1616 - 1650

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• Title	ro
  Birth	Abt 1616
  Gender	Male
  Education	Abt 1648	Succeeded as Second Baronet   [1]
  Died	3 Sep 1650	Killed at the battle of Dunbar, fighting on the royalist side against Cromwell.   [2]
  Person ID	I0184	McKinney and Stewart of Clarion County, Pennsylvania
  Last Modified	16 Aug 2007 15:18:29
  Father	Sir William Stewart, b. Abt 1582, Wigtownshire, Scotland
  Mother	Frances Newcomen
  Family ID	F0125	Group Sheet
  Family	Catherine Newcomen
  Married	Abt 1648  [1]
  Children	> 1. Sir William Stewart, First Viscount of Mountjoy, b. 1650
  Family ID	F0127	Group Sheet

• Notes

  The Irish Times article of November 10, 1940, states "Sir Alexander, who succeeded as second Baronet, married, about 1648, his cousin Catherine, daughter of Sir Robert Newcomen, and was killed at the battle of Dunbar, 3rd September, 1650, fighting on the King's side". An article in "The Stewarts", Volume VI, by Walter A. Stewart, September 1, 1933, pages 370 and 371, states that "Sir Alexander is chiefly known to history for having conducted the 'First Siege of Derry' in the year 1649, when the city was held for the English Parliament by Sir Charles Coote. On the failure of that operation, Sir Alexander proceeded to Scotland and was killed in the following year at the battle of Dunbar. He figures under the name of 'Colonel Alexander Stewarte' in the list of 'Men of note killed at this dismal routte of 'Dunbar', given in the Historical Works of Sir James Balfour, Lyon King of Arms, 1630-1654 (see p. 98, Vol. IV of the edition published in London, 1825)" "Sir Alexander Stewart, born about 1616, was "a military commander of considerable repute" and "a gentleman of great integrity and fervent in propagating the gospel interest in the districts around Derry," said Patrick Adair. in his TRUE NARRATIVE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN IRELAND", 1623-1670. In 1648, when Oliver Cromwell had impounded King Charles I and made himself virtual master of England, the Presbyterian forces in Ulster, remaining loyal to the king, planned to drive Cromwell's partisan, Sir Charles Coote, out of the city of Londonderry, which he was garrisoning, with 1,000 men. Sir Alexander Stewart, who had been left in command of the Lagan forces in northwest Ulster, brought his troops, to Derry and sat down before that city in March, 1649. His uncle, Sir Robert Stewart, joined him in the siege with a body of royalists, and Sir George Monro, with a commission from King Charles II - King Charles I was beheaded on Jan. 30,1649 - arrived with a contingent of Scottish highlanders and Irishmen. However, the siege petered out in August, after Lord Montgomery of Ards, hitherto a staunch Presbyterian, came to supersede Monro and the two Stewarts. There was just too much going on for a man of principle to ride out the storm. Sir Alexander Stewart married Catherine Newcomen, daughter of Sir Robert, third son of Sir Robert Newcomen of Mosstown, County Longford. Catherine's mother was Anna Bullein, a grandniece of the late Queen Elizabeth. Sir Alexander had become the second baronet of Rathmelton on the death of his father in 1646 and he felt a strong attachment to his sovereign as well as to his church. He went to Scotland and joined the Scottish Covenanter army fighting Cromwell for King Charles II. He was killed in the battle of Dunbar, in Haddingtonshire, fought on Sep. 3, 1650. His son William, who was to become the third baronet and heir to the greater part of the Stewart estate, excepting Fort Stewart, was born six weeks after his father's death. Alexander's widow Catherine married Sir Arthur Forbes, later created earl of Granard, who became the boy's guardian. Alexander's only son: William 1650; married Mary Coote daughter of Richard." (Source - Stewart Clan Magazine, Tome H, Volume 37, Number 6, December 1959) "Dunbar was the decisive battled in Cromwell's war against royalty. The Scottish army, under General David Leslie, was well equipped, in fine fettle, and occuppied an impregnable position on their own home ground, while Cromwell was baffled, his soldiers sick and tired, a movement of retreat might prove disastrous. While Cromwell hesitated some chaplins or religious exhorters in Leslie' camp had a stunning idea. Why not trust in God, who was on their side, and march down to glorious victory! This must have been sensible to Leslie, or the preachers had him bluffed, for look! boys, here they come! Just before the crack of dawn the whole Scottish army, like confused rabble, marched out to be murdered. Cromwell was quick to see the fluke, and he threw all his resources into the fight. Within less than sixty minutes 3,000 Scotchmen had been killed, 10,000 were trapped and taken prisoner, and a few hundred - including the preachers - ran back into the hills and escaped. This lucky break established Cromwell as a great general - and statesman - in the eyes of European diplomats and was a blow to Scottish national pride from which Scotland never recovered.' (Source - Stewart Clan Magazine, Tome H, Volume 57, Number 6, December 1959) "During the fall and winter of 1650 over 3,000 Scottish prisoners of war made a perilous 120 mile march from their defeat at the Dunbar battlefield in Scotland to Durham Cathedral in the North of England. From there most were sent to staff labor starved English colonial ventures in the West Indies, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maine, and Ireland. Sixty-two were sent aboard the Unity across the wintry seas of the Atlantic to the Saugus Ironworks in Lynn, Massachusetts." (The Redtower, Clan Galbraith Association, Vol. XXII, No. 2, March 2001)

• Sources

  [S02856] The Irish Times, Saturday, November 10, 1940 [S02856] The Irish Times, Saturday, Novewmber 10, 1940