J. D. S.
Murray, titular Earl of Dunbar (Vol. vi., p. 11.).—In correcting Lord Albemarle's mistake respecting "James Murray, titular Earl of Dunbar," your correspondent C. (2.), Portsmouth, seems to have fallen into a similar error, which I hope he will pardon me for pointing out.
The Christian name of Murray of Broughton was not James, but John; and the ancient Border family to which he belonged was so distinctly connected with that of Stormont (a branch of Tullibardine), that even genealogical tradition was silent. His activity as an agent recommended him to Prince Charles, who employed him as his secretary during the campaign of 1745, to the misfortunes of which he added by fomenting the Prince's distrust of Lord George Murray: and his final treachery to his master and his cause has condemned him to an immortality of infamy. He had nothing in common with "James Earl of Dunbar," save the name which he disgraced and the cause which he betrayed.
James Murray, second son of Lord Stormont, and elder brother of the famous Lord Mansfield, escaped to the court of the exiled Stuarts after 1715. He became governor to the prince; and under the title of Earl of Dunbar, chief minister and secretary to his father. He never returned to Scotland, but died in 1770 at Avignon, at the age of eighty. His honorable fidelity to a ruined cause is admitted even by Junius, when, "willing to wound," he taunts Mansfield with this Jacobite connexion; while the intensity of loathing with which Scotland viewed his infamous namesake is illustrated by the anecdote of old Walter Scott throwing the cup out of the window, lest "lip of him, or his, should come after John Murray of Broughton."
D. B.
Balfour.
Loggerheads (Vol. v., p. 338.).—As I do not find that any correspondent of "N. & Q." on the subject of the sign of "We Three" has mentioned the existence of a similar sign in a small village in Denbighshire, on the border of Flintshire, to which a curious tradition is attached, I am induced to forward the account of it. The last years of Wilson, the landscape painter (who died in 1782), were passed at a house called Clomendu, the dove-cote, situated on a property to which he had succeeded in the little village of Llanoerris, through which the high road from Mold, his burial-place, to Ruthin passes. Wilson was fond of ale, and is
traditionally said to have frequented a small inn close by the roadside (on the right hand as you pass through the village from Mold towards the vale of Clwyd), and to have spent many an hour upon the bench under a tree which was lately, and is perhaps still standing opposite. His friend the landlord, wanting a new sign, or more probably a restoration of the old established one, Wilson painted for him the heads of two very merry red-faced men, who are looking hard, with a broad grin, towards the spectator. Long exposure to the wind and weather had, when I saw them, nearly obliterated the original colouring of the heads, and I have heard that some Dick Tinto has of late years restored the rubicund hue to their cheeks: but the words "We Three Loggerheads Be" were quite legible ten years ago. The innkeeper, who sets a very high value on this sign, is, I believe, a son of the man for whom Wilson painted it. It is not attached to a pole, but fastened against the front of the inn: and a few years ago, an idea prevailing that "The Loggerheads" had been painted on the back of an unfinished landscape, an artist offered the innkeeper a sum of money to be allowed to take it down, and ascertain the fact. But it was indignantly refused, with a protest that the sign which Wilson had painted should never be removed from its place, as long as he lived.
Cambrensis.
Lord Nelson and Walter Burke (Vol. vi., p. 576.).—An obituary memoir of Mr. Burke appears in the Examiner for October 1, 1815.