James Melville of Carnbee

Pedigree

https://www.stirnet.com/genie/data/british/mm4ae/melville03.php

• Sir Richard de Melvill (a 1258, d after 1295)
  • 1. Robert de Melvill, 1st of Carnbee, Fife (a 1309)
    • A. Sir Richard de Melvill of Carnbee (a 1345)
      • i. John Melvill of Carnbee (a 1362) m. Janet Scot (of family of Balweary)
        • a. James Melvill of Carnbee (d before 1437) m. (c1400) ?? Wardlaw (dau of Sir Henry (sb Andrew?) Wardlaw of Torry)
          • (1) Robert Melvill of Carnbee (d after 1459) m1. _ Kinninmouth (of the family of that ilk)
            • (A) Henry Melvill of Carnbee (a 1547, 1494) m. Elizabeth Wemyss ("of the noble famiy of Wemyss")
              • (i) William Melvill of Carnbee (a 1483) m. Margaret Keith (descended of the house of Mareschall)
                • (a) John Melvill of Carnbee (a 1496, 1508) - continued below m. Anne Lundin (dau of William Lundin of that ilk)
            • (B) son
            • (C) Catherine Melvill probably of this generation m. John Arnot of Arnot m2. Giles de Myrton

Notes

http://clydesburn.blogspot.com/2017/02/sir-john-melville-of-carnbee...

This would suggest he was 68 years old (‘sexaginta octo’), so was therefore born in 1560, and it seems was a knight for 49 years so therefore had been knighted around 1579-80. He is identified as 'Sir John Melville of the Carnbee family at Inch, near Downpatrick' in the 1881 book Scottish Arms being a Collection of Armorial Bearings. It appears that he was a man of some influence; having been knighted by King James VI, Melville assisted in 1593 to revise the means of tax collection in Scotland (source here).

Carnbee is a parish in Fife, where the Melvilles lived for many generations, as far back as the late 1200s. They had been in Scotland since at least 1165 as shown in a charter from King William the Lion of Scotland to Galfrid and Gregory de Melville (source here).

The volume The East Neuk of Fife by Rev Walter Wood (1887) records the Melvilles having arrived at Carnbee by 1296. There is a short biography of Sir John and his second wife Alison Ross (the ‘A.R.’ on the gravestone) which speaks of them having to sell their Granton estate near Edinburgh in 1598. Interestingly, Sir John had been declared a rebel, having begun to build a mill on the land of King James VI at Kingsbarns without royal permission. Perhaps these events were what caused him to move to Ulster. Carnbee was then acquired by the Moncreiff family.