Background
James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose was born in Montrose, Scotland, in 1612.
James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose was born in Montrose, Scotland, in 1612.
He was educated at the University of St. Andrews and in France and Italy.
In 1638 he was one of the first to sign the National Covenant, the oath taken by the Presbyterian Scots (Covenanters) against the Anglican Church policy of Charles I. Montrose played a vital part in the struggle that brought the Covenanters to power in Scotland, but he broke with them over their ruthlessness. In the Civil War between Charles and his English Parliament (1642 - 1646), the Covenanters assisted Parliament while Montrose raised the Scottish Highlanders for the king.
At the head of a small band of Irish and Highland troops, operating in mountainous country, he won a series of spectacular victories against much larger forces (August 1644 - August 1645). When he marched south to assist the king in England, his Highlanders began to desert, and he was defeated on the border. He raised new forces, but the surrender of the king forced him to disband them and flee abroad in 1646.
After the execution of Charles I (1649), Montrose offered to raise the Highlanders for his son, Charles II, then in exile. The venture failed, and he was captured and hanged in Edinburgh in May 1650. As a royalist ally he is a controversial figure in Scottish history, but as a popular hero he has a firm hold on the imagination of his countrymen. Montrose also wrote verse, characteristic fragments of which have survived, and he figures in several Scottish ballads as well as in Sir Walter Scott's novel A Legend of Montrose.