Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 1 Vol 2.djvu/409

 408 CRAWFORD. CEAWFOBD.(») Earldom [S.] Sir David LiJcnsAY,('') of Crawford, ( f ) in Clydesdale, I 1398 k ;llj " ut 1360, s - and h. 0* sir Alexander L. of Glenesk, in Angus, liy his first wife, Catherine (heiress of the same), da. of Sir John Stihlim; (which Alexander was 3rd s. of Sir David Lindsay of Crawford), sue. his father in 13S2. Justiciary, 13S9 ; Sheriff of Banff ; and is celebrated by having, on St. George's Day, 1390, as the representative of the Scottish chivalry, unhorsed the English champion John, Lord Welles (formerly Ambassador to Scotland), in the presence of King Richard II and his court, on London Bridge. In 1397 he sue. his cousin, Sir James Lindsay (who d. s.p.m.), in the barony of Crawford, and other entailed estates of the house of Lindsay, of which he then became the Chief, and the year after was, " by solemn belting and investiture in the Pari, held at Berth," a: EARL OF CRAWFORD [S.] on 21 April 139S,(d) " accompanied by a regraut of the (») See "Lives of the Lindsays or a memoir of the houses of Crawford and Balcarres," by Alexander W. C. Lindsay, styled Lord Lindsay, afterwards [1869-S0] Earl of Crawford [S.], 3 vols. 8vo, 1843 and 1858. This invaluable work is generally admitted to be a model for the history of a family. ( b ) Although the account of the Lindsay family here given commences no earlier than the title of Crawford, some allusion is not inappropriate to the continuous fitting* in Parliament enjoyed by the ancestors of the first Earl, more especially as, tho' other families in Scotland may have, been of more historic, none can in genealogical importance equal that of Lindsay, not only as to antiquity in the male line, but in all probability as to the number of 1'arliamentary sittings, such sittings commencing, also, at the earliest period of which any record exists, and, tho' not conferring of themselves, (as has been held in England) a hereditary peerage dignity, shewing at least the high position held from the remotest antiquity by that family. The first of their ancestors who settled in Scotland was Sir Walter da Lindens, who as "Noble and Knight" was a witness to the inquisition of the See of Glasgow, in HUi, having doubtless attended David, Earl of Huntingdon, afterwards King David I [S.], in his colonization of the Lowlands. During a great part of the period of some 300 years that elapsed between that time and the creation of the Earldom there were three contemporaneous branches of the family of Lindsay (descendants of the above-named Sir Walter), holding the following baronies ; one branch holding Lamberton in Scotland, as also Kendal and Molesworth iu England ; another branch holding Lufi'ness and Ckawkoiid in Scotland, as also half Limesi in England ; and the third branch holding Brenevifle and ByrBS in Scotland, as also certain lands (such lauds, however, not being held by Barony in chief of the King of England) iu England. The heads of all these three branches all sat in Pari. [S.], holding the highest offices of State in every generation, before the elevation in 1398 of the heir male and chief of the house to the rank of Earl. The family (as alBO was the case with some other families, most of which, however, are now extinct) were undoubtedly " Magnates " at initio, altho' the first person noticed in the text is he, in whom there first existed an hereditary Peerage of the kind now recognised. 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 ennobled in the modern sense of the term, but were among the Pares, of which Kings are Primi, from the commencement of recorded history." (°) The great mountain territory of Crawford, in Clydesdale, forms the southern extremity of Lanarkshire, and, being the highest district in the south of Scotland, was sometimes called the Bouth Highlands. It was held by tho family of Lindsay, certainly as early as the 12th century till the close of the loth, when it passed to the family of Douglas, of the house of Angus. rt ) The Earldom of Crawford was but " the third created since the extinction, of the Celtic Dynast)/ [1290]; that of Douglas [1 3f>7] having been the second, and that of Moray [of which 131 2, the charter being undated, is the probable date] the Jirst." Two other then [1398] existing Earldoms, Mar and Sutherland, claimed an antiquity long prior. The question of precedency between the Earldom of Crawford and that of Sutherland, was, at the Union, 1707, "settled or rather re- affirmed, after long and learned investigations, in favour of the Maris if Crawford, who rank, accordingly, as Premier Scottish. Karl s on the Union Roll. If dale of creation were the sole criterion, there is no doubt but that the Earldom of Man