the supplies needed for the troops, Murray
is reported to have replied ‘Historians will
say that the British Army … carried on war
in Spain and Portugal until they had eaten all
the beef and mutton in the country and were
then compelled to withdraw’. In this post he
would have been working alongside Beckwith,
who in 1812 became Deputy assistant QMG.
Along with Beckwith, Murray attended the
annual Heroes’ dinners hosted each year by
Wellington at Apsley House.
Following a period as Governor of the Royal
Military College at Sandhurst in Camberley, Surrey, Murray was, in 1824,
elected MP for Perth and from 1825 was Commander in Chief in Ireland, until
Wellington offered him the post of Secretary of State for the colonies in May
1828. A conscientious administrator, in June 1830 he was described by the
Lord Steward as ‘one of his Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State’. Under
Sir Robert Peel he served twice as Master of the General Ordnance (1834–35,
1841–46) responsible for all the army and military supplies, engineers and
fortifications – and in which he was succeeded by his brother-in-law the
Marquis of Anglesey. In 1841 he was promoted to General.
In about 1817, Murray began a relationship with Lady Louisa Erskine,
the estranged wife of his military colleague, Sir James Erskine. The latter
(conveniently) died during the divorce proceedings in 1825, but, although she
had lived with Murray from 1820, Ersk [