Robert Moray - Early Life

Early Life

Moray was the elder of two sons of a Perthshire laird, Sir Mungo Moray of Craigie. His grandfather was Robert Moray of Abercairney (near Crieff), and his mother was a daughter of George Halket of Pitfirran, Dunfermline. An uncle, David Moray, had been a personal servant of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Biographers have claimed that Moray attended the University of St Andrews and continued his university education in France, however, Moray himself wrote to his friend Alexander Bruce (who probably had attended St Andrews), jocularly proposing a debate between the 2 men, in which Moray said he would force Bruce to "rub up your St Andrews language", and "one may give you your hands full that was scarcely ever farrer East then Cowper" (Cupar lies several miles to the west of St Andrews). Moray's name does not appear in the matriculation records of the university.

Moray appears to have taken an interest in applied science early in life. In 1623 he visited the artificial island constructed in the Firth of Forth at Culross by Sir George Bruce (Alexander's grandfather), from which coal was mined. In a letter written later in his life, Moray cites 1627 as the year when he began study "to understand and regulate my passions".

In 1633, he joined the Garde Écossaise, a regiment which fought under Colonel John Hepburn in the army of Louis XIII. He became a favourite of Cardinal Richelieu, who used him as an agent (spy). Richelieu promoted Moray to Lieutenant Colonel and sent him to join the Covenanters army in Edinburgh in 1638. Experienced in military engineering, he was appointed quartermaster-general in the Scottish Army that invaded England in 1640 in the Second Bishops' War and took Newcastle upon Tyne.

Several Freemasons who were members of the Lodge of Edinburgh initiated him into Freemasonry there on 20 May 1641. Although he was initiated into a Scottish lodge, the event took place south of the border: this is earliest extant record of a man being initiated into speculative Freemasonry on English soil. Thereafter, he regularly used the five pointed star, his masonic mark, on his correspondence.