(1746 - 84), o. dau. of William Murray, Laird of Touchadam and Polmaise; m. 1769 Filippo, Marchese di Accaromboni.
1768 - 84 Florence (by Mar. 1768), Rome (by Aug.), Naples, Rome (by Jan. 1769 - 1784)
In 1762 Peggy Murray became engaged to the traveller and explorer James Bruce, who was in Africa from 1763 to 1773. In 1768 she came out to Italy with her brother William. In March they had 'been this good while at Florence' and were 'soon expected' in Rome but, wrote Margaret Forbes, 'I hear that they are to make no stay but are to proceed to Naples'.1 In August they went to 'Caprasonti, 36 miles from Rome', with the Abb? Grant, who thought that Miss Murray was very well, and 'grown much plumper since she went to the country'.2 In January 1769 she was about to become a Catholic in order to marry the Marchese Accaromboni. By 15 February she was converted, thereby, wrote Alessandro Verri, gaining eternal and temporal life, for with her fragile health she could not survive in England, but now with her dowry of 9,000 scudi she married a very good man who is just as rich.3
At Easter 1769 'Margarita Sorella Cattolica' aged twenty-four was living in the Via Babuino with her brother Thomas [sic] Murray ('Tommaso Morai Scozzese Protestante' aged twenty-six).4 In September 1769 the Abb? Grant returned 'from the country' with Margaret Murray, the new wife of the Marchese Filippo Accaromboni, whom he called her music teacher.5 The next month she was 'in great good health and looks' and had promised to sit for the young Scottish painter Anne Forbes.6 In November 1771 Mrs Home remarked on Accaromboni's wealth and said the Marchesa was 'so fat, so terribly with child from top to toes'.7
James Bruce, her quondam fianc?, had meanwhile returned to Italy from his voyages in 1773 and was surprised to discover that Margaret had married; she fainted at the sight of him. Bruce, a huge man, demanded satisfaction from Accaromboni who protested 'you were entirely unknown to me', and honour was thereby satisfied.8 In the late 1770s the Marchesa sat to Batoni (Sotheby's, 13 Jul. 1994) and she and her husband remained accommodating hosts to British and particularly Scottish visitors in Rome. But it seems the Marchesa never quite recovered from the reappearance of James Bruce, and she died at the comparatively early age of thirty-eight; their daughter was then placed in a convent in Rome.9
1. Forbes MSS (1 Mar. 1768). 2. Ibid. (19 Aug. 1768). 3. Verri, Cart., 2:139, 167 (18 Jan., 15 Feb. 1769). 4. AVR sa, S.Maria del Popolo. 5. Thorpe letters MSS (4 Jul. 1769*). 6. Forbes MSS (Mrs Forbes, 29 Aug. 1769). 7. Home (Mrs Jane) jnl.MSS (19 Nov. 1771). 8. A. Murray ed., Travels to the Source of the Nile [1805], 1:cccxxii - v (letter of 30 Nov. 1773). 9. Skinner, Scots in Italy, 6, and notes.