appears to have returned to Scotland about 1638, and to have taken some part in the early incidents of the Scottish rebellion against Charles I. In 1642 he went to Ireland, nominally as second in command under Alexander Leslie, but in fact in chief command of the Scottish contingent against the Catholic rebels. After taking and plundering Newry in April 1642, and ineffectually attempting to subdue Sir Phelim O’Neill, Munro succeeded in taking prisoner the earl of Antrim at Dunluce. The arrival of Owen Roe O’Neill in Ireland strengthened the cause of the rebels (see O’Neill), and Munro, who was poorly supplied with provisions and war materials, showed little activity. Moreover, the civil war in England was now creating confusion among parties in Ireland, and the king was anxious to come to terms with the Catholic rebels, and to enlist them on his own behalf against the parliament. The duke of Ormonde, Charles’s lieutenant-general in Ireland, acting on the king’s orders, signed a cessation of hostilities with the Catholics on the 15th of September 1643, and exerted himself to despatch aid to Charles in England. Munro in Ulster, holding his commission from the Scottish parliament, did not recognize the armistice, and his troops accepted the solemn league and covenant, in which they were joined by many English soldiers who left Ormonde to join him. In April 1644 the English parliament entrusted Munro with the command of all the forces in Ulster, both English and Scots. He thereupon seized Belfast, made a raid into the Pale, and unsuccessfully attempted to gain possession of Dundalk and Drogheda. His force was weakened by the necessity for sending troops to Scotland to withstand Montrose; while Owen Roe O’Neill was strengthened by receiving supplies from Spain and the pope. On the 5th of June 1646 was fought the battle of Benburb, on the Blackwater, where O’Neill routed Munro, but suffered him to withdraw in safety to Carrickfergus. In 1647 Ormonde was compelled to come to terms with the English parliament, who sent commissioners to Dublin in June of that year. The Scots under Munro refused to surrender Carrickfergus and Belfast when ordered by the parliament to return to Scotland, and Munro was superseded by the appointment of Monk to the chief command in Ireland. In September 1648 Carrickfergus was delivered over to Monk by treachery, and Munro was taken prisoner. He was committed to the Tower of London, where he remained a prisoner for five years. In 1654 he was permitted by Cromwell to reside in Ireland, where he had estates in right of his wife, who was the widow of Viscount Montgomery of Ardes. Munro continued to live quietly near Comber, Co. Down, for many years, and probably died there about 1680. He was in part the original of Dugald Dalgetty in Sir Walter Scott’s Legend of Montrose.
See Thomas Carte, History of the Life of James, Duke of Ormonde (6 vols., Oxford, 1851); Sir J. T. Gilbert, Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland 1641–1652 (3 vols., Dublin. 1879–1880) and History of the Irish Confederation and the War in Ireland (7 vols., Dublin. 1881–1891); John Spalding, Memorials of the Troubles in Scotland and England (3 vols.. Aberdeen, 1850); The Montgomery MSS., 1603–1703, edited by G. Hill (Belfast, 1869); Sir Walter Scott, The Legend of Montrose, author’s preface.
MUNRO, SIR THOMAS (1761–1827), Anglo-Indian soldier and statesman, was born at Glasgow on the 27th of May 1761, the son of a merchant. Educated at Glasgow University, he was at first intended to enter his father’s business, but in 1789 he was appointed to an infantry cadetship in Madras. He served with his regiment during the hard-fought war against Hyder Ali (1780–83), and again in the first campaign against Tippoo (1790–92). He was then chosen as one of four military officers to administer the Baramahal, part of the territory acquired from Tippoo, where he remained for seven years, learning the principles of revenue survey and assessment which he afterwards applied throughout the presidency of Madras. After the final downfall of Tippoo in 1799, he spent a short time restoring order in Kanara; and then for another seven years (1800–1807) he was placed in charge of the northern districts “ceded” by the nizam of Hyderabad, where he introduced the ryotwari system of land revenue. After a long furlough in England, during which he gave valuable evidence upon matters connected with the renewal of the company’s charter, he returned to Madras in 1814 with special instructions to reform the judicial and police systems. On the outbreak of the Pindari War in 1817, he was appointed as brigadier-general to command the reserve division formed to reduce the southern territories of the Peshwa. Of his signal services on this occasion Canning said in the House of Commons: “He went into the field with not more than five or six hundred men, of whom a very small proportion were Europeans. . . . Nine forts were surrendered to him or taken by assault on his way; and at the end of a silent and scarcely observed progress he emerged . . . leaving everything secure and tranquil behind him.” In 1820 he was appointed governor of Madras, where he founded the systems of revenue assessment and general administration which substantially remain to the present day. His official minutes, published by Sir A. Arbuthnot, form a manual of experience and advice for the modern civilian. He died of cholera on the 6th of July 1827, while on tour in the “ceded” districts, where his name is preserved by more than one memorial An equestrian statue of him, by Chantrey, stands in Madras city.
See biographies by G. R. Gleig (1830), Sir A. Arbuthnot (1881) and J. Bradshaw (1894).
MUNSHI, or Moonshi, the Urdu name of a writer or secretary, used in India of the native language teachers or secretaries employed by Europeans.
MÜNSTER, GEORG, Count zu (1776–1844), German palaeontologist, was born on the 17th of February 1776. He formed a famous collection of fossils, which was ultimately secured by the Bavarian state, and formed the nucleus of the palaeontological museum at Munich. Count Münster assisted Goldfuss in his great work Petrefacta Germaniae. He died at Bayreuth on the 23rd of December 1844.
MÜNSTER, SEBASTIAN (1489–1552), German geographer, mathematician and Hebraist, was born at Ingelheim in the Palatinate. After studying at Heidelberg and Tübingen, he entered the Franciscan order, but abandoned it for Lutheranism about 1529. Shortly afterwards he was appointed court preacher at Heidelberg, where he also lectured in Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis. From 1536 he taught at Basel, where he published his Cosmographia universalis in 1544, and where he died of the plague on the 23rd of May 1552. A disciple of Elias Levita, he was the first German to edit the Hebrew Bible (2 vols., fol., Basel, 1534–1535); this edition was accompanied by a new Latin translation and a large number of annotations. He published more than one Hebrew grammar, and was the first to prepare a Grammatica chaldaica (Basel, 1527). His lexicographical labours included a Dictionarium chaldaicum (1527), and a Dictionarium trilingue, of Latin, Greek and Hebrew (1530). But his most important work was his Cosmographia, which also appeared in German as a Beschreibung aller Länder, the first detailed, scientific and popular description of the world in Münster’s native language, as well as a supreme effort of geographical study and literature in the Reformation period. In this Münster was assisted by more than one hundred and twenty collaborators.
The most valued edition of the Cosmographia or Beschreibung is that of 1550, especially prized for its portraits and its city and costume pictures. Besides the works mentioned above we may notice Münster’s Germaniae descriptio of 1530, his Novus orbis of 1532, his Mappa Europae of 1536, his Rhaetia of 1538, his editions of Solinus, Mela and Ptolemy in 1538–1540 and among non-geographical treatises his Horologiographia, 1531, on dialling (see Dial), his Organum uranicum of 1536 on the planetary motions, and his Rudimenta mathematica of 1551. His published maps numbered 142.
See V. Hantzsch, Sebastian Münster (1898). in vol. xviii. of the Publications of the Royal Society of Sciences of Saxony, Historical-Philological Section).
MÜNSTER, a town of Germany, in the district of Upper Alsace, 16 m. from Colmar by rail, and at the foot of the Vosges Mountains. Pop. (1905), 6078. Its principal industries are spinning, weaving and bleaching. The town owes its origin to a Benedictine abbey, which was founded in the 7th century, and at one time it was a free city of the empire. In its
