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James Murray (ca 1721-1794) was a British military officer, colonial administrator and governor of Quebec. Murray commanded a battalion in the 1758 siege of Louisbourg and served under General James Wolfe at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759. He was the military commander of Quebec City after it fell to the British.
Murray led the British army on April 28, 1759 at the Battle of Sainte-Foy, on the same ground as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham had been fought the year before. He was defeated by the French army under Levis in a hard fought battle. Afterwards one of the officers of the 78th Fraser Highlanders, who had been wounded at the battle of Culloden in 1746 while serving under Lord Murray, Prince Charles Stuart's general, remarked "From April battles and Murray generals Lord save me". James Murray heard the remark, but took it in good heart.
In October 1760, he became military governor of the district of Quebec and became the first civil governor of Quebec in 1764. As governor he was sympathetic to the French-Canadians favouring them over English merchants who came to settle in the wake of the conquest and allowed the continuance of French civil law. The dissatisfaction of English settlers led to his recall in 1766 (however he remained governor in name until 1768) but his precedents were preserved in the Quebec Act.
Murray was lieutenant-governor and then governor of Minorca from 1774 to 1782 leading an unsuccessful defence of the colony against attack by French and Spaniard forces.
See also: List of Governors General of Canada and List of Lieutenant Governors of Quebec
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