After the failure of that expedition, Murray quit the army.
He had married in 1735, and had succeeded his father as Lord Elibank the next year. Returning to Scotland, he associated chiefly with the members of the legal profession, among whom he had been brought up, and seems to have been very popular; but his chief interests were literary.
He was long in intimate relations with Lord Kames and David Hume, and the three were regarded in Edinburgh as a committee of taste in literary matters, from whose judgment there was no appeal.
He was the early patron of Dr. Robertson, and of John Home, the tragic poet, both of whom were at one time ministers of country parishes near his seat in East Lothian.[2]
Upon the accession of George III, Elibank, like many other Jacobites, rallied to the house of Hanover; and when Lord Bute came into power it was determined to bring him into the House of Lords.
This plan was, however, foiled by a severely sarcastic article by John Wilkes in the North Briton on his presumed services to the Pretender.
Wilkes had been an unsuccessful candidate for the governorship of Canada when that office was conferred on Elibank's brother, General James Murray.[2]
Thoughts on Money Circulation and Paper Currency, Edinburgh, 1758.
Queries relating to the proposed Plan of altering the Entails in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1765.
Letter to Lord Hailes on his Remarks on the History of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1773.
Considerations on the present State of the Peerage of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1774, in which he attacked with much warmth the mode of electing Scottish peers to the House of Lords.
