Robert Murray Keith (the younger)

Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Murray Keith KB PC FRSE (the younger) (20 September 1730 – 22 June 1795) was a British soldier, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1775 to 1780.

He was born in Edinburgh, the eldest son of Robert Murray Keith and his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir William Cunningham, 2nd baronet, of Caprington.

Destined for a military career, he was sent to an academy in London and was commissioned a cornet in 1747 and quickly transferred to a Scots Brigade in Dutch service, with which he remained until the regiment was reduced in 1752.

On the recommendation of Colonel Henry Seymour Conway, he was made aide-de-camp to Lord George Sackville and fought at the Battle of Minden.

In the face of a worsening political situation for Johan Friedrich Struensee the minister who ruled Denmark for the insane Christian VII and his Queen Caroline Matilda, a sister of George III of Great Britain (and without instructions), he threatened a British naval bombardment of Copenhagen if the queen was harmed.

He came home in 1788 and was made a Privy Councillor in 1789, but then returned to Vienna, where his final duties included attending the Congress of Sistovo, which ended the Turkish war.