Elizabeth at the Hague and at Rhenen, supplying her generously with funds on the cessation of her English pension owing to the outbreak of the Civil War. He contributed also large sums in aid of Charles I., and, after his execution, of Charles II., the amount bestowed upon the latter being alone computed at £50,000,[1] notwithstanding that since 1651 the greater part of his estates had been confiscated by the parliament and his house at Caversham reduced to ruins.[2] At the Restoration he accompanied Charles to England, regained his estates, and was rewarded with offices and honours. He was made colonel of several regiments including the Coldstream, and in 1667 lieutenant-general and also high steward of Cambridge University. In 1666 he became a privy councillor, but was not included later in 1679 in Sir William Temple’s remodelled council.[3] In 1668 he became a governor of the Charterhouse, was appointed lord-lieutenant of Middlesex, and master of the Trinity House in 1670; and in 1673 a commissioner for Tangier. He was one of the lords proprietors of Carolina and a member of the Fishery Committee.
In March 1664 he was created viscount and earl of Craven. Meanwhile his devotion to the interests of the queen of Bohemia was unceasing, and on her return to England he offered her hospitality at his house in Drury Lane, where she remained till February 1662. At her death, within a fortnight afterwards, she bequeathed to Craven her papers and her valuable collection of portraits, but there is no foundation for the belief entertained later that she had married him. In 1682 he became the guardian of Ruperta, the natural daughter of his old comrade in arms, Prince Rupert. He was again made a privy councillor and lieutenant-general of the forces by James on his accession, and at the age of eighty was in command of the Coldstreams at Whitehall on the 17th of December 1688 when the Dutch troops arrived. He refused to withdraw them at the bidding of Count Solms, the Dutch commander, but obeyed later James’s own orders to retire. His public career now closed and he filled no office after the revolution. Although his claims upon the gratitude of the Stuart royal family were immense, Craven had never been considered a possible candidate for high political place. His ability was probably small, and he is spoken of with little respect in the Verney Papers and by the electress Sophia in her Memoirs. The latter retails some foolish observations made by Craven, and Pepys was disgusted at his coarse and stupid jests at the Fishery Board, where his “very confused and very ridiculous proceedings” are also censured.[4] His military prowess, however, his generosity and his public spirit are undoubted. He showed great activity during the plague and fire of London. He was a patron of letters and a member of the Royal Society. He inherited Combe Abbey near Coventry from his father, and purchased Hampstead Marshall in Berkshire, where he built a house on the model of Heidelberg Castle.
He died unmarried on the 9th of April 1697, when the earldom became extinct, the barony passing by special remainder to his cousin William, 2nd Baron Craven; the present earl of Craven (the earldom being revived in 1801) is descended from John, a younger brother of the latter. The first Lord Craven’s brother John, who was created Baron Craven of Ryton in Shropshire and who died in 1648, was the founder of the Craven scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge universities, of which the first was awarded in 1649.
Bibliography.—See the article in the Dict. of Nat. Biography (and Errata); Lives of the Princesses of England (Elizabeth, eldest daughter of James I.), vol. vi., by M. A. E. Green (1854); Memoirs of Elizabeth Stuart, by Miss Benger (1825); Memoiren der Herzogin Sophie, ed. by A. Köcher in Publ. aus den k. preussischen Staatsarchiven, Bd. iv. (1879); “Briefe der Elisabeth Stuart” in Bibliothek des litterarischen Vereins (Stuttgart, 1903), 155, 157; G. E. C.’s Complete Peerage (1889), ii. 404; Lives and Characters of the Most Illustrious Persons (1713), p. 546; Macaulay’s Hist. of England, ii. 584 (1858); Verney Papers (Camden Soc., 1853); Cal. of St. Pap. Dom.; Tracts relating to the confiscation of his estate in Cat. of the British Museum. Much information also doubtless exists in the Craven MSS. at Combe Abbey. (P. C. Y.)
CRAWFORD, EARLS OF. The house of Lindsay, of which the
earl of Crawford is the head, traces its descent back to the barons
of Crawford who flourished in the 12th century, and has included
a number of men who have played leading parts in the history of
Scotland. It is said that “though other families in Scotland may
have been of more historic, none can in genealogical importance
equal that of Lindsay,” and the Lindsays claim that “the predecessors
of the 1st earl of Crawford were barons at the period of
the earliest parliamentary records, and that, in fact, they were
never enrolled in the modern sense of the term, but were among
the pares, of which kings are primi, from the commencement of
recorded history.” Again we are told, “the earldom of Crawford,
therefore, like those of Douglas, of Moray, Ross, March and others
of the earlier times of feudalism, formed a petty principality, an
imperium in imperio.” Moreover, the earls “had also a concilium,
or petty parliament, consisting of the great vassals of the earldom,
with whose advice they acted on great and important occasions.”
Sir James Lindsay (d. 1396), 9th lord of Crawford in Lanarkshire, was the only son of Sir James Lindsay, the 8th lord (d. c. 1357), and was related to King Robert II.; he was descended from Sir Alexander Lindsay of Luffness (d. 1309), who obtained Crawford and other estates in 1297 and who was high chamberlain of Scotland. The 9th lord fought at Otterburn, and Froissart tells of his wanderings after the fight. He was succeeded by his cousin, Sir David Lindsay (c. 1360–1407), son of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Glenesk (d. 1382), and in 1398 Sir David, who married a daughter of Robert II., was made earl of Crawford.
The most important of the early earls of Crawford are the 4th and the 5th earls. Alexander Lindsay, the 4th earl (d. 1454), called the “tiger earl,” was, like his father David the 3rd earl, who was killed in 1446, one of the most powerful of the Scottish nobles; for some time he was in arms against King James II., but he submitted in 1452. His son David, the 5th earl (c. 1440–1495), was lord high admiral and lord chamberlain; he went frequently as an ambassador to England and was created duke of Montrose in 1488, but the title did not descend to his son. Montrose fought for James III. at the battle of Sauchieburn, and his son John, the 6th earl (d. 1513), was slain at Flodden.
David Lindsay, 8th earl of Crawford (d. 1542), son of Alexander, the 7th earl (d. 1517), had a son Alexander, master of Crawford (d. 1542), called the “wicked master,” who quarrelled with his father and tried to kill him. Consequently he was sentenced to death, and the 8th earl conveyed the earldom to his kinsman, David Lindsay of Edzell (d. 1558), a descendant of the 3rd earl of Crawford, thus excluding Alexander and his descendants, and in 1542 David became 9th earl of Crawford. But the 9th earl, although he had at least two sons, named the wicked master’s son David as his heir, and consequently in 1558 the earldom came back to the elder line of the Lindsays, the 9th earl being called the “interpolated earl.”
David Lindsay, 10th earl of Crawford (d. 1574), was a supporter of Mary Queen of Scots; he was succeeded by his son David (c. 1547–1607) as 11th earl. This David, a grandson of Cardinal Beaton, was concerned in some of the risings under James VI.; he was converted to Roman Catholicism and was in communication with the Spaniards about an invasion of England. After his death the earldom passed to his son David (d. 1621), a lawless ruffian, and then to his brother, Sir Henry Lindsay or Charteris (d. 1623), who became 13th earl of Crawford. Sir Henry’s three sons became in turn earls of Crawford, the youngest, Ludovic, succeeding in 1639.
Ludovic Lindsay, 16th earl of Crawford (1600–1652), took part in the strange plot of 1641 called the “incident.” Having joined Charles I. at Nottingham in 1642, he fought at Edgehill, at Newbury and elsewhere during the Civil War; in 1644, just after Marston Moor, the Scottish parliament declared he had forfeited his earldom, and, following the lines laid down when this was regranted in 1642, it was given to John Lindsay, 1st earl of Lindsay. Ludovic was taken prisoner at Newcastle in 1644 and was condemned to death, but the sentence was not carried out, and in 1645 he was released by Montrose, under whom he served until the surrender of the king at Newark. Later he was in
