James Murray (British Army Officer) - Early Life

Early Life

He was a younger son of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank, and his wife Elizabeth (Betty) Stirling. Educated in Haddington and Selkirk, he began his military career in 1736 in the 3rd Scots Regiment in Dutch service. In 1740 he served as a second lieutenant in Wynyard’s Marines, under his brother Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank, in the unsuccessful attack on Cartagena. He returned as a captain in 1742. He served as Captain of the grenadier company of the 15th Regiment of Foot during the War of the Austrian Succession, being severely wounded during the Siege of Ostend in 1745, and distinguishing himself in the Raid on Lorient in 1746. In December 1748, he married Cordelia Collier, of Hastings.

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