Keith, JAMES, best known as Marshal Keith, was born at the castle of Inverugie, near Peterhead, 11th June 1696. He came of a family, represented now by the Earl of Kintore, which from the 12th century had held the hereditary office of Great Marischal of Scotland, and whose principal seat was Dunnotar Castle (q.v.). Sir William Keith, the tenth in descent from the founder of the line, was created Earl Marischal in 1458; and George, fifth earl, his sixth descendant, in 1593 founded the Marischal College in Aberdeen. His fourth descendant, William, ninth earl (d. 1712), married Lady Maria Drummond, a Catholic and strong Jacobite, daughter of the fourth Earl of Perth, and by her was the father of Marshal Keith and of his elder brother, George, tenth Earl Marischal (1693-1778). James was destined for the law, and had studied at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, when in 1715 he engaged with his brother in the Jacobite rising, and in 1719 in Alberoni's expedition to the West Highlands, which ended in the 'battle' of Glenshiel (q.v.). Both times the brothers escaped to the Continent; and James held for nine years a Spanish colonelcy, and took part in the siege of Gibraltar (1726-27). But his creed, the Episcopal, was against him; and in 1728 he entered the Russian service as a major-general. He distinguished himself in the wars with Turkey and Sweden, particularly at the siege of Ochakov (1737) and the reduction of the Åland Islands (1743). To be healed of a wound received on the former occasion he visited Paris, and thence crossed over to London, where he made his peace with the Hanoverian government, and had more than one interview with George II. In 1747, finding the Russian service in various respects disagreeable, he exchanged it for that of Prussia. Frederick the Great knew his merits, and gave him at once the rank of field-marshal. From this time his name is associated with that of the king of Prussia, who relied as much on Keith's military genius as he did on the diplomatic ability of his brother, the Earl Marischal, whom he despatched on embassies to Paris and Madrid. Keith's talents became still more conspicuous upon the breaking out of the Seven Years' War (1756). He shared Frederick's doubtful fortunes before Prague, was present at the victories of Lobositz and Rossbach, and conducted the masterly retreat from Olmütz. His last battle was not far distant. On 14th October 1758 at Hochkirch (q.v.) Keith, who commanded the Prussian right wing, was shot dead while for the third time charging the enemy. The Austrians buried him honourably in the church at Hochkirch, whence Frederick next year translated his remains to the Garrison church at Berlin. There, too, in the Wilhelmsplatz, Frederick in 1786 erected a statue of the marshal, a replica of which in bronze was gifted by King William to Peterhead in 1868. Keith died poor and unmarried, but he left children by his mistress, the Swedish captive, Eva Merthens, who survived him till 1811.
See his fragmentary but valuable Memoir, 1714-34 (Spalding Club, 1843); the Memoir of Marshal Keith, with a Sketch of the Keith Family (Peterhead, 1869); Carlyle's Frederick; and the German Lives of Keith, by Varnhagen von Ense (1844; new ed. 1888) and Lieut. von Paczynski-Tenczyn (1889).