Family and Education

b. c.1720, o. surv. s. of Col. Sir Robert Munro, 6th Bt.. educ. Westminster 1734-6; Leyden 1736; Doddridge’s acad. at Northampton 1737-?9. m. 13 Jan. 1753, Anne, da. of Hugh Rose, M.P., of Kilravock, Nairn, 3s. 2da. suc. fa. 17 Jan. 1746.

Offices Held

Capt. Loudoun’s regt. of Ft. 1745, half-pay 1748; chamberlain of Ross 1747-d.

Biography

Munro, a staunch Presbyterian and Hanoverian, like the rest of his family, was educated at a nonconformist school in Northampton, kept by his father’s friend, Dr. Doddridge, who subsequently published an account of the family. In May 1745 he wrote from London to Duncan Forbes, asking him to support his father, then commanding the Black Watch in Flanders, for the county seat, vacated by the death of Charles Ross at Fontenoy in April. ‘By a seat in Parliament my father may be able ... to procure me a civil post’.1 On the outbreak of the Forty-five, in which his father was killed at Falkirk and his uncle assassinated by the rebels, Munro, having obtained a captain’s commission in a newly raised regiment, joined Sir John Cope with his company. Captured at Prestonpans, he returned after Culloden to Ross-shire, where he was active in rounding up rebel Mackenzies and supplying lists of the disaffected. Elected for Ross-shire in December 1746, he was rewarded for his services in reporting on rebel activities in the county2 by a local office worth £S1,000 or £83.6s.8d. sterling p.a. His anti-Jacobite zeal did not prevent him from paying a visit, accompanied by Sir Ludovick Grant, to Lord Lovat on the eve of his execution, when ‘they advised him to beware of giving offence by his last words lest it should hinder the mercy towards his son’, for whose pardon they subsequently interceded with Newcastle, offering to stand bail for him, if released.3

Under Pelham’s plan for the 1747 Parliament Munro exchanged Ross-shire for Tain Burghs, where Sir John Gordon raised an unexpected but unsuccessful opposition.4 In the debate of 17 Mar. 1752, on the forfeited estates bill, Hardwicke suggested that any surplus money might be used to compensate loyalists: ‘Could a nobler use be made of it than in rewarding Sir Harry Munro, who and whose family had done and had suffered so much for the service of the Crown?’ In February 1754 the Exchequer of Scotland was ordered to issue £5,000 out of Lord Elcho’s forfeited estates to pay off the debts encumbering the Munro estates, any surplus being allocated to Munro personally.5 Re-elected at the general election that year, he retired in 1761. He died 12 June 1781.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Edith Lady Haden-Guest

Notes

• 1. More Culloden Pprs. iii. 235-7.
• 2. Yorke, Hardwicke, i. 449; Munro to Loudoun, 4 Aug. 1746, Loudoun mss; see More Culloden Pprs. v. 159.
• 3. HMC Laing, ii. 392; Munro to ? Stone, 2 July 1747, Add. 32712, f. 11.
• 4. Andrew Fletcher to Pelham, 21 July 1747, Newcastle (Clumber) mss.
• 5. Walpole, Mems. Geo. II, i. 271; T17/16, 159.