LEVEN AND MELVILLE, EARLS OF

This article appears in Volume V16, Page 508 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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LEVEN AND MELVILLE, EARLS OF . The family of

Melville

which now holds these two earldoms is descended' from Sir John

Melville

of Raith in Fifeshire. Sir John, who was a member of the reforming party in

Scotland

, was put to death for high treason on the 13th of December 1548; he left with other children a son Robert (1527-1621), who in 1616 was created a lord of

parliament

PARLIAMENT (Anglo-Lat. parliamentum, Fr. parlement, from parler, to speak)

as Lord Melville of Monymaill. Before his

elevation

ELEVATION

to the Scottish peerage Melville had been a stout partisan of Mary, queen of Scots, whom he represented at the English court, and he had filled several important offices in

Scotland

under her son James VI. The fourth holder of the lordship of Melville was George (c. 1634-1707), a son of John, the 3rd lord (d. 1643), and a descendant of Sir John Melville. Implicated in the Rye

House

HOUSE
HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
Gothic
- GOTHIC
it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)

plot against Charles II., George took

refuge

REFUGE

in the Netherlands in 1683, but he returned to England after the revolution of 1688 and was appointed secretary for Scotland by William III. in 1689, being created

earl

EARL

of Melville in the following year. He was made president of the Scottish privy council in 1696, but he was deprived of his office when Anne became queen in 1702, and he died on the 20th of May 1707. His son David, 2nd

earl

EARL

of Melville (1660-1728), fled to Holland with his father in 1683; after serving in the army of the elector of Brandenburg he accompanied William of Orange to England in 1685. At the head of a regiment raised by himself he fought for William at Killiecrankie and elsewhere, and as commanderin-

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

of the troops in Scotland he dealt promptly and effectively with the attempted Jacobite rising of T708. In 1712, however, his office was taken from hint and he (lied on the 6th of June 172S.
Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven (q.v.), was succeeded in his earldom by his grandson Alexander, who died without sonsin July 1664. The younger Alexander's two daughters were then in turn countesses of Leven in their own right; and after the death of the second of these two ladies in 1676 a dispute arose over the succession to the earldom between John Leslie, earl (afterwards duke) of Rothes, and David Melville, 2nd earl of Melville, mentioned above. In 1681, however, Rothes died, and Melville, who was a

great

GREAT

-grandson of the 1st earl of Leven, assumed the title, calling himself earl of Leven and Melville after he succeeded his father as earl of Melville in May 1707. Since 18o5 the family has borne the name of Leslie-Melville. In 1906 John David Leslie-Melville (b. 1886) became 12th earl of Leven and 11th earl of Melville.
See Sir W. Fraser, The Melvilles, Earls of Melville, and the Leslies, Earls of Leven (1890); and the Leven and Melville Papers, edited by the Hon. W. H. Leslie-Melville for the Bannatyne Club (1843).

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