Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 6.djvu/89

Rh anew to all the pain and suffering which he had experienced immediately after receiving it. From Bedford, the earl and countess proceeded to London, from thence to Helvoetsluys, and finally to Bois le Duc, where they arrived in June. On the 22d May, his lordship, previous to his leaving England, was appointed to the command of the 2d regiment of dragoons, or royal Scots Greys, in room of the earl of Stair, deceased; and, on the 26th of September following, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general.

On the conclusion of the campaign, the earl, accompanied by his countess, went to Aix-la-Chapelle, for the benefit of the baths there; being still seriously annoyed by his wound, which had again broken out after a second temporary cure. While his lordship was confined here to bed, his young countess—she had not yet attained her twentieth year—was seized with a violent and malignant fever which carried her off in four days. His lordship, who was deeply affected by his loss, and for a time wholly inconsolable, ordered that the body of his deceased lady should be embalmed, and sent over to his family burial place at Ceres in Fife. He himself remained at Aix till the opening of the campaign in 1748, when he joined the duke of Cumberland and confederate army of 150,000 men. His lordship remained with the army till the conclusion of the peace, which took place in the same year. On the 16th of February of the following year, (1749,) he superintended the embarkation of the British troops at Willianistadt, and soon after returned to London, where he died on the 25th December, in the forty-eighth year of his age, after suffering again severely from his wound. His remains were carried to Ceres, and deposited beside those of his countess.

His lordship is represented to have been of middle size, remarkably stout, but finely formed. His manners were mild, elegant, and refined; his disposition generous, brave, and charitable, often beyond his means. His purse, open to all, was especially at the service of the distressed widows of officers, numbers of whom were relieved from misery and destitution by his bounty. His lordship always maintained a splendid retinue, and lived in a style becoming his rank, but was moderate at table, and temperate in all his habits. His judgment was strong, his temper serene and dispassionate. His lordship having died without issue, the titles of Crawford and Lindsay devolved on George, viscount of Garnock.

LINDSAY,, of Pitscottie, author of the Chronicles of Scotland known by his name, was born about the beginning of the sixteenth century. He was a cadet of the noble family of Lindsay, comprising the earls of Crawford and. Lindsay, and the lords Lindsay of Byres. He is not known otherwise than as the author of the Chronicles alluded to, and these have not had the effect of eliciting any information regarding him from his contemporaries, which could be of any avail to a modern biographer. He has, in truth, been scarcely recognized even as a literary man by the chroniclers of Scottish genius, and yet, this is the only ground on which he seems to have any claim to commemoration, there being no other circumstance of any interest in his life but that of his having written the work spoken of above.

As to the Chronicles themselves, it is not perhaps very easy to determine in what language they should be spoken of. They present a strange compound of endless and aimless garrulity, simplicity, credulity, and graphic delineation; the latter, however, evidently the effect not of art or design, but of a total want of them. He describes events with all the circumstantiality of an eye-witness, and with all the prolixity of one who is determined to leave nothing untold, however trifling it may be.

But his credulity, in particular, seems to have been boundless, and is remark-