DE MORNAY, JOHN SCOTT [SSNE 1204]

Surname

DE MORNAY, SCOTT

First name

JOHN SCOTT, JOHAN SCHOTT

Title/rank

BARON

Nationality

SCOT

Social status

NOBILITY

Text source

John Scott is so called ‘Baron de Mornay’. Mornay remains a shadowy figure despite his titled name. He seems to have been a well-travelled man. Baron de Mornay served in Denmark as a colonel in 1683. He departed in 1691 after serving 7 years. From then on, Mornay seemed to have gravitated around northern Europe. In July 1694, he was in Leiden. The evidence points to Mornay having left Leiden after July 1694 and either sailed to Brazil and returned to Europe via Portugal or, more likely, made his way to Portugal and from there crossed to the New World and returned via the same route. In a document dated 17 February 1696/7 in the Hamilton papers in the National Records of Scotland, Mornay gives a short description of the people, both men and women, of the Amazon having recently visited ‘that opulent Country’. He was back in Europe by early 1697 and lived for a while in the country he had served about a decade previously. This is indicated by a letter dated at Quebec on 30 June 1699 from a James Croxen alias Smith and addressed to Mornay in Copenhagen. Croxen indicated that his ‘Cussen’ Smith was bringing Scott ‘divers charts, and Jornalls’ of the shadowy Admiral de Fonte. In another letter to an unknown recipient dated ‘Quiracoa’ in January 1697, Croxen stated that his recipient had sent him a sketch (‘Skets’) reducing the ‘sev[era]ll pieces’ of de Fonte’s ‘surveys & remarks’.  He signed himself J. Scott Mornay.  

 

J.C.W. Hirsch and K. Hirsch (eds.), 'Fortegnelse over Dansk og Norske officerer med flere fra 1648 til 1814 (12 vols. compiled 1888-1907), VII, vol.3; NRS, Hamilton Muniments, GD406/1/4158; Lennoxlove, Hamilton Papers, NRAS 2177, bundle 1415, copy letter of James Croxen alias Smith to le baron Scott de Mornay, 30 June 1699; copy letter of Croxen, Quiracao, 7 January 1697; Thomas Brochard, 'Scots and the Netherlands as Seen through Alba Amicorum, 1540s–1720s', Dutch Crossing (online, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1080/03096564.2020.1755552.

 

This entry was kindly updated by Dr Thomas Brochard.

Service record

DENMARK-NORWAY, DANISH ARMY

Arrived 1683-01-01, as COLONEL

Departed 1691-12-31, as COLONEL

Capacity OFFICER, purpose MILITARY