Major William Norman Ramsay (1782–1815) was a Scottish officer in the British Royal Horse Artillery who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, and was noted for his valour.

It was engaged at Busaco in 1810, and was specially thanked by Sir Stapleton Cotton, for its zeal and activity in covering the subsequent retreat to Torres Vedras.

It was supposed that the guns were lost, but soon a commotion was observed among the French cavalry:an English shout pealed high and clear, the mass was rent asunder, and Norman Ramsay burst forth, sword in hand, at the head of his battery, his horses breathing fire, stretched like greyhounds along the plain, the guns bounded behind them like things of no weight, and the mounted gunners followed close, with heads bent low and pointed weapons in desperate career.

[4] At Vittoria (21 June 1813) the troop was attached to Graham's corps, and contributed largely to the capture of Abechuco, by which the French Army was cut off from the Bayonne road, its best line of retreat.

Wellington met him at a neighbouring village, and, as he had some thought of sending him with Graham's corps by another road, told him, according to his own account, to halt there and not to move from it till he should receive further orders from myself, knowing that he would be sent to from the advanced posts.

None came; and next morning Ramsay, acting on the verbal directions of a staff-officer and a written order from the quartermaster-general, advanced to rejoin the Cavalry Brigade, to which he belonged.

As his friend and chief, Frazer wrote: 'Admitting, contrary to all evidence, that he had mistaken the verbal orders he received, this, surely, is a venial offence, and one for which long-tried and faithful services should not be forgotten.

[4] His friend Frazer buried the body during a momentary lull of the battle in a hollow immediately behind, and afterwards erected a monument in the church at Waterloo, with an inscription to his memory.

The body was, a few weeks afterwards, sent to Scotland, where on 8 August it was reinterred in the churchyard of Inveresk, near Edinburgh, the burial-place of his family, beneath a fine sarcophagus, supported by a cannon and some shot, and surmounted by a helmet, sword, and accoutrements.