in November 1615, secretly instigated the clan Gunn to burn the corn of Forbes's tenants in Sansett, and, to remove suspicion from himself, spread the rumour that it had been done by the Mackays (Gordon, p. 322). When complaints were made against him to the privy council, he is said to have caused the witnesses to be drowned, so that no actual proof could be found against him (Hist. of James the Sext, p. 390). Several complaints were made against him by Lord Forbes for reset of the incendiaries, and on 11 June he was denounced for not exhibiting them (Reg. P. C. Scotl. x. 1541); he was in the same year denounced a rebel for his papistical opinions (ib. passim); but he finally obtained remission by paying an indemnity of two thousand marks, by renouncing the pension of one thousand crowns bestowed on him by the king, and by resigning the sheriffdom of Caithness (Hist. of James the Sext, p. 391). Latterly he got hopelessly in debt, and endeavoured openly to defy his creditors. On 1 June 1619 he was denounced as a rebel for remaining pertinaciously at the horn (Reg. P. C. Scotl. xi. 583); on 25 Oct. 1621 his son, Lord Berriedale, who had been imprisoned for his father's debts, was compelled to complain against him to the council.
Various fulminations were issued against Caithness in 1621 without the least effect, and at last, on 19 Dec. 1622, a commission was granted to Sir Robert Gordon to reduce him to obedience either by negotiation, or, if that failed, with fire and sword (ib. xiii. 124). Negotiation failed, and on 10 June 1623 a commission for fire and sword was given (ib. p. 281), all the lieges of the north being commanded to assist (ib. p. 283). It was entirely successful, Caithness fleeing precipitately to Orkney, and thence to Shetland. On 30 March 1624 a proclamation was issued warning all mariners against assisting him from Shetland back to Orkney or Caithness (ib. p. 391); but on 10 June 1624 the proclamation against intercommuning with him was cancelled, and a new protection was granted him to come to Edinburgh and deal with his creditors (ib. p. 523). From his creditors he obtained during his last years an aliment out of his estates. He died at Caithness in February 1643, in his seventy-eighth year. By his wife, Lady Jean Gordon, only daughter of John, fifth earl of Huntly, he had three sons and a daughter: William, lord Berriedale, who predeceased his father; Francis; John, who entered the service of Gustavus Adolphus, and was slain at Donauwerth in 1631; and Anne, married to George, thirteenth earl of Crawford.
The fifth earl of Caithness was succeeded by his great-grandson George, son of John, master of Berriedale. As, through the folly of his grandfather, he had become hopelessly in debt, his principal creditor, Sir John Campbell of Glenurchy (afterwards first Earl of Breadalbane) [q. v.], on the earl's death in 1672, took possession of the estates, and in June 1677 was created Earl of Caithness. The title and estates were, however, claimed by George Sinclair of Keiss, son of Francis, the second son of the fifth earl, who took possession of certain lands in Caithness by force. In 1680 he endeavoured to cope with a force sent against him under General Dalziell, but was totally defeated. Nevertheless, his claim to the title was finally sustained by the privy council in 1681, whereupon Campbell relinquished it, and was created Earl of Breadalbane.
[Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot.; Reg. P. C. Scotl.; Calderwood's Hist. of the Church of Scotland; Gordon's Earldom of Sutherland; Pitcairn's Criminal Trials; Hist. of James the Sext, in the Bannatyne Club; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 247.]
SINCLAIR or SINCLAR, GEORGE (d. 1696), professor successively of philosophy and mathematics at Glasgow, was probably a native of East Lothian. On the title-page of his ‘Ars Nova’ he styles himself ‘Scoto-Lothiani,’ and he possessed property in the town of Haddington (Laing, Charters). His brother, John Sinclar, was for a time regent in St. Leonard's College in St. Andrews, and in 1647 he became minister of Ormiston in East Lothian, whence in 1682 he went to Holland, and died at Delft in 1689 (Scott, Fasti Eccl. Scoticanæ, i. 301). In 1654 George was acting as a ‘pedagogue’ in St. Andrews, whence he was brought to Glasgow (Baillie, Letters and Journals, ed. Laing, iii. 285). He was admitted a master of Glasgow University on 18 Oct. 1654, and in the same year was appointed professor of philosophy at Glasgow. He was one of the first in Scotland who devoted attention to the study of physics, then held, as he laments, of little account. In 1655 he was associated with an unnamed experimenter, probably Maule of Melgum, the original inventor of the diving-bell, in using the new invention in exploring the contents of the ship Florida, a relic of the Armada, wrecked on the Isle of Mull (Ars Nova, pp. 220 et seq.). He remained at Glasgow as a professor until June 1666, when he was obliged to resign as he refused to comply with the episcopal form of church government (Wodrow, History, &c., ed. 1829, iii. 3).
On leaving Glasgow, Sinclar came to
