in a discussion with the king insisted on the fellows' rights (Wood, Life, pp. cvii-xii; Bloxam, Magdalen College and James II, Oxf. Hist. Soc., pp. 90-2). He declined in November an invitation to dine with the king's special commissioners on the evening after they had expelled the fellows of Magdalen, saying, 'My taste differs from that of Colonel Kirke. I cannot eat my meals with appetite under a gallows' (Macaulay, Hist. vol. ii. chap, viii.) ' The new chancellor has much pleased the university,' wrote Sykes to Dr. Charlett, 'by his prudent behaviour in all things, and I hear that the king was pleased to say that he was an honest, blunt man' (Aubrey, Lives, i. 36).
After the revolution, Ironside was rewarded for his resistance by being appointed bishop of Bristol. Hearne spitefully writes that he supported the Prince of Orange, so as to 'get a wife and a bishopric.' But the emolument of the Bristol see was small, and Ironside was consecrated, 13 Oct. 1689, on the understanding that he should be translated to a more lucrative see when opportunity offered. Accordingly, on the death of Bishop Herbert Croft, he was transferred to the see of Hereford in July 1691. He died on 27 Aug. 1701, and was buried in the church of St. Mary Somerset, Thames Street, London. On the demolition of that church in 1867, the bishop's remains were transferred to Hereford Cathedral.
He appears to have been conspicuous for the roughness of his manners among his Oxford contemporaries ('Table Talk of Bishop Hough,' in Collectanea, ii. 415, Oxf. Hist. Soc.) When about sixty years of age, according to Wood, Ironside married 'a fair and comely widow' of Bristol, whose maiden name was Robinson.
Ironside published, with a short preface from his own pen, Bishop Ridley's account of a disputation at Oxford on the sacrament, together with a letter of Bradford's, Oxford, 1688, and a sermon preached before the king on 23 Nov. 1684, Oxford, 1685. A portrait is in the hall of Wadham College.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iv. 896; Wood's Life, pp. cv, cvii-xii; Hutchins's Dorset, Introd. p. xxvi, ii. 529; Macaulay's Hist, of England, ii. 304; Bloxam's Magdalen College and James II, pp. 90-2, and passim; Gardiner's Eeg. of Wadham College, p. 184; Hearne's Coll., ed. Doble (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), i. 97.]
IRVINE, Sir ALEXANDER, of Drum (d. 1658), royalist, was descended from William de Irvine, who was armour-bearer to Robert Bruce, and was rewarded for his devoted services by a grant of the forest of Drum, Aberdeenshire, at that time part of a royal forest. A grandson of William de Irvine (Sir Alexander) distinguished himself at the battle of Harlaw (1411), in a hand-to-hand encounter with MacLean of Dowart, general of Donald of the Isles, in which both were slain. The prowess of this ‘gude Sir Alexander Irvine’ is specially celebrated in the ballad on the battle of Harlaw. Other heads of the family rendered important services to subsequent sovereigns, and in the seventeenth century the lairds of Drum vied in wealth and power with many families of noble rank.
Alexander, the royalist, was the eldest son of Alexander, ninth laird of Drum, by Lady Marion, daughter of Robert Douglas, earl of Buchan. He was probably educated at the university of Aberdeen, where the name of Alexander Irvine occurs as an entrant on the ides of December 1614 (Fasti Aber. p. 454). In December 1634 he was appointed sheriff of Aberdeen (Spalding, Memorials, i. 55), and the appointment was annually renewed for many years (ib. passim). As one of the commissioners for Aberdeen he received in 1638 an order to cause the people to subscribe the king's covenant and bond (ib. p. 111), and he was one of the few commissioners in the north who aided the Marquis of Huntly in that work (ib. p. 112; Gordon, Scots Affairs, i. 122). He also accompanied Huntly to the cross of Aberdeen, when the king's proclamation discharging the Service Book was read (Spalding, i. 113). On the outbreak of hostilities in 1639, Montrose on 6 April quartered five hundred highlandmen sent by Argyll on the lands of the laird of Drum, where ‘they lived lustelie upon the goods, sheep, corn, and victual of the ground’ (ib. p. 162) until the 11th (ib. p. 166). Irvine himself had meanwhile, on 28 March, taken ship for England (ib. p. 151); but in June he returned in a collier brig under the command of Lord Aboyne, and finally, landing on the 6th (ib. p. 203), assisted in the capture of Aberdeen for the king (ib. p. 205). Afterwards he proceeded to fortify his place of Drum (ib. p. 265), but according to Gordon it was ‘not strong by nature, and scarcely fencible at that time by art’ (Scots Affairs, iii. 197). On 2 June 1640 General Monro arrived before it with the Earl Marischal. Irvine was absent, but when Monro proceeded to open fire his wife agreed to deliver the castle, on condition that the garrison were permitted to go out free with their arms and baggage, and that she and her children were allowed to reside in one of the rooms. She moreover promised to send her husband to Monro at Aberdeen (Gordon, pp. 197–8; Spalding, i. 280–1).
