Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/383

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Murray
377
Murray

and accompanied Sir Ralph Abercromby with the advance of the Duke of York's army to North Holland, where he was shot through the arm at the landing. He had odd ways, and Bunbury describes him as chuckling at having now been shot through both arms and both legs (Bunbury, Narrative, p.47). Abercromby wrote of him, 'Sir James Pulteney surprised me. He showed ardour and intelligence, and did himself honour' (Dunfermline, Life of Abercromby, p. 174). In August 1800 Pulteney was sent with a body of troops against Ferrol. The troops were landed, the Spanish outposts driven in, and the heights above the port occupied ; but Pulteney considered the place too strong to be taken except by a regular siege, which would afford time for the Spanish armies to move to its relief. Accordingly he reembarked his troops. This gave great dissatisfaction, the naval officers of Sir John Borlase Warren's squadron holding that the place could easily have been carried. Sir John Moore afterwards told Bunbury that during a hasty reconnaissance in 1804 he saw enough to convince him that the place could not have been carried by a coup de main (Bunbury, Narrative, p. 73). Reinforced by additional troops, Pulteney then sailed away to Gibraltar with twenty thousand men. He was second in command under Sir Ralph Abercromby in the demonstration against Cadiz in October the same year; after which he proceeded to Lisbon with the troops enlisted for European service only. Most of these subsequently went to Malta, and Pulteney returned home. He stood proxy for Sir William Medows at an installation of the Bath in 1803. He held a lieutenant-general's command in Sussex, with his headquarters at Eastbourne, during the invasion alarms of 1803-4. His plans in the event of an invasion are given by Bunbury (ib. pp. 178-9).

Pulteney represented the combined boroughs of Wey mouth and Melcombe Regis in successive parliaments from November 1790 until his death. A petition was lodged against his return in 1802, and referred to a committee, which reported that the petition was not frivolous and vexatious, although Murray was duly elected. He was secretary at war under the Grenville administration in 1806-7. In April 1811 a powder-flask burst in his hands and destroyed one of his eyes. No danger was at first apprehended, and his calm, unruffled temperament favoured recovery, but inflammation supervened and proved fatal. He died at Buckenham, a seat he rented in Norfolk, on 26 April 1811. He is stated to have left 600,000l. to his half-brother, Sir John Murray, who succeeded him as eighth baronet, and 200,000l. to another half-brother, the Rev. William Murray, who ultimately became ninth baronet (Gent. Mag. 1811, pt. i. p. 499). The Pulteney estates passed under the will of his wife, who had died at Brighton, 14 Aug. 1808, and had been buried beside her father in Westminster Abbey, to the children of Mrs. E. Markham, a daughter of Sir Richard Sutton, bart., and the divorced wife of a son of William Markham, D.C.L., archbishop of York.

Bunbury writes of Pulteney : 'He was a very odd man. In point of natural abilities he took high rank. He had seen a great deal of the world and of military service ; he had read much and variously, and possessed a great fund of knowledge and considerable science. Remarkably good-tempered and unpretending, he was utterly indifferent to danger and to hardship.' He was, however, inclined to indecisive argument, and lacked confidence in his own opinion, while his awkward manners and 'a grotesque and rather repulsive exterior ' concealed the best points in his character (Bunbury, Narrative, pp. 46-7).

[Foster's Baronetage, under 'Murray of Clermont;' Army Lists and London Gazettes; Jones's Hist, of the Campaigns in Flanders, also War Office Records in the Public Record Office, ' Correspondence with the Army on the Continent,' 1793-4 ; Bunbury's Narrative of Passages in the late War with France, London, 1854. A few notices of Murray will be found in the Journal and Correspondence of the first Lord Auckland.]

H. M. C.

MURRAY, JAMES (1831–1863), architect, born in Armagh on 9 Dec. 1831, was articled to W. Scott, architect, of Liverpool, in 1845, and afterwards practised there in partnership with T. D. Barry. He was for a time in Coventry, and subsequently settled in London, where and on the continent he executed several works in connection with E. Welby Pugin [q. v.] At the dissolution of this partnership he returned to Coventry, and resided there until his death, which took place on 24 Oct. 1863. Among his most important works are the Justice Rooms, Coventry, and the Corn Exchange of that town, 1856, of Banbury, 1857, and St. Albans, 1853, besides churches at Warwick, Boulton, Sunderland, Newcastle, St. James's, Stratford-on-Avon, Emscote, Birmingham, and Stortford; and a Gothic warehouse for Messrs. Bennoch in Silver Street, London (1857-8). He published 'Modern Architecture, Ecclesiastic, Civil, and Domestic;' 'Gothic and Classic Buildings erected since 1850,' pt. i. 4to, Coventry, 1862.

[The Builder, 1863, xxi. 780, 807; The Dictionary of Architecture, v. 146.]

A. N.