Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/16

This page has been validated.

in 1500; but before this date he had entered the service of Henry VII. In June 1499, being then described as prothonotary, he went on an embassy to Louis XII of France, and he, on his return, occupied the position of king's secretary (cf. Gairdner, Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII, Rolls Ser. i. 405, &c.; Cal. State Papers, Venetian, i. 795, 799). Ruthall had a long series of ecclesiastical preferments. In 1495 he had the rectory of Bocking, Essex, in 1502 he became a prebendary of Wells, and in 1503 archdeacon of Gloucester and chancellor of Cambridge University. In 1505 he was made prebendary of Lincoln, and was appointed dean there (not, as Wood says, at Salisbury). Henry VII, who had already made him a privy councillor, appointed him bishop of Durham in 1509, but died before he was consecrated. Henry VIII confirmed his appointment, and continued him in the office of secretary. He went to France with the king in 1513 with a hundred men, but was sent back to England when James IV threatened war. He took a great part in the preparations for defence, and wrote to Wolsey after Flodden. He was present at the marriage of Louis XII and the Princess Mary in 1514, and in 1516 was made keeper of the privy seal. In 1518 he was present when Wolsey was made legate, and was one of the commissioners when the Princess Mary was betrothed to the Dauphin. He was at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and was again at Calais with Wolsey in 1521. When Buckingham was examined by the king, Ruthall was present as secretary. A story is told that being asked to make up an account of the kingdom, he did so, but accidentally gave in to the king another account treating of his own property, which was very large, and that he became ill with chagrin. He was a hardworking official who did a great deal of the interviewing necessary in diplomatic negotiations. Brewer represents him as Wolsey's drudge, and Giustinian speaks of his 'singing treble to the cardinal's bass.' He died on 4 Feb. 1522-3 at Durham Place, London, and was buried in St. John's Chapel, Westminster Abbey.

Ruthall was interested in architecture. He repaired the bridge at Newcastle, and built a great chamber at Bishop Auckland. He also increased the endowment of the grammar school at Cirencester which had been established by John Chedworth, bishop of Lincoln, in 1460. It afterwards fell into difficulties when the chantry commissioners of Edward VI's day attacked its endowments, which were not fully restored till 1573.

[Cooper's Athenae Cantabr. i. 27; Wood's Athenae Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 722; Wriothesley's Chron. (Camd. Soc.) i. 12; Chron. of Calais (Camd. Soc.) pp. 12, 19, 30; Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. Gairdner (Rolls Ser.), i. 132, 405, 412, 414, ii. 338; Friedmann's Anne Boleyn, ii. 322; Leland's Itinerary, ii. 50, 51; Brewer's Henry VIII, i. 27 n.; Giustinian's Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII (ed. Rawdon Brown), i. 73 n., ii. 25 n.; Chesham's Cirencester, p. 213; Cal. State Papers, Venetian, 1509-19 passim, 1520-6 passim; in the index to Vol. i. of the Spanish Series he is confused with Fox, cf. p. 158; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vols. i. and ii.]

W. A. J. A.

RUTHERFORD, ANDREW, Earl of Teviot (d. 1664), was the only son of William Rutherford of Quarrelholes, Roxburghshire, a cadet of the Rutherfords of Hunthill, by Isabella, daughter of Sir James Stuart of Traquair. He was educated at the university of Edinburgh, and at an early period he entered the French service, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant-general. He returned to Scotland at the Restoration, and, being specially recommended by the French king to Charles II, was by patent dated Whitehall, 10 Jan. 1661, created Lord Rutherford ‘to his heirs and assignees whatsoever, and that under the provisions, restrictions, and conditions which the said Lord Rutherford should think fit.’ Soon afterwards he was appointed governor of Dunkirk, which had been captured from the Spanish in 1658, and was held in joint possession by the French and English. On the transference of the town in 1662 to Louis XII of France for 400,000l., Rutherford returned to England, and in recognition of his able services as governor he was on 2 Feb. 1663 created Earl of Teviot, with limitation to heirs male of his body. In April he was appointed colonel of the second or Tangier regiment of foot, and the same year was named governor of Tangier, where he was killed in a sally against the Moors on 4 May 1664. By his will he made provision for the erection of eight chambers in the college of Edinburgh, and gave directions that a Latin inscription which he had composed should be placed upon the building. By his death without lawful male issue the earldom of Teviot became extinct; but on 23 Dec. 1663 he had executed at Portsmouth a general settlement of his estates and dignities to Sir Thomas Rutherford of Hunthill, who on 16 Dec. 1665 was served heir in his title of Lord Rutherford and also in his lands.

[Monteath's Theatre of Mortality; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 458–9; Jeffrey's Hist. of Roxburghshire, ii. 286–8.]

T. F. H.