1468 he obtained a warrant to pass to France, Brittany, Picardy, &c. (ib. 1382).
Crawford was one of the jury who sat at the trial of the Boyds in 1469, and after their fall he rose rapidly in wealth and influence. He had on 19 Oct. 1466 obtained a charter of the sheriffdom of Forfar, and on 9 March 1472–3 he received a grant of the third of the lordships of Brechin and Novar for life. In July 1473 he was appointed keeper of Berwick for three years. He was frequently employed on important embassies to England, and on 26 Oct. 1474 acted as proxy for James III at his betrothal to the Princess Cecilia of England. On 6 Dec. of this year he made a new entail of the family estates, settling them on his heirs male for ever. On the rebellion of MacDonald of the Isles in 1476 he was appointed lord high admiral, but MacDonald gave in his submission before it was necessary to proceed against him. In 1480 he was appointed master of the household. He took part in the raid of Lauder in 1482, when the king's favourite Cochrane [see Cochrane, Robert, Earl of Mar] was hanged over the bridge there. Crawford was not, however, concerned in the further proceedings against the king. In 1483 he was appointed lord chamberlain. To aid in withstanding the designs of Angus and the other malcontent nobles, he was on 11 Jan. 1487–8 appointed joint high justiciary with Huntly of the north of Scotland. After the pacification of Blackness he was, on 18 May 1488, created Duke of Montrose, the first instance of the dignity of duke being conferred on a Scotsman not a member of the royal family. In the battle of Sauchieburn on the 11th of the following June, Montrose was severely wounded and taken prisoner. He received his liberty on a ransom, but was deprived of all his offices. Having obtained the offer of a free pardon from James IV on condition of resigning the hereditary sheriffdom of Angus to Andrew, lord Gray, he finally, while protesting against the transference as illegal, agreed on 6 Nov. 1488 to resign it. He thus escaped the consequences of the act passed on 18 Oct. annulling all grants made by the late king during the eight preceding months. On 19 Sept. 1489 he received a new charter of the dukedom of Montrose for life, and in February 1489–90 was chosen a member of the privy council. He died at Finhaven about Christmas 1495, and was buried in the Greyfriars Church, Dundee. A petition was presented in 1848 to the queen by the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, claiming the dukedom of Montrose on the ground that the first patent still held good, inasmuch as it was not specially mentioned as abolished; but the House of Lords on 5 Aug. 1853 decided against the claim. After Crawford's death the lordship of Crawford was, on 21 Jan. 1495–6, bestowed on the Earl of Angus, it being declared forfeited by the Duke of Montrose, on account of his having sold it or part of it without the king's consent (Reg. Mag. Sig. 1424–1513, entry 2298).
By his wife, eldest daughter of James, first lord Hamilton, he had two sons—Alexander, lord Lindsay, and John, master of Crawford, who became sixth earl. The two brothers in 1489 quarrelled and fought, when the elder was mortally wounded. The Duke of Montrose married as his second wife Margaret Carmichael.
[Cal. Documents relating to Scotland, vol. iv.; Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vol. i.; Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot. vol. i.; Histories of Buchanan, Leslie, and Lindsay of Pitscottie; Riddell's Abstract of the Crawford Case, 1851; Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays; Lindsay Pedigree, by W. A. Lindsay, in the College of Arms; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 376.]
LINDSAY or LYNDSAY, Sir DAVID (1490–1555), Scottish poet and Lyon king of arms, was the son of David Lyndsay of the Mount in the parish of Monimail, Fife, and of Garmylton, two miles north of Haddington. At which of his father's seats he was born is uncertain, and so is the place of his school education, which, if in Fife, was probably Cupar; if in Lothian, Haddington. The tenor of his character in after-life perhaps turns the balance in favour of Haddington, the school of John Major, Gavin Douglas, and John Knox, possibly also of William Dunbar and George Buchanan. In 1508–9 the name ‘Da Lindesay’ occurs next to the name ‘Da Betone,’ the future cardinal, among the students incorporated as graduates of the college of St. Salvator, which, assuming as is almost certain, the entry refers to the poet, would give the period between 1505 and 1508 as that of his university studies. In the ‘Exchequer Rolls’ of 1508, in the list of servants of Queen Margaret, there appears ‘Unus vocatus Lyndesay in averia [the stable] quondam domini principis,’ who received by the king's command 4l. 8s. 4d. for his fee and his horses' keep (xiii. 127). If this refers to David Lyndsay, as is probable, it proves that he entered the royal service as equerry to the elder Prince James, one of the sons of James IV, who died in infancy. He was certainly attached to the court before the birth of James V, as the ‘Treasurer's Accounts’ show he received a quarterly payment of 10l. from 1 Nov. 1511 to 2 Aug. 1512. On 12 Oct.
