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James Holborne of Menstrie


Major General Sir James Holborne of Menstrie was a Scottish soldier during the years of the English Civil War. Although he initially fought on the side of the English Parliament, he later became a senior officer in the Scottish Army, fighting against Cromwell. He lived at Menstrie Castle, in Menstrie, Clackmannanshire, central Scotland, which he had purchased in 1649.

James Holborne led a brigade of infantry in the Parliamentarian army of the Earl of Essex at the first Battle of Newbury in 1643. He was with Sir William Waller's army at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge on 29 June 1644. At Stowe St Mary, near , in January 1645, Sydenham House, a large Elizabethan mansion on the banks of the River Lyd, then being garrisoned for the King, was taken by Colonel Holborne. In April that year, Holborne was offered command of a regiment of foot in the New Model Army, but like several prominent Scottish and Presbyterian officers, he declined.

Holborne was a Major General by 1645, when he was nominated, with the Earl of Leven, and Lord Kirkcudbright, as a deputation from the Convention of Estates, the most powerful party in Scotland at that time, to open negotiations with Oliver Cromwell, whose army was then at Berwick. On 4 October 1648 Cromwell made his first visit to Edinburgh. The Lord Kirkcudbright and Major General Holborne conducted him into the city, where he was lodged in the Earl of Moray's house in the Canongate.


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