John Murray MP

MP of Linlithgow Burghs (1754-1761), and son of John Murray, MP, of Philiphaugh and Eleanor, daughter of Lord Basil Hamilton and grand-daughter of William, 3rd Duke of Hamilton. Educated at Glasgow University 1742; advocate 1748. He married 'Miss Thomson' in 1765. They had 4 daughters and 3 sons.

Murray was the head of a well-known Border family which owned great estates in Ettrick and Yarrow. On his mother's side he was related to the Dukes of Hamilton and Douglas, and the Earls of Selkirk, Dundonald, and March, and on his father’s to the leading freeholders of Selkirkshire. He became heir to his father in 1747 (when his brother died) though continued to work as an advocate.

He was listed as a 'West Indian' MP in Judd's list, although his sitting as MP preceded by some time his settling with his wife and daughters in Jamaica, where they appear to have gone in 1785. He had incurred severe financial problems by 1768, after reverses in land speculation in East Florida and the island of St John: conceivably these ventures [in slave-economies] account for Judd's classification of him. He died in Jamaica on 28 February 1800. The contestation over his will after his death is reported in Scottish Jurist Vol. 6 (1830) p. 179.

History of Parliament online; Gerrit P. Judd IV, Members of Parliament 1734-1832 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1955).