Sir James, descended from an honourable Scots family, being the third son of the laird of Kaesth, was born about the middle of the 16th century. He went to France very young, in the capacity of page to Queen Mary, then married to the dauphin; and on the death of her husband, followed her to Scotland, where he was made gentleman of her chamber, and admitted a privy counsellor. She employed him in her most important concerns, till her unhappy confinement in Lochleven, all which he discharged with the utmost fidelity; and, from his own accounts, there is reason to conclude, that had she taken his advice, she might have avoided many of her misfortunes. When she was prisoner in England, she recommended him strongly to her son James; with whom he continued in favour and employment until the death of Queen Elizabeth: James would then have taken him to England; but Melvil, now grown old, was desirous of retiring from business, and in his retirement he drew up the memoirs of his past life for the use of his son. These Memoirs were accidentally found in Edinburgh castle in the year 1660, though nobody knew how they came to be deposited there; and were published in folio in 1683.

MEMBERS, in Anatomy, the exterior parts, arising from the trunk or body of an animal like the boughs from the trunk of a tree.