Robert Moray (1608/9–1673)

Sir Robert Moray was a Scottish statesman and natural philosopher. One of the founding members of the Royal Society, he maintained broad scientific interests throughout his life, dabbling in chemistry, medicine, engineering, and oceanography. He was an early convert to freemasonry, and was possibly the first mason to have been initiated in England (albeit into an Edinburgh lodge).

Probably born in South Ayrshire and educated in France, Moray joined a Scottish regiment of the French army in the mid-1630s. While in military service he formed a close acquaintance with Cardinal Richelieu, leading many to speculate that his subsequent return to England was orchestrated on behalf of the French state. He received a knighthood from Charles I in 1643, and in that same year returned to France to take up an appointment as lieutenant-colonel of the newly formed Scottish Guards. The ensuing phase of the Thirty Years’ War proved disastrous for the French, however, and Moray was taken captive in Bavaria. After fifteen months his ransom was paid by a cousin and he was freed, an event likely catalysed by the Scottish government’s decision to enter in to an alliance with the French against the English Parliamentarians. Moray’s propensity to find himself at the centre of complex tussles between Scottish, French, and English political interests would become a running theme throughout his life.

During the Civil War years Moray managed negotiations first between the Scottish parliament and Charles I, and then between the Scots and the French. After the decisive Battle of Worcester in 1951 he continued to take part in underground Royalist activity in Scotland, and in 1664 fled to the Western Isles, where he made detailed observations of tidal phenomena. He remained close to the deposed royals, and—after a brief conflagration in which he was wrongfully accused of plotting to assassinate Charles II—went into exile at their residence in Cologne. Thereafter, he moved to Maastricht, living a secluded existence in what he would describe as his ‘Hesperidean garden’. He read widely, set up an amateur laboratory, became increasingly fascinated by horology and seafaring, and began to correspond at length with Bruce and other polymaths. He then went on to Paris to build French support for the restoration.

After Charles II’s coronation Moray returned to London, attending the Royal Society’s founding meeting at Gresham College in November 1660. Once again, he found himself performing the role of diplomat, liaising this time between the Society and the king. Besides securing crucial funds for the institution, he was personally involved in numerous experiments and began writing—although never finished—a history of freemasonry. In 1663, he became deputy secretary of state for Scotland under John Maitland, second earl of Lauderdale, with whom he would develop an increasingly tempestuous relationship, and served as a Scottish representative at the unsuccessful bid for Anglo-Scottish union in 1670. After his sudden death in 1673, Gilbert Burnet wrote that ‘he was universally beloved and esteemed by men of all sides and sorts’: an exaggeration, perhaps, but one that captured Moray’s capacity to navigate adroitly turbulent social and political tides. Moray’s letters exchanged with Alexander Bruce (1629–1680), his long-time friend and mentee, preserve an image of a man who was intellectually energetic, fiercely witty, and unfailingly proud of his Scottish origins. John Aubrey, in his Brief Lives, described Moray as ‘the chiefe appuy of his countreymen and their good angel.’