Argyll and the extreme party and the consequent fall of Crawford who, by the ‘Act of Classes,’ was deprived of all his offices. In December 1649 he refused to subscribe a band acknowledging the lawfulness of the acts of the previous session of parliament, and was consequently apprehended at Elie, Fifeshire, when about to embark for Holland. He was sent to his own house, but no further steps were taken against him (ib. iii. 434). In January 1650 he ‘subscribed the band for the peace of the country’ (ib. iv. 1), and joined the coalition for the restoration of Charles II.
The defeat of the extreme covenanters by Cromwell at Dunbar again led to the ascendency of Crawford's moderate party. At the coronation of the king at Scone on 1 Jan. 1651–2 he carried the sceptre. From the 15th to the 17th of the following February he entertained the king at his house of the Struthers (ib. iv. 247). When the king marched into England, Crawford was appointed lieutenant-general under the Earl of Leven (ib. p. 314); but while attending a committee of the estates at Alyth on 28 Aug. he was surprised by a division of Monck's cavalry and taken prisoner to London (Nicoll, Diary, p. 68). At first he was confined in the Tower and then in Sandown Castle, but on 27 Nov. 1656 he was removed to Windsor Castle (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1656–7, p. 169), where he remained till the end of his captivity. He was excepted from Cromwell's act of grace, and was forfaulted at the cross of Edinburgh, 5 May 1654 (Nicoll, Diary, p. 125); but lands of his of the clear annual value of 400l. sterling were settled upon his wife and children. The annual value of his forfeited estate was 1,284l. 15s. 5d., and the claims against it were 28,449l. 11s. 1d. (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1655–6, p. 362).
At the Restoration he received his liberty (3 March 1660), and when in the December following he entered Edinburgh on his return to Scotland, he was welcomed with enthusiasm (Nicoll, p. 308). He was reinstated in all his offices, and received the lord high treasurership by patent of 19 Jan. 1660–1 for life. Notwithstanding his royalist leanings, he, however, ‘continued yet a zealous presbyterian’ (Burnet, Own Time, ed. 1838, p. 71). He opposed the rescissory act (ib. p. 80), strongly opposed the establishment of episcopacy, and refused to take the ‘declaration’ abjuring the covenant. He therefore found it necessary in 1663 to resign all his offices (see particulars in Row, Continuation of Blair's Autobiography, p. 440) and to retire from public life. He took up his residence at his estate of Struthers, to ‘enjoy the peace of a good conscience far from court.’ He died there in 1678.
By his wife, Lady Mary Hamilton, second daughter of James, second marquis of Hamilton [q. v.], he had two sons—William, eighteenth earl of Crawford [q. v.], and Patrick, ancestor of the Viscounts Garnock—and three daughters: Anne, married to John, duke of Rothes; Christian, to John, fourth earl of Haddington; Helen, to Sir Robert Sinclair, bart., of Stevenson, Haddingtonshire; and Elizabeth, to David, third earl of Northesk.
[Balfour's Annals of Scotland; Gordon's Scots Affairs; Spalding's Memorialls of the Trubles; Robert Baillie's Letters and Journals (Bannatyne Club); Nicoll's Diary (Bannatyne Club); Row's Continuation of Robert Blair's Autobiography; Burnet's Own Time; Bishop Guthry's Memoirs; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. Reign of Charles I and the Commonwealth period; Crawford's Officers of State; Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays; Lindsay Pedigree, by W. A. Lindsay, in the College of Arms; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 386–7.]
LINDSAY, JOHN, twentieth Earl of Crawford (1702–1749), military commander, born 4 Oct. 1702, was son of John, nineteenth earl, by Emilia, daughter of Lord Doune, and widow of Thomas Fraser of Strichen. His mother having died during his infancy, he was on the death of his father in 1713 placed under the care of his grandaunt, the Dowager-duchess of Argyll. He received his early education from a private tutor, and, after attending the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, was sent in 1721 to the military academy of Vaudeuil, Paris. In 1726 he was appointed to a company in one of the additional troops of the Scots Greys. He early acquired a reputation for resolution and daring, and, while not neglecting intellectual accomplishments, attained exceptional proficiency in athletic exercises, especially in shooting, fencing, riding, and dancing. On the disbandment of the additional troops of Scots Greys in 1730, he took up his residence with the Dowager-duchess of Argyll at Campbelltown, devoting his more serious attention to military studies, and his leisure to boating and hunting. On 3 Jan. 1732 he obtained command of a troop of the seventh or Queen's Own regiment of dragoons. The same year he was chosen a representative peer of Scotland, and in June 1733 appointed gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales. In February 1734 he obtained a captain-lieutenancy in the first regiment of foot guards, and in October a captaincy in the third regiment of foot guards; but, being desirous of acquiring practical acquaintance with the
