Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/269

 and Crawford was restored to his estates and titles.

Huntly was one of the commanders at the siege of Roxburgh Castle in 1460, when the king was killed by the bursting of one of the siege guns. He died at Elgin on 14 July 1470. By his first wife, Jean, daughter and heiress of Robert de Keith, grandson and heir of Sir William de Keith, great marischal of Scotland, he had no issue. By his second wife, Egidia, daughter and heiress of Sir John Hay of Tulliebody, Clackmannanshire, he had a son Sir Alexander Seton, ancestor of the Setons of Touch, Stirlingshire. By his third wife, Elizabeth, daughter of William, lord Crichton, lord high-chancellor of Scotland, he had three sons and three daughters, who took the name of Gordon, the succession to the earldom of Huntly being settled on the issue of this marriage, by charter 29 Jan. 1449–50. The sons were George Gordon, second earl of Huntly [q. v.]; Sir Alexander of Midmar, ancestor of the Gordons of Abergeldie; and Adam, dean of Caithness and rector of Pettie.

[Lindsay of Pitscottie's Chronicle; Bishop Lesley's History of Scotland; Exchequer Rolls of Scotland; Tytler's History of Scotland; William Gordon's House of Gordon; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 643–4.]

 SETON, ALEXANDER (d. 1542), Scottish friar and reformer, was educated at the university of St. Andrews, and is probably to be identified with a student of that name who was a determinant in 1516. According to Calderwood (History, i. 93), he was ‘brother to Ninian Seton, laird of Touch,’ and if so he was the youngest son of Sir Alexander Seton of Touch and Tullybody, by Lady Elizabeth Erskine, daughter of Thomas, second earl of Mar. It was probably about 1534 or 1535 that he began, according to Knox, to ‘tax the corrupt doctrine of the papacy’ (Works, i. 45), maintaining that the ‘law of God had of many years not been truly taught’ (ib.) His statements, reflecting especially on the conduct of the bishops, gave such offence that they accused him to James V, whose confessor he was, whereupon, dreading the king's anger, he suddenly left for England. From Berwick he sent the king a letter, in which he offered to return to Scotland and debate the matters in dispute in his presence before any bishop, abbot, friar, or secular he might name (printed in, i. 48–52). According to Knox, he ‘taught the evangel’ in England for some years (ib. p. 54), but in 1541 he made a recantation at St. Paul's Cross in London, which was published with the title, ‘The Declaracion made at Paules Crosse in the Cytye of London, the fourth Sunday of Advent, by Alexander Seyton, and Mayster William Tolwyn, persone of St. Anthonyes in the sayd Cytye of London, the year of our Lord God MDXLI, newly corrected and amended. Imprinted at London in Saynt Sepulchres parysshe in the Olde Bayly by Richard Lant. Ad imprimendum solum.’ He was for some time chaplain to Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, in whose house he died in 1542.

[Histories of Knox and Calderwood; Foxe's Book of Martyrs; Laing's Notes to Knox's History.]

 SETON, ALEXANDER, first  (1555?–1622), born about 1555, was fourth son of George, fifth lord Seton [q. v.], by Isabel, daughter of Sir William Hamilton of Sanquhar. Sir John Seton (d. 1594) [q. v.] was his brother. Being intended for the church, he went to Rome, where he studied at the College of Jesuits. It was probably before this that (on 17 Sept. 1565) he received from Queen Mary a grant of the priory of Pluscardine, of which his father had been economus and commissioner since 17 April 1561. In his sixteenth year he delivered with great applause an oration, ‘De Ascensione Domini,’ in the pope's chapel of the Vatican before Gregory XIII and the cardinals. This was probably in December 1571; for mention is made of his having about this time been presented to the pope, who commanded him to be treated as his own son (Cal. State Papers, For. 1569–71, No. 2166). According to Lord Kingston (Continuation of the History of the House of Seton), he was ‘a great humanist in prose and verse, Greek and Latin, and well versed in the mathematics and great skill in architecture.’ He is supposed to have taken holy orders, and it is also customary to state that the occurrence of the Reformation caused him either to give up thoughts of entering the church or to abandon the holy vocation; but the definite notice of his presentation to the pope in 1571 shows that he had not even entered on his studies when the Reformation took place. But whatever his original intentions, and whatever the cause of his abandoning them, if he did abandon them, he ultimately began the study of law, and, after attending various lectures in France, returned to Scotland, where he at length passed advocate. At some unknown period, but probably on the fall of Mary Stuart, he was deprived of the priory of Pluscardine which was held successively by Alexander Dunbar and James Douglas, natural sons of