MUNRO, frequently
spelled Monro, and sometimes with a final e at both forms of the
surname, the name of a clan (in Gaelic Clann roich of Rothich) whose
possessions, situated on the north side of the firth of Cromarty, were
generally known in the Highlands by the name of Fearrann Donull or
Donald’s country, being so called from the progenitor of the clan,
Donald the son of O’Ceann, who lived in the time of Macbeth. The
Monroe’s were vassals of the earls of Ross, and may be regarded as a
portion of the native Scottish Gael. According to Sir George Mackenzie,
they came originally from the north of Ireland with the Macdonalds, on
which great clan “they had constantly a depending.” Their name he states
to have been derived from “a mount on the river roe,” county Derry. Clan
tradition, however, holds that they formed a branch of the natives of
Scotland who, about 357, being driven out by the Romans, and forced to
take refuge in Ireland, were located for several centuries on the stream
of the Roe, and among the adjacent mountains. In the time of Malcolm
II., or beginning of the 11th century, the ancestors of the Munroes are
said to have come over to Scotland to aid in expelling the Danes, under
the above-named Donald son of O’Ceann, who, for his services, received
the lands of East Dingwall in Ross-shire. These lands, erected into a
barony, were denominated Foulis, from Loch Foyle in Ireland, and the
chief of the clan was designated of Foulis, his residence in the parish
of Kiltearn, near the mountain called Ben Uaish or Benwyvis.
Another conjecture as to
the origin of the name of Munro is that from having acted as baillifs or
stewards to the lords of the Isles in the earldom of Ross, they were
called “Munrosses.” Skene ranks the clan as members of a great family
called the Siol O’Cain, and makes them out to be a branch of the clan
Chattan, by converting O’Cain into O’Cathan, and thus forming Chattan.
Sir George Mackenzie says the name originally was Bunroe.
Hugh Munro, the first of
the family authentically designated of Foulis, died in 1126. He seems to
have been the grandson of Donald, the son of O’Ceann above mentioned.
Robert, reckoned the second baron of Foulis, was actively engaged in the
wars of David I. and Malcolm IV. Donald, heir of Robert, built the old
tower of Fowlis. His successor, Robert, married a daughter of the earl
of Sutherland. George, fifth baron of Foulis, obtained charters from
Alexander II. Soon after the accession of Alexander III., an
insurrection broke out against the earl of Ross, the feudal superior of
the Munroes, by the clans Ivor, Talvigh and Laiwe, and other people of
the province. The earl having apprehended their leader, and imprisoned
him at Dingwall, the insurgents seized upon his second son at Balnagowan,
and detained him as an hostage till their leader should be released. The
Munroes and the Dingwalls immediately took up arms, and setting off in
pursuit, overtook the insurgents at Bealligh-ne-Broig, between
Ferrandonald and Loch-Broom, where a sanguinary conflict took place.
“The clan Iver, clan Talvigh, and clan Laiwe,” says Sir Robert Gordon,
“wer almost uterlie extinguished and slain.” The Munroes and Dingwalls
lost a great many men. Dingwall of Kildun, and seven score of the
surname of Dingwall were killed. No less than eleven Munroes of the
house of Foulis who were to succeed one after another, fell in this
battle, so that the succession of Foulis opened to an infant “then lying
in his cradle.” The earl’s son was rescued, and to requite the service
performed he made various grants of land to the Munroes and Dingwalls.
The child lying in his
cradle was afterwards Sir Robert Munro, the sixth of his house. He
fought in the army of Bruce at the battle of Bannockburn. His only son,
George, fell there, leaving an heir, who succeeded his grandfather. This
George Munro of Foulis was slain at Halidonhill in 1333. The same year,
according to Sir Robert Gordon, although Shaw makes the date 1454, the
following remarkable event occurred in the clan history: John Munro, the
tutor of Foulis, in traveling homeward from Edinburgh to Ross, stopped
in a meadow in Strathardie that he and his servants might obtain some
rest. While they were asleep, the owner of the meadow cut off the tails
of their horses. To revenge this insult, on his return to Ross, he
summoned his whole kinsmen and followers, and having selected 350 of the
best men amongst them, he returned to Strathardie, which he wasted and
spoiled; killing some of the inhabitants and carrying off their cattle.
In passing by the castle of Moy, on his way home, the laird of Macintosh
sent a message to him demanding a share of the spoil, This was customary
among the Highlanders when a party drove cattle so taken through a
gentleman’s land, and the part so exacted was called a Dyspoh Rathaid,
or Staoig Creich, that is, a road collop. Munro offered Macintosh a
reasonable share of the booty, but the latter would not accept of less
than the half. This Munro refused, and drove off the cattle. Collecting
his clansmen, Macintosh went in pursuit of him, and came up with him at
Clach-na-haire, near Inverness. On perceiving his approach, Munro sent
home fifty of his men with the cattle, and in the contest that ensued,
Macintosh and the greater part of his men were killed. Several of the
Munroes were also slain, and John Munro himself was left for dead on the
field of battle, when Lord Lovat had him carried to his house in the
neighbourhood, where he was cured of his wounds. One of his hands was so
mutilated, that he lost the use of it, on which account he was
afterwards called John Bac-Laimb, or Ciotach. The Munroes had great
advantage of the ground, by taking up a position among rocks, from which
they annoyed the Macintoshes with their arrows.
Robert, the eighth baron
of Foulis, married a niece of Euphame, daughter of the earl of Ross, and
queen of Robert II. He was killed in an obscure skirmish in 1369, and
was succeeded by his son, Hugh, ninth baron of Foulis, who joined
Donald, second lord of the Isles, when he claimed the earldom of Ross in
right of his wife. The decisive battle of Harlaw, in 1411, put an end to
his pretensions.
The forfeiture of the
earldom of Ross in 1476, made the Munroes and other vassal families
independent of any superior but the crown. In the charters which the
family of Foulis obtained from the Scottish kings, at various times,
they were declared to hold their lands on the singular tenure of
furnishing a ball of snow at Midsummer if required, which the hollows in
their mountain property could at all times supply; and it is said that
when the duke of Cumberland proceeded north against the Pretender in
1746, the Munroes actually sent him some snow to cool his wines. In one
charter, the addendum was a pair of white gloves or three pennies.
In 1497, when Sir
Alexander Macdonald of Lochalsh a second time invaded Ross, he was
encountered by the Munroes and the Mackenzies, at a place called
Drumchatt, where, after a sharp skirmish, he and his followers were
again routed, and driven out of the country. In 1502, a commission was
given to the earl of Huntly, the Lord Lovat, and William Munro, twelfth
baron of Foulis, to proceed to Lochaber, and let the king’s lands of
Lochaber and Mamore, for the space of five years, to true men. Sir
William Munro of Foulis was nominated justiciary of Inverness by James
IV. He fell in battle in 1505. In 1514 Munro of Foulis and Mackenzie of
Kintail were appointed lieutenants pro tempore of Wester Ross. Robert,
the 14th baron, fell at the battle of Pinkie in 1547. Robert More Munro,
the fifteenth chief, was a faithful friend of Mary, queen of Scots.
Buchanan states that when that unfortunate princess went to Inverness in
1562, “as soon as they heard of their sovereign’s danger, a great number
of the most eminent Scots poured in around her, especially the Frasers
and Munroes, who were esteemed the most valiant of the clans inhabiting
those countries.” These two clans took for the queen Inverness castle,
which had refused her admission.
With the Mackenzies the
Munroes were often at feud, and Andrew Munro of Milntown defended, for
three years, the castle of the canonry of Ross, which he had received
from the regent Moray in 1569, against the clan Kenzie, at the expense
of many lives on both sides. It was, however, afterwards delivered up to
the Mackenzies under the act of pacification.
The chief, Robert More
Munro, became a protestant at an early period of the Scottish
Reformation. Of the family of Foulis, there is a sketch appended to Dr.
Doddridge’s well-known ‘Life of Colonel Gardiner,’ and Robert More Munro
is there described as “a wise and good man, who left an opulent estate
to the family.” James IV. granted to him a lease of certain crown
customs or dues in the shires of Inverness, Ross, Sutherland, and
Caithness. He died in 1588. His son, Robert, sixteenth baron of Foulis,
died, without issue, in July 1589, and was succeeded by his brother,
Hector Munro, seventeenth baron of Foulis. The latter died 14th November
1603.
Hector’s eldest son,
Robert Munro, eighteenth chief of Foulis, styled “the Black Baron,” was
the first of his house who engaged in the religious wars of Gustavus
Adolphus, in the seventeenth century. In 1626 he went over with the
Scottish corps of Sir Donald Mackay, first Lord Reay, accompanied by six
other officers of his name and near kindred. Doddridge says of him, that
“the worthy Scottish gentleman was so struck with a regard to the common
cause, in which he himself had no concern but what piety and virtue gave
him, that he joined Gustavus with a great number of his friends who bore
his own name. Many of them gained great reputation in this war, and that
of Robert their leader was so eminent that he was made colonel of two
regiments at the same time, the one of horse, the other of foot in that
service.” In 1629 the laird of Foulis raised a reinforcement of 700 men
on his own lands, and at a later period joined Gustavus with them. The
officers of Mackays and Munro’s Highland regiments who served under
Gustavus Adolphus, in addition to rich buttons, were a gold chain round
their necks, to secure the owner, in case of being wounded or taken
prisoner, good treatment, or payment for future ransom.
The “Black Baron” died at
Ulm, from a wound in his foot, in the year 1633, and leaving no male
issue, he was succeeded by his brother, Hector Munro, nineteenth baron
of Foulis, who had also distinguished himself in the German wars, and
who, on his return to Britain, was created by Charles I., a baronet of
Nova Scotia, 7th June 1634. He married Mary, daughter of Hugh Mackay of
Farr, and dying in 1635, in Germany, was succeeded by his only son, Sir
Hector, second baronet, who died, unmarried, in 1651, at the age of 17.
The title and property devolved on his cousin, Robert Munro of Opisdale,
grandson of George, third son of the fifteenth baron of Foulis. His
uncle, colonel Robert Monro, who also served with reputation in the
German wars, was author of a work, entitled, “Munro, his Expedition with
the worthy Scots regiment called Mackay’s, in the wars of Gustavus
Adolphus of Sweden,’ &c., published at London in 1657, folio; a work
which Sir Walter Scott acknowledges having suggested to him the
character of the renowned Soldado, Dugald Dalgetty. In the service of
Gustavus, there were at one time not less than “three generals, eight
colonels, five lieutenant-colonels, eleven majors, and above thirty
captains, all of the name of Munro, besides a great number of
subalterns.”
During the civil wars at
home, when Charles I. called to his aid some of the veteran officers who
had served in Germany, this Colonel Robert Munro was one of them. He was
employed chiefly in Ireland from 1641 to 1645, when he was surprised and
taken prisoner personally by General Monk. While in Ireland he published
‘Relation of the proceedings of the Scottish army in Ireland, in Three
Letters, sent to General Leslie,’ London, 1642, 4to; and ‘Letter of
great consequence to the Committee for Irish affairs in England,
concerning the state of the rebellion there,’ London, 1643, 4to. His
nephew, colonel Sir George Munro, succeeded him in the Irish command. He
was subsequently lieutenant-general of the royalist troops in Scotland,
when he fought a duel with the earl of Glencairn. Afterwards he joined
Charles II. in Holland. At the Revolution he was appointed
commander-in-chief of the forces in Scotland.
Sir Robert Munro, third
baronet of Foulis, died in 1688, and was succeeded by his eldest son,
Sir John, fourth baronet, who, in the Scottish convention of estates,
proved himself to be a firm supporter of the Revolution. He was such a
strenuous advocate of Presbyterianism, that, being a man of large frame,
he was usually called “the Presbyterian mortar-piece.” In the Stuart
persecutions, previous to his succession to the title, he had, for his
adherence to the covenant, been both fined and imprisoned by the
tyrannical government that then ruled in Scotland. He died in 1696. His
son, Sir Robert, fifth baronet, though blind, was appointed by George I.
high sheriff of Ross, by commission, under the great seal, dated 9th
June 1725. He married Jean, daughter of John Forbes of Culloden, and
died in 1729.
His eldest son, Sir
Robert, twenty-seventh baron and sixth baronet of Foulis, a gallant
military officer, was the companion in arms of Colonel Gardiner, and
fell at the battle of Falkirk, 17th January 1746. “He went early,” says
Dr. Doddridge, “from the university to the camp, and served seven years
in Flanders, being some time captain in the Royal Scots. It was here
that he contracted that acquaintance and strict friendship with good
Colonel Gardiner, which ran through the remainder of their lives.” In
the rebellion of 1715, when the majority of the Highlanders espoused the
cause of the exiled family, the Munroes, like the Mackays and Rosses,
joined the government forces. On his return from Flanders, Sir Robert,
with his clan, assisted the earl of Sutherland in retarding, for nearly
two months, the march of the earl of Seaforth, with 3,000 men, to the
rebel camp at Perth, and thereby prevented the earl of Mar from crossing
the Forth, till the duke of Argyle had gathered sufficient strength to
oppose him. In 1716, Sir Robert was made a commissioner of inquiry into
the forfeited estates, and we are informed by Dr. Doddridge, that by his
interest with the government, he did eminent service to the unfortunate
widows and children of such as had, to the ruin of their families, been
engaged in the rebellion. He was for 30 years a member of parliament.
From the termination of his commission of inquiry in 1724 till 1740, he
had no post under government.
In May 1740, when the
Independent companies were formed into the 43d Highland regiment, Sir
Robert Munro was appointed lieutenant-colonel, John earl of Crawfurd and
Lindsay being its colonel. Among the captains were his next brother,
George Munro of Culcairn, and John Munro, promoted to be
lieutenant-colonel in 1745. The surgeon of the regiment was his youngest
brother, Dr. James Munro. Embarking for Flanders, the 43d was engaged in
the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. The Highlanders on this occasion were
commanded by Sir Robert, in whom, besides great military experience,
were united all the best qualities of the soldier. Aware of the
importance of allowing his men to follow their accustomed tactics, he
obtained leave of the duke of Cumberland to allow them to fight in their
own way. He accordingly, says Dr. Doddridge, “ordered the whole regiment
‘to clap to the ground’ on receiving the French fire; and instantly
after its discharge they sprang up, and coming close to the enemy,
poured in their shot upon them to the certain destruction of multitudes,
and drove them precipitately through their lines; then retreating, drew
up again, and attacked them a second time after the same manner. These
attacks they repeated several times the same day, to the surprise of the
whole army. Sir Robert was everywhere with his regiment, notwithstanding
his great corpulency, and when in the trenches he was hauled out by the
legs and arms by his own men; and it is observed that when he commanded
the whole regiment ‘to clap to the ground,’ he himself alone, with the
colours behind him, stood upright, receiving the whole fire of the
enemy; and this because, as he said, though he could easily lie down,
his great bulk would not suffer him to rise so quickly. His preservation
that day was the surprise and astonishment not only of the whole army,
but of all that heard the particulars of the action.” Sir Robert was
subsequently appointed to the command of General Ponsonby’s regiment,
that general having been slain at Fontenoy. It was ordered to Scotland
during the rebellion, and made part of the left wing of the royal army
at the battle of Falkirk, 17th January, 1746. His regiment partook of
the panic which had seized the other regiments on the left, and fled,
leaving its colonel alone and unprotected. In this situation, Sir Robert
was attacked by six men of Lochiel’s regiment, and, for some time,
gallantly defended himself with his halfpike. He killed two of his
assailants, and would probably have dispatched more, had not a seventh
come up and shot him in the groin with a pistol. On falling, the
Highlander struck him two blows across the face with his broadsword,
which killed him on the spot. Dr. Munro of Opisdale, his brother, who
had attended him to the field, was standing close beside him when he
fell, and shared his fate, at the hands of the same Highlander, who,
after firing another pistol into his breast, cut him down with his
claymore. The bodies of the two brothers having been recognized the next
day, were honourably interred in one grave in the churchyard of Falkirk
in presence of all the chiefs.
The fate of Sir Robert’s
other brother, Captain George Munro of Culcairn, was peculiar. He was
shot on the shores of Loch Arkaig, on the Lord’s day, 31st Aug., 1746,
amongst the wild rocks of Lochaber, by one of the rebels named Dugald
Roy Cameron, or, as he is still styled in tradition, Du Rhu. After the
rebellion, an order was issued to the Highlanders to deliver up their
arms. Dugald, accordingly, sent his son to Fort-William with his arms to
be delivered up. When proceeding down Loch Arkaig, the young man was met
by an officer of the name of Grant, who was conducting a party of
military into Knoydart, and being immediately seized, was ordered to be
shot on the spot. His father swore to be revenged, and learning that the
officer rode a white horse, he watched his return behind a rock, on a
height above Loch Arkaig. Captain Munro had unfortunately borrowed the
white horse on which Grant rode, and he met the fate which was intended
for Grant. Dugald Roy escaped at the time, and afterwards became a
soldier in the British service.
Sir Robert left a son,
Sir Harry Munro, 7th baronet and 25th baron of Foulis, an eminent
scholar and M.P. The friend of Ruddiman, he is mentioned as having
criticized Buchanan’s Latin edition of the Psalms elaborately. He died
in 1781.
His son, Sir Hugh, 8th
baronet, had only a daughter, Mary Seymour Munro, who died January 12,
1849.
On his decease, May 2, 1848, his kinsman, Sir Charles, became 9th
baronet and 27th baron of Foulis; eldest son of George Munro, Esq. of
Culrain, Ross-shire (who died in 1845), and lineal male descendant of
Lieutenant-general Sir George Munro, next brother to the 3d baronet of
this family. Born May 20, 1795, and educated at Edinburgh, he early
entered the army, and served under Wellington in the Peninsula and in
France, and received a medal and six clasps. In 1817 he commanded the
1st regiment of English lancers in the service of Venezuela, and in 1818
was made general in the Columbian army by Bolivar. He married 1st, in
1817, Amelia, daughter of Frederick Browne, Esq., 14th dragoons; issue,
5 sons and 2 daughters; 2dly, in 1853, Harriette, daughter of Robert
Midgley, Esq. of Essington, Yorkshire. Charles, the eldest son, born in
1824, married in 1847, with issue.
The military strength of
the Munroes in 1715 was 400, and in 1745, 500 men; badge, the common
club moss, The clan slogan or battle cry was “Caisteal Foulis na theine”
– Castle Foulis in flames.
____
The family of Munro of
Lindertis, Forfarshire, possesses a baronetcy of the United Kingdom,
conferred in 1825 on Major-general Sir Thomas Munro, who distinguished
himself by his services in India, and of whom a memoir is given below.
On his death, July 6, 1827, his eldest son, Sir Thomas, born in 1819,
formerly captain 10th hussars, became the 2d baronet. Heir presumptive,
his brother, Campbell, captain grenadier guards, born in 1823; married.
There are also the family
of Munro of Teaninich, county Ross, a branch of the house of Foulis;
Munro of Novar, county Ross, and Munro of Poyntsfield, county Cromarty,
besides other respectable families of the name.
_____
Donald Munro, or Monro,
dean of the Isles, was the author of a ‘Description of the Hybrides, or
Western Iles;’ a little work which is mentioned with praise by Buchanan.
It was published in 1774, and reprinted in 1805 and 1818.
MUNRO, SIR THOMAS, a distinguished civil and military officer in
India, was born at Glasgow, May 27, 1761; being the second son of
Alexander Munro, a once affluent merchant in that city, and his wife,
Margaret, daughter of Thomas Stark. He was educated for the mercantile
profession, but his father having become involved in his circumstances,
in consequence of the revolt of the North American colonies of Great
Britain, with which he principally traded, young Munro, in the end of
1779, proceeded to Madras as an infantry cadet, in the service of the
East India Company. His conduct, during Lord Cornwallis’ Mysore war
against Hyder Ali, attracted the notice of government, and after he had
been promoted to the rank of lieutenant, his talents and discretion
obtained for him, in August 1788, the appointment of assistant in the
Intelligence Department. In this capacity he served under the orders of
Captain Alexander Read, in the occupation of the ceded district of
Guntoor, until the breaking out of the war with Tippoo Saib in 1790,
when he again took the field with the army, and remained with it till
the hollow peace of 1792.
On the cession by Tippoo
of the Baramahl, he was again employed under Captain Read, in the civil
administration of that district till 1799. In the ensuing campaign
Captain Munro served in the army of Lord Harris, as secretary to his
friend, now Colonel Read, who commanded a detached force; and, after the
fall of Seringapatam, he was appointed, with Captain, afterwards Sir
John Malcolm, joint secretary to the commissioners for the settlement of
Mysore. Soon after he was nominated by Lord Mornington (afterwards the
Marquis Wellesley), then governor-general of India, to the charge of the
civil administration of Canara, a wild and rugged province on the
western or Malabar coast of the peninsula.
In May 1800 Munro was
promoted to the rank of major, and having established order and
tranquility in Canara, he applied for and obtained the superintendence
of the extensive and valuable province ceded by the Nizam in commutation
of his subsidy; and in this new field, where he continued for seven
years, he not only achieved the complete organization of a disturbed and
barbarous territory, but so far gained the confidence and good will of
the inhabitants as to be styled by them “The Father of the People.”
In 1804 he obtained the
rank of lieutenant-colonel; and in 1808, after twenty-eight years’
uninterrupted service in India, he revisited his native country. On the
renewal of the Company’s charter, he was, for many days consecutively,
examined before a committee of the House of Commons. In 1813 he attained
the full rank of colonel, and in 1814 he married Jane, daughter of
Richard Campbell, Esq. of Craigie, Ayrshire, by whom he had two sons,
Thomas and Campbell. In the latter year he returned to Madras, at the
head of a commission of inquiry into the judicial administration of our
Eastern dominions, for which his vigorous and comprehensive
understanding, his long and extensive experience, and his habits of
laborious research rendered him peculiarly qualified.
In the war with the
Pindarries and Mahrattas in 1817 and the following year, he greatly
distinguished himself. Being in the neighbourhood of Soondoor, where he
had been sent as commissioner to take charge of the districts ceded to
the Company by the Peishwa, he was appointed by Lieutenant-general Sir
Thomas Hislop to undertake the reduction of the rebellious feudatory of
Soondoor, and shortly after he was vested with a separate command of the
reserve, with the rank of brigadier-general, under orders from the
marquis of Hastings. With a very inadequate force he immediately entered
upon active measures, and fortress after fortress was surrendered at his
approach. Mr. Canning, in moving, March 4, 1819, the thanks of the House
of Commons to the marquis of Hastings and the army in India for their
splendid services in the war of 1817 and 1818, thus describes the
conduct of Munro on the occasion:--
"To give some notion of
the extent of country over which these actions were distributed, the
distance between the most northern and most southern of the captured
fortresses is not less than 700 miles. At the southern extremity of this
long line of operations, and in a part of the campaign carried on in a
district far from public gaze, and without opportunities of early and
special notice, was employed a man whose name I should have been sorry
to have passed over in silence. I allude to colonel Thomas Munro, a
gentleman of whose rare qualifications the late House of Commons had
opportunities of judging when he was examined at their bar, on the
renewal of the East India Company’s charter, and than whom England never
produced a more accomplished statesman, nor India, fertile as it is in
heroes, a more skilful soldier. This gentleman, whose occupations for
some time past have been rather of a civil and administrative than of a
military nature, was called, early in the war, to exercise abilities
which, though dormant, had not rusted from disuse. He went into the
field with not more than 500 or 600 men, of whom a very small proportion
were Europeans, and marched into the Mahratta territories, to take
possession of the country which had been ceded to us by the treaty of
Poona. The population which he subdued by arms, he managed with such
address, equity, and wisdom, that he established an empire over their
hearts and feelings. Nine forts were surrendered to him, or taken by
assault on his way; and at the end of a silent and scarcely observed
progress, he emerged from a territory heretofore hostile to the British
interest, with an accession instead of a diminution of force, leaving
everything secure and tranquil behind him.”
At the conclusion of the
war, Colonel Munro resigned his military command, and, accompanied by
his family, again visited England, where he arrived in 1819. In November
of that year he was invested with the insignia of a knight companion of
the Bath. In 1820, with the rank of major-general, he returned to Madras
as governor of that presidency; and, as a farther reward of his
distinguished services, he was created a baronet of the United Kingdom,
June 30, 1825. The Burmese war prevented him from retiring from India so
early as he wished; and, sacrificing his personal wishes and convenience
to the public service, he retained his office till its conclusion. At
length, in 1827, he made every arrangement for returning to enjoy his
well-earned honours in his native land, and before his departure
proceeded to pay a farewell visit to the people of the Ceded Districts,
for whom he had continued to feel a strong interest, but was attacked on
July 5 with cholera, then prevalent in the country, and expired on the
6th at Putteecondah, near Gooty, where he lies interred. “There was
something exceedingly solemn and touching in the funeral,” says a
gentleman who was present on the occasion. “The situation of the
churchyard; the melancholy sound of the minute guns reverberating among
the hills; the grand and frowning appearance of the fortress towering
above the Gour, all tended to make the awful ceremony more impressive.”
An equestrian statue, by Chantrey, has been erected to his memory at
Madras. In 1830 was published ‘The Life of Sir Thomas Munro, with
Extracts from his Correspondence and Private Papers. By the Rev. G. R.
Gleig,’ 3 vols.
Sir Thomas Munro
In the Extraordinary
Gazette issued at Madras, after his death, the following tribute was
paid to his merits. After stating that he had been more than 47 years in
the service of the East India Company, it continues, “From the earliest
period of his service, he was remarkable among other men. His sound and
vigorous understanding, his transcendent talents, his indefatigable
application, his varied stores of knowledge, his attainments as an
Oriental scholar, his intimate acquaintance with the habits and feelings
of the native soldiers, and inhabitants generally, his patience, temper,
facility of access, and kindness of manner, would have insured him
distinction in any line of employment. These qualities were admirably
adapted to the duties which he had to perform in those provinces where
he had long been known by the appellation of Father of the people.” |