on the wane, and in the beginning of November he was superseded as commander-in-chief by Rupert, the chief reason being probably that, on account of his growing infirmities, his strategic skill was more than counterbalanced by his lack of alertness and initiative power. ‘Although he had been without a doubt a very good officer and had great experience,’ says Clarendon, ‘and was still a man of unquestionable courage and integrity, yet he was now much decayed in his parts, and, with the long-continued custom of immoderate drinking, dozed in his understanding, which had been never quick and vigorous, he having been always illiterate to the greatest degree that can be imagined. He was now become very deaf, yet often pretended not to have heard what he did not then contradict, and thought fit afterwards to disclaim. He was a man of few words and of great compliance, and usually delivered that as his opinion which he foresaw would be grateful to the king’ (History of the Rebellion, viii. 30). But, although superseded, Ruthven continued to retain the king's favour. He was appointed chamberlain to the Prince of Wales, and by a grant dated Oxford, 26 March 1645, his paternal coat-of-arms was augmented with bearings borrowed from the royal arms of England and of Scotland. He remained with the Prince of Wales in the west from March 1645 to March 1646, and afterwards accompanied him to Jersey and France.
Notwithstanding his advanced age, Ruthven continued to the last to take an active interest in the royal cause. In February 1649 he set out from the king to Queen Christina of Sweden to entreat her to extend her aid to the exiled king. He left Sweden in the beginning of June, returning first to Breda, and afterwards going to St. Germains with arms and ammunition obtained chiefly by pledging his estate in Sweden. In September he removed to The Hague, and, notwithstanding the objections of the Scottish commissioners, accompanied Charles II to Scotland. On 4 June 1650 an act was passed excluding him and other royalists ‘beyond seas’ from entering Scotland, and on 27 June an act was passed against his remaining in the kingdom (Acta Parl. Scot. vi. 530, 537), whereupon he retired to Perth. At the parliament held at Perth in December—when a coalition of covenanters and royalists against Cromwell was deemed advisable—an act was passed in his favour (ib. vi. 551). He died at Dundee on 2 Feb. following, and was buried in Grange Durham's aisle in the parish church of Monifieth (Balfour, Annals, iv. 256). By his first wife, a sister of Colonel John Henderson, who held the command of Dumbarton Castle in 1640, he had one son and three daughters: Alexander, lord Ettrick, who predeceased him; Elspeth, married first to William Lundie of Lundie, and afterwards to George Pringle; Jean or Janet, married to Lord Forester; and Christian, married first to Sir Thomas Kerr of Fairmallie, Selkirkshire, and afterwards to Sir Thomas Ogilvie. By his second wife, Clara, daughter of John Berner of Saskendorff, Mecklenburg, he left no issue.
A large number of letters from Ruthven to Axel Oxenstierna—1624 to 1649—are among the ‘Oxenstierna Papers’ in the Royal Archives at Stockholm. There are oil portraits at Skokloste Castle and in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
[In the Rev. W. D. Macray's valuable Introduction to the Ruthven Correspondence (Roxburghe Club), the ascertained facts concerning Ruthven are combined into a connected narrative for the first time. See also Gordon's Scots Affairs and Spalding's Memorialls (Spalding Soc.); Robert Baillie's Letters and Journals (Bannatyne Club); Sir James Balfour's Annals; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. during Charles I and the Commonwealth; Acta Parl. Scot. vol. vi.; Clarendon's History of the Rebellion; Harte's Life of Gustavus Adolphus; Warburton's Life of Prince Rupert; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 605; information from the Rev. W. D. Macray.]
RUTHVEN, WILLIAM, second Lord Ruthven (d. 1552), was descended from an ancient Scottish family, the earliest of whom is said to have been Thor, a Saxon or Dane, who settled in Scotland in the reign of David I, and whose son Swan, in the reign of William the Lion, possessed the manors of Ruthven, Tibbermuir, and other lands in Perthshire. The first Lord Ruthven, created on 29 Jan. 1488, was the son of William de
