extinct, and the succession to the Earldom of Crawford reverted, in terms of the patent of 1642, to the heirs-male of Earl Ludovic, the Earls of Balcarres. The Crawford-Lindsay estates, being destined to heirs-female, went to Earl George's only surviving sister, the late Lady Mary Lindsay Crawford. † *This has been lately proved before the House of Lords-not through hearsay or taciturnity, but by a multiplicity of original legal evidence. For some interesting fragments descriptive of the "country" of the Lindsays of the Byres, of the present state of their castle at Struthers, of their burial-place at Ceres, &c., see the Appendix, No. XL. The succession of Lady Mary was opposed, unsuccessfully, by Colonel William Claud Campbell, grandson of Lady Mary Lindsay, sister of Earl John, and heir of line of the Crawford-Lindsay family, and by John Crawford, by self-nomination John Lindsay Crawford, of Castle-Dawson in Ireland, who asserted himself to be the descendant of the Hon. James Crawford, third son of John first Viscount Garnock, producing forged documents in support of his pretensions; and pursued his object during the remainder of his life-backed by the voluntary subscriptions of thousands throughout Scotland-with a perseverance and determination on the one side, and an enthusiastic generosity on the other, worthy of a better cause. Long in fact after the imposture had been detected, and the Hon. James Crawford had been proved to have died without issue, persons were found to credit his pretensions, his son asserted them with equal assurance, and fresh sums had been raised to prosecute the claim, when disclosures took place which induced the Counsel engaged to throw up their briefs. Their report on doing so, dated March, 1839,-a very interesting document-will be found reprinted in the Appendix, No. XLI. And any antiquary who may be interested in investigating the history of perhaps the most singular instance of peerage imposture on record, may find ample information in the work by Dr. Adams entitled 'The Crawford Peerage,' the manifesto of John Crawford, published in quarto at Edinburgh in 1829, and in Mr. Dobie's ‘Examination of the Claim of John Lindsay Crawford to the estates and honours of Crawford,' the refutation of that work, similarly printed in quarto, 1831.* inscription: Here lies the Body of John Lindsay Crawford, 2nd son of the Honourable Viscount Garnock of Kilbirney, in Scotland, who departed this Life on the 2nd of June, in the year 1745, aged 47 years. Also the Body of his Brother James Lindsay Crawford, 3rd son of the aforesaid Honourable Viscount Garnock, who departed this life 1st December, 1745, aged 45 years.'-Miss Crawford was rejoiced at this discovery. It seemed to her to furnish a presumption that members of Lord Crawford's family must have made a settlement in Ireland. This might, she thought, be inferred from the circumstance of two sons of Lord Garnock being buried at Derrybrusk. It did not occur to her that the tombstones were a rank forgery. Yet such is the undoubted fact.-The Hon. John Crawford, whose name appears upon SECTION III. Besides the Gallant John Earl of Crawford, there was living contemporary with Earl James, and still more closely in alliance with him, a character marked with lines as strong, and whose fate was equally contrasted-the patriarchal chief of both these noblemen, David Lindsay, the "last of the Lairds" of Edzell. I must devote a few pages, during this lull in my narrative, to the waning fortunes of that elder branch of our family. On the death of George, the third and last Lord Spynie, in 1671, the chiefship of the Lindsays, involving the representation of the original House of Crawford and the remembrance of the wrong done to the legitimate heirs by Earl Ludovic and Earl John, devolved on David Lindsay of Edzell, father of the David just mentioned. He claimed the Earldom before Parliament in 1685,† with the warm support and sympathy, as already intimated, * On this, as already stated, he assumed the chief arms of Crawford, in conformity with the heraldic usage of Scotland.-Lord Spynie having died in debt, his creditors came upon Edzell for payment, as next heir (male) of entail, and representative of the Crawford family, in terms of the charters of 1546, 1564, 1587, &c. Edzell consequently renounced the succession. See the Crawford Case, p. 140. + Edzell's Petition, the Warrant and Charge at his instance against William Earl of Lindsay, the Information given in to Parliament by Edzell, and the counter Information tendered by Earl William, may be seen in the Crawford Case, pp. 139, 194 sqq.-Of the two Informations two copies only are known to exist, that of Edzell in the possession of Mr. Maidment, who most kindly entrusted it to my father for the prosecution of his claim to the Crawford Earldom,-that of Earl William in the Lindsay Charter-room at Crawford Priory. its lying surface, died in Edinburgh on the 25th February, 1739, and is interred in the Greyfriars' churchyard in that city. The Hon. James Crawford, who is associated with his brother John in the Derrybrusk inscription, died, as we have already seen, in 1744, in London, and is buried at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The fabricator of the Derrybrusk tombstone probably intended it to support a line of evidence he meant to invent in behalf of a certain claimant; and with this view he appears to have thought that its apparent authenticity would be strengthened by quietly interring two brothers together beneath it. But the proofs of John Crawford's death in Edinburgh in a different year from that stated on the tombstone transpired subsequently to the fabrication; which was therefore rendered altogether unavailable as evidence, and withal somewhat perilous to its ingenious contriver. The entire case thenceforth required to be recast; and the audacious forgery was left to repose amongst the brushwood and briars of Derrybrusk, where it would have probably lain unnoticed and forgotten, if it had not been accidentally discovered in 1842 by Miss Catherine Crawford, when searching for evidence in her brother's behalf. Patrician, Sept. 1848, p. 270. a The remnant of the Crawford estates stood vested in the person of the third Lord Spynie and his heirs-male whatsoever, as proved by his retour to David eleventh Earl of Crawford, 8 Nov. 1665, (Crawford Case, p. 137,) in terms of the entail of 1587. of the dignified clergy. He rested his claim on the transactions between the son of the Wicked Master and Earl David of Edzell, in 1546, and on the admitted fact that by the extinction of the Spynie branch he had become heir-male of the ancient Earls of Crawford,-totally overlooking the material consideration, that, however unjustly, Earl Ludovic had legally resigned his honours into the hands of King Charles I., and that Charles had, in the unquestionable exercise of his prerogative, restored them to him by patent with an altered limitation. This of course precluded success in the claim. No record of it is extant in the public registers, but Earl James of Balcarres states that the High Commissioner, William Duke of Queensberry, then on ill terms with Earl Colin, gave the King's negative without his instructions,*which is very possible in itself, independently of any feeling of animosity to Colin, since Edzell's claim directly attacked the royal prerogative, and was palpably unsubstantial and futile. Sir John Nisbet of Dirletoun notices another objection to its entertainment, its being addressed to the House of Parliament, instead of the more correct tribunal, the Court of Session.† However this may be, the claim was dropped, and the descendants of John Earl of Crawford-Lindsay, the Treasurer, enjoyed * Memoirs, MS. + In his celebrated work, entitled, 'Doubts and Questions in the Law, especially of Scotland,'-(doubts, said by a celebrated English lawyer to be far better than most men's certainties,) in which he observes, in reply to the query, “If reductions may be pursued summarily before the Parliament in primâ instantiâ,”—“ that, although, when my Lord Lauderdale was Commissioner, that was done, . . . and there is now a complaint at the instance of Edzell against the Earl of Crawford for reducing the said Earl his title; yet such processes would not be sustained before the Parliament, if it were represented that, by divers ancient laws, and for great reasons, it is provided that all complaints in civilibus should be first pursued before the Judge Ordinary," that is, in the Court of Session. Doubts, &c., pp. 134-5, edit. 1698. Crawford Case, p. 33.—That the investigation and decision of Scottish peerage claims belongs strictly to the Court of Session, to the exclusion of Parliament or any other judicatory, can be proved by the most cogent evidence, founded alike upon principle and practice. See Mr. Riddell's Peerage and Consistorial Law, tom. i. pp. 3 sqq.-It would surely be a relief to the House of Lords, as it would unquestionably be the saving of precious time and enormous expense to Scottish claimants, were this ancient rule restored,—to say nothing of the extreme embarrassment of having to plead before judges born and bred in English law, and forgetful occasionally of the fact, that the House of Peers, as constituted since the Union, is not an English but a Scottish court, when sitting in judgment upon a Scottish cause, and consequently bound to judge, in such contingency, wholly and solely by Scottish law. the honours of Crawford, unchallenged and by undoubted right, as already stated, till the death of George, the last Earl of that branch, in 1808. It is remarkable indeed, that the barony of Lindsay, as held by David Earl of Crawford and "Lord the Lyndissay" at least as early as 1443, had never been resigned by Earl Ludovic, and consequently ought to have gone as a matter of course to Lord Spynie, and after him to the families of Edzell and Balcarres. Had the claim in 1685 been limited to the barony only, it must have been successful.* The Edzell family were in fact less interested in acquiring or vindicating new honours than in sustaining the position they already held. Sir David, the elder brother of John Lindsay of Balcarres, Lord Menmuir, had been extravagant, as we know, but the estates had been relieved of their burdens during the twenty years subsequent to his death, and in the year 1630 were worth ten thousand pounds a-year,†—a very large income in those days. But the civil war brought them, and many another Lindsay a * Respecting the barony of Lindsay, vide supra, tom. i. p. 125, note.-The barony of Spynie was claimed in 1785 by the grandfather of the present Mr. Lindsay Carnegie, of Spynie and Boysack, the representative of the family in the female line, in virtue of the charters of 6 May, 1590, and 17 April, 1593, and the Parliamentary ratification, 1592,-but unsuccessfully. Convinced, however, that, on reconsideration of the case, the House would now pronounce a judgment favourable to the heir-female, the Earl of Balcarres did not include the barony of Spynie among the ancient honours of the Crawford family recently claimed by him before the House of Lords. On this subject see the observations of Mr. Riddell in his 'Peerage and Consistorial Law,' pp. 654-707.—I may take this opportunity of expressing publicly my acknowledgments to John MacKenzie Lindsay, Esq., Principal Clerk of Session, brother of Mr. Lindsay of Spynie, for great kindness and much personal trouble cheerfully encountered by him in behalf of my father in his recent claim. + Letter of John Earl of Lauderdale, 15 Feb. 1630. Haigh Muniment-room. family, to the dust; and, though they regained their footing and struggled on for a season, it was only to sink at last in irretrievable ruin. The declension began from the hour the troops of Montrose invaded Angus. John of Edzell, grandson of Sir David, and father of the penultimate Laird, was compelled to petition Parliament, in 1649, for exemption from contributing to the new levies then raised," the rebel army," he says, having been " for a long time encamped and quartered upon the lands of Edzell and Glenesk, to the utter ruin and destruction of my lands and tenants, the whole corns being burnt in the barnyards, and the whole store of cattle and goods killed or driven away, whereby the haill lands of Glenesk,* which were worth of yearly revenue nine thousand marks, have ever since been lying waste be reason the tenants have not been able to labour the same, insomuch that the particular amount of my losses, which was clearly instructit to the Committee of Common Burdens, did amount to the sum of four-score thousand marks, or thereby; besides great charges and expences, which I have hitherto been forced to sustain, for maintaining three several garrisons for a long time to defend my tenants, whereof many, in their own defence, were most cruelly and barbarously killed; as likewise, ever since, a constant guard of forty men, for defending my lands and tenants from the daily incursions of enemies and robbers."-A state of things which will remind you of some of the scenes and descriptions in 'Waverley.' Two years after this complaint the castle was occupied by Cromwell's troops. There was no sermon at the church, says the parish-register, from the 28th September "until the last day of November, by reason the English army had taken up their quarters at Edzell, and scattered the people of God to gather corn and forage for their horses."‡ And finally, as I have already mentioned, a fine of three thou *Not including Edzell and other property. Supplication, 16 March, 1649. Acts Parl., tom. vi. p. 441.-An Act was passed accordingly, 17 July, 1649, alluding to a previous award of £20,000 (Scots) for his relief, which had not been paid, and exempting him from part of his monthly assessment, in consideration of the hardships complained of. Haigh Muniment room. Cited in the 'Views of Edzell Castle,' Edinb., folio, 1838, p. 8. |