Andrew Rutherford, 1st Earl of Teviot

Andrew Rutherford, 1st Earl of Teviot (died 4 May 1664; sometimes spelt "Rutherfurd") was a Scottish soldier.

Andrew was the fifth and youngest son of a merchant burgess of Edinburgh - William Rutherfurd (died 1624) of Wrightslands and of Easter and Wester Quarrelholes in Restalrig - and his wife Isobel (married 1608), daughter of James Stewart of Traquair. He received his education at Edinburgh University, and later took up a career in the military in France.

During the Commonwealth (or, to monarchists, the Interregnum), Rutherford served the French government, which maintained regiments of Scottish soldiers throughout the Thirty Years's War. On the restoration of Charles II, Rutherford was taken into employment by his own king on the recommendation of Louis XIV of France. He eventually held a commission as Lieutenant-general in France and had a high reputation for personal courage, though this was certainly not (as claimed in the Oxford DNB) upon the death of the Earl of Irvine d.1645). Indeed, he only became a full colonel of one of the Scottish regiments in France in 1653.^[1]

Rutherford returned to Scotland in 1660. In 1661 Charles II gave him the Scottish title of Lord Rutherfurd and the governorship of Dunkirk, which had been acquired by the Protector Oliver Cromwell. When Charles II sold the town to France in 1662 Rutherford was consoled by the command of the Colony of Tangier and the Tangier Regiment, and was made Earl of Teviot.

He was sent in 1663 as governor to Tangier. His tenure of office was very short, for on 4 May 1664 he was trapped at the Battle of Tangier in an ambush by the Moors, who had been carrying out incessant irregular warfare against the English garrison, and was killed, together with nineteen officers and nearly five hundred men of the garrison.

In his will he donated funds to his former university in Edinburgh, for the construction of 8 chambers.

References

• Matthew Glozier, Scottish Soldiers in France the service of the Sun King (Brill, Leiden, 2004).
• W. F. Lord, The Lost Possessions of England (London, 1896).

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Teviot, Andrew Rutherford, Earl of". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.