On 21 May 1650 James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, the chief Royalist military commander in Scotland, died.
Graham had originally been one of the nobles to draw up the National Covenant in 1638, however he became concerned about the opposite extreme, a Protestant oligarchy led by Archibald Campbell, the 8th Earl of Argyll, who imprisoned Graham in 1640. Graham therefore sided with the King against the Covenanting Army under Argyll, which was allied to the English army under Oliver Cromwell. Graham showed himself to be a remarkable tactician, winning six successive battles at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth, before being defeated by David Leslie at Philiphaugh. He escaped to continental Europe. Shocked at the execution of Charles I, he returned to avenge the old King and support the young King Charles II, but his small force was defeated at Carbisdale. He was betrayed by MacLeod of Assynt, captured, hung, quartered and his head impaled on a stake at the Mercat Cross on Edinburgh's Royal Mile. He was reburied in St. Giles Kirk some eleven years after this terrible execution and his grave was marked in 1888 with a monument by Robert Rowand Anderson.
