invaluable assistance to Kirkcaldy of Grange in holding the French in check in Fife, distinguishing himself by slaying in single combat La Bastie, a French captain of repute (Knox, ii. 11). In February 1559–60 he took part at Berwick in the negotiations for a treaty with England (ib. p. 45). On 27 April he subscribed the band to ‘defend the liberty of the Evangell of Christ’ (ib. p. 63), and he also subscribed the ‘Book of Discipline’ (ib. p. 129). He observed the obligations into which he thus entered with greater faithfulness than discretion. He was one of those deputed by the general assembly on 28 May 1561 to suppress ‘Idolatrie and all monuments thereof’ (ib. p. 163), and when Queen Mary, after her arrival from France in the following August, made known her intention of having mass said in her private chapel, he and his followers gathered in front of it, exclaiming that ‘the idolater priest should die the death’ (ib. ii. 270). Claude Nau [q. v.] asserts that he ‘drove the chaplain from the chapel and overthrew all the memorials’ (Life of Queen Mary, ed. Stevenson, p. 326), but Knox states that ‘Lord James’ (afterwards Earl of Moray) kept the door and prevented Lindsay entering the chapel (Works, ii. 270). To Lord James, who was his brother-in-law, Lindsay was specially devoted, and through his mediation Lindsay and the queen became reconciled shortly afterwards. Rough as he was in manners, Lindsay may also not have been altogether proof against the queen's personal charm. ‘It would well have contented your honour,’ writes Randolph to Cecil from St. Andrews, 25 April 1562, ‘to have seen the queen and the Master of Lindsay shoot at the butts against the Earl of Marr [afterwards Earl of Moray] and one of the ladies.’ On the rebellion of Huntly during the queen's progress in the north of Scotland in the following September, Lindsay and Kirkcaldy of Grange were, with their followers, specially summoned to her assistance (Randolph to Cecil in Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1562, entry 718); and Lindsay seems to have had a considerable share in winning the battle of Corrichie (Buchanan, bk. xvi.; Knox, ii. 275: ancient ballad on the battle).
Shortly after succeeding to the title on the death of his father, in December 1563, Lindsay had a contention with the Earl of Rothes as to his right to the sheriffdom of Fife (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1563–4, entry 1523). Rothes obtained the sheriffdom, and although on 12 Jan. 1564–5 he agreed that Lindsay should be exempted from its jurisdiction (Reg. P. C. Scotl. i. 315), Lindsay was never reconciled to the loss of the office. Being related to Darnley, Lindsay, in opposition to Moray and the stricter reformers, favoured Darnley's marriage to the queen. In the ‘roundabout raid’ against Moray he ‘accompanied the king in leading the battle’ (ib. p. 379). The subsequent policy of the queen made him a zealous supporter of the plot for the murder of Rizzio, and on the night of the murder he accompanied Morton to the palace court with a band of armed followers. When Mary escaped to Dunbar Lindsay fled to England with the other contrivers of Rizzio's murder, but the queen pardoned him, Morton, and others shortly before the murder of Darnley (Bedford to Cecil, 30 Dec. 1566, in Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1566–8, entry 872). There is no evidence that he was made aware of any scheme to ‘get rid’ of Darnley, and the presumption is that, like his kinsman Atholl, he deeply resented Darnley's murder. His resentment partly accounts for the prominent part assigned him by the queen's enemies in their proceedings against her. He signed at Stirling the bond against Bothwell, and was one of the principal actors in the strange proceedings at Carberry Hill on 15 June. He besought the lords as a special favour to permit him to accept Bothwell's challenge to single combat ‘in regard of his nearness of blood to the defunct king,’ and Morton presented him with the famous two-handed sword of Archibald Bell-the-Cat, but the queen's interference prevented the encounter (Hume of Godscroft, House of Douglas, p. 297; Knox; ii. 561; Sir James Melville, Memoirs, p. 184). Lindsay was largely responsible for the hard terms made with the queen. After her surrender, when she was given to understand that she was practically the prisoner of the confederate lords, she sent for Lindsay, and, giving him her hand, exclaimed, ‘By the hand which is now in yours I'll have your head for this’ (Drury to Cecil, 18 June 1567). Lindsay, along with Lord Ruthven, conveyed Mary to Lochleven, and they and the lord of the castle were jointly made her guardians. Lindsay was deputed to obtain her signature to the deed abdicating the crown. According to a catholic account, Lindsay told her ‘that if she did not sign the document she would compel them to cut her throat, however unwilling they might be’ (‘Report upon the State of Scotland by the Jesuit Priests’ in Stevenson's edition of Nau's Queen Mary, p. 60). Sir James Melville, however, states that she was informed that Lindsay was in a ‘boasting humour’ before his arrival, and that she subscribed the document without demur (Memoirs, p. 190). At the coronation of the infant prince Lindsay
