critical editions; a selection was published by G. Balke in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur (1890). Cf. W. Kawerau, Murner und die Kirche des Mittelalters (1890); and by the same writer, Murner und die deutsche Reformation (1891); also K. Ott, Über Murners Verhältniss zu Geiler (1896).
MUROM, a town of Russia, in the government of Vladimir, on the craggy left bank of the Oka, close to its confluence with the Tesha, 108 m. by rail S.E. of the city of Vladimir. Pop. (1900), 12,874. Muron has an old cathedral. It is the chief entrepôt for grain from the basin of the lower Oka, and carries on an active trade with Moscow and Nizhniy-Novgorod. It is famed, as in ancient times, for kitchen-gardens, especially for its cucumbers and seed for canaries. Its once famous tanneries have lost their importance, but the manufacture of linen has increased; it has also steam flour-mills, distilleries, manufactories of soap and of iron implements.
MURPHY, ARTHUR (1727–1805), Irish actor and dramatist,
son of a Dublin merchant, was born at Clomquin, Roscommon,
on the 27th of December 1727. From 1738 to 1744, under
the name of Arthur French, he was a student at the English
college at St Omer. He entered the counting-house of a merchant
at Cork on recommendation of his uncle, Jeffery French,
in 1747. A refusal to go to Jamaica alienated French’s interest,
and Murphy exchanged his situation for one in London. By
the autumn of 1752 he was publishing the Gray’s Inn Journal,
a periodical in the style of the Spectator. Two years later he
became an actor, and appeared in the title-rôles of Richard III. and Othello; as Biron in Southerne’s Fatal Marriage; and as
Osmyn in Congreve’s Mourning Bride. His first farce, The
Apprentice, was given at Drury Lane on the 2nd of January
1756. It was followed, among other plays, by The Upholsterer
(1757), The Orphan of China (1759), The Way to Keep Him
(1760), All in the Wrong (1761), The Grecian Daughter (1772),
and Know Your Own Mind (1777). These were almost all
adaptations from the French, and were very successful, securing
for their author both fame and wealth. Murphy edited a
political periodical, called the Test, in support of Henry Fox, by
whose influence he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn,
although he had been refused at the Middle Temple in 1757
on account of his connexion with the stage. Murphy also
wrote a biography of Fielding, an essay on the life and genius
of Samuel Johnson and translations of Sallust and Tacitus.
Towards the close of his life the office of a commissioner of
bankrupts and a pension of £200 were conferred upon him
by government. He died on the 18th of June 1805.
MURPHY, JOHN FRANCIS (1853–), American landscape painter, was born at Oswego, New York, on the 11th of December 1853. He first exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1876, and was made an associate in 1885 and a full academician two years later. He became a member of the Society of American Artists (1901) and of the American Water Color Society.
MURPHY, ROBERT (1806–1843), British mathematician, the
son of a poor shoemaker, was born at Mallow, in
Ireland, in 1806. At the age of thirteen, while working as an apprentice
in his father’s shop, he became known to certain gentlemen in
the neighbourhood as a self-taught mathematician. Through
their exertions, after attending a classical school in his native
town, he was admitted to Caius College, Cambridge, in 1825.
Third Wrangler in 1829, he was elected in the same year a fellow
of his college. A course of dissipation led him into debt; his
fellowship was sequestered for the benefit of his creditors, and
he was obliged to leave Cambridge in December 1832, After
living for some time with his relations in Ireland, he repaired
to London in 1836, a penniless literary adventurer. In 1838
he became examiner in mathematics and physics at London
University. He had already contributed several mathematical
papers to the Cambridge Philosophical Transactions (1831–1836),
Philosophical Magazine (1833–1842), and the Philosophical
Transactions (1837), and had published Elementary Principles of
the Theories of Electricity (1833). He now wrote for the “Library
of Useful Knowledge” a Treatise on the Theory of Algebraical
Equations (1839). He died on the 12th of March 1843.
MURPHYSBORO, a city and the county-seat of Jackson
county, Illinois, U.S.A, in the south part of the state, on the Big Muddy River, about 57 m. N. of Cairo. Pop. (1890), 3880;
(1900), 6463, including 557 foreign-born and 456 negroes; (1910),
7485. It is served by the Illinois Central, the Mobile & Ohio
and the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railways. It is
the centre for a farming region, in which there are deposits of
coal, iron, lead and shale, and there are various manufactures
in the city. Murphysboro was incorporated in 1867, and reincorporated
in 1875.
MURRAIN (derived through O. Fr. morine, from Lat. mori, to die), a general term for various virulent diseases in domesticated animals, synonymous with plague or epizooty. The principal diseases are dealt with under Rinderpest; Pleuro-Pneumonia; Anthrax; and Foot and Mouth Disease. See also Veterinary Science.
MURRAY (or Moray), EARLS OF. The earldom of Moray was one of the seven original earldoms of Scotland, its lands corresponding roughly to the modern counties of Inverness and Ross. Little is known of the earls until about 1314, when Sir Thomas Randolph, a nephew of King Robert Bruce, was created earl of Moray (q.v.), and the Randolphs held the earldom until 1346, when the childless John Randolph, 3rd earl of this line and a soldier of repute, was killed at the battle of Neville’s Cross. According to some authorities the earldom was then held by John’s sister Agnes (c. 1312–1369) and her husband, Patrick Dunbar, earl of March or Dunbar (c. 1285–1368). However this may be, in 1359 an English prince, Henry Plantagenet, duke of Lancaster (d. 1361), was made earl of Moray by King David II.; but in 1372 John Dunbar (d. 1391), a grandson of Sir Thomas Randolph and a son-in-law of Robert II., obtained the earldom. The last of the Dunbar earls was James Dunbar,
who was murdered in August 1429, and after this date his
daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Archibald Douglas (d. 1455),
called themselves earl and countess of Moray.
The next family to bear this title was an illegitimate branch of the royal house of Stuart, James IV. creating his natural son, James Stuart (c. 1499–1544), earl of Moray. James died without sons, and after the title had been borne for a short time by George Gordon, 4th earl of Huntly (c. 1514–1562), who was killed at Corrichie in 1562, it wa.s bestowed in 1562 by Mary Queen of Scots upon her half-brother, an illegitimate son of James V. This was the famous regent, James Stuart, earl of Moray, or Murray (see below), who was murdered in January 1570; after this event a third James Stuart, who had married the regent’s daughter Elizabeth (d. 1591), held the earldom. He, who was called the “bonny earl,” was killed by his hereditary enemies, the Gordons, in February 1592, when his son James (d. 1638) succeeded to the title. The earldom of Moray has remained in the Stuart family since this date. Alexander, the 4th earl (d. 1701), was secretary of state for Scotland from 1680 to 1689; and in 1796 Francis, the 9th earl (1737–1810), was made a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Stuart.
See vol. vi. of Sir R. Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland, new ed. by Sir J. B. Paul (1909).
MURRAY, ALEXANDER STUART (1841–1904), British
archaeologist, was born at Arbroath on the 8th of January 1841,
and educated there, at Edinburgh high school and at the
universities of Edinburgh and Berlin. In 1867 he entered the
British Museum as an assistant in the department of Greek and
Roman antiquities under Sir Charles Newton, whom he succeeded
in 1886. His younger brother, George Robert Milne
Murray (b. 1858), was made keeper of the botanical department
in 1895, the only instance of two brothers becoming heads of
departments at the museum. In 1873 Dr Murray published a
Manual of Mythology, and in the following year contributed to
the Contemporary Review two articles—one on the Homeric
question—which led to a friendship with Mr Gladstone, the
other on Greek painters. In 1880–1883 he brought out his
History of Greek Sculpture, which at once became a standard
work. In 1886 he was selected by the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland to deliver the Rhind lectures on archaeology, out of
