French writer, of Scottish birth, commonly called the “Chevalier Ramsay,” born at Ayr on the 9th of January 1686. Ramsay served with the English auxiliaries in the Netherlands, and in 1710 visited Fénelon, who converted him to Roman Catholicism. He remained in France until 1724, when he was sent to Rome as tutor to the Stuart princes, Charles Edward and Henry, the future cardinal of York. He was driven by intrigue from this post, and returned to Paris. He was in England in 1730, and received an honorary degree from the university of Oxford. The claim was nominally his discipleship to Fénelon, but in reality beyond doubt his connection with the Jacobite party. He died at St. Germain-en-Laye (Seine-et-Oise) on the 6th of May 1743. Ramsay’s principal work was Les voyages de Cyrus (London, 1728; Paris, 1727), a book composed in avowed imitation of Télémaque. He also edited Télémaque itself (Paris, 2 vols., 1717) with an introduction, and wrote a Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Fénelon (The Hague, 1723), besides a partial biography (Paris, 1735) of Turenne, some poems (Edinburgh, 1728) in English, and other miscellaneous works.
