married the daughter of the Earl of Rothes, in 1645. Alexander left a son and two daughters, who were taken charge of by their grandfather. The younger daughter, Agnes, died in infancy, and after the marriage of the other daughter, Catherine, to George, fourth lord, afterwards first earl of Melville, Leven settled the whole of his estates upon his grandson and successor, Alexander, who married in 1656 Margaret Howard, sister of Charles, earl of Carlisle. After Cromwell's death, when Leven petitioned the English parliament to extricate his estates from some heavy claims upon them arising out of their sequestration in 1651, Leven referred to his grandson's alliance with an Englishwoman as justifying a favourable treatment of his case (petition printed in Fraser's Melvilles of Melville, &c., i. 432).
Leven is improbably said to have married as his second wife Frances, daughter of Sir John Ferrers of Tamworth in Staffordshire, and widow of Sir John Pakington of Westwood in Worcestershire (Collins, English Baronetage, i. 396). Neither in his will, which the earl made in 1656, nor in any other document whatever, is any reference made to such a person.
The earldom and estates devolved upon his grandson, Alexander, second earl of Leven, but he and his young countess both died in 1664, within a few weeks of each other, leaving three sickly daughters, none of whom reached womanhood. The eldest, Margaret, succeeded her father as Countess of Leven, and married her cousin, the Hon. Francis Montgomerie, younger brother of Alexander, eighth earl of Eglinton. She died in 1674, in less than a year, and was succeeded by her youngest sister, Catherine, countess of Leven (their second sister, Lady Anna, having died first), who only survived till January 1676. The earldom of Leven was then claimed by George, earl of Melville, for his second son, David Melville, as next heir of entail in the settlement made by the second Earl of Leven; but the chancellor, John, duke of Rothes, whose second son, then deceased, had a prior place in the entail, resisted the claim on the ground that, though he had no sons as yet, he still might have. The judges of the court of session ruled his contention good. Rothes, however, died without a male heir in 1681, when David Melville became third earl of Leven, and as he afterwards also succeeded his father as Earl of Melville, the two titles eventually were conjoined.
[Authorities cited; Fraser's Melvilles of Melville and Leslies of Leven, and authorities there cited.]
LESLIE, ANDREW properly fifth, but sometimes called fourth, Earl of Rothes (d. 1611), was the eldest son of George, fourth earl [q. v.], by his wife, Agnes Somerville, daughter of Sir John Somerville of Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire. His elder half-brothers, Norman Leslie [q. v.] and William, whose legitimacy was doubtful, were involved in the murder of Cardinal Beaton, and declared rebels. The father consequently redeemed the family estates, which had been settled on Norman, and settled them on Andrew. Andrew Leslie had married Grizel, daughter of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart [q. v.], and Buchanan states that the king of France, to secure the support of the Hamiltons for the scheme of marrying the young Princess Mary to his son Francis, secured Andrew's reinstatement in the succession in preference to his brother William. Andrew succeeded to the peerage on the death of his father in 1558, and was served heir on 10 Sept. 1560, apparently because he was really the eldest legitimate son (cf. Reg. Mag. Sig. 1546–80, entries 213 and 1545). The two brothers still claimed the estates, and the dispute was submitted to Queen Mary, who on 15 Jan. 1566 decided that Andrew should enjoy the whole earldom, and that all right and title to it should revert to him on his infefting his brother William in the lands of Cairnie in the Carse of Gowrie. On 3 June 1566 Andrew received a new infeft of the earldom. The earl's claim to succeed his father as sheriff of Fife was opposed by Patrick, lord Lindsay of the Byres, but the Lindsays finally resigned all their claims on 19 April 1575.
Rothes took a prominent part in the proceedings of the lords of the congregation against the queen-regent, Mary of Guise. He was one of those who assembled at Cuparmuir in June 1559 to bar her march to St. Andrews (Knox, i. 351), and he took part in the deliverance of Perth from the French garrison on the 25th of the same month (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1558–9, entry 880). He signed the ratification of the treaty of Berwick (Knox, ii. 53), the contract to ‘defend the liberty of the Evangel’ (ib. p. 63), and the ‘Book of Discipline’ (ib. p. 129). After the return of Queen Mary to Scotland he was chosen a member of the privy council, and in September 1561 the queen stayed for a night at his house at Leslie. Having joined the Earl of Moray and other nobles in opposing the Darnley marriage, he was compelled to take refuge in England. In November 1565 he and others were summoned at the Market Cross of Edinburgh to appear at the parliament in the ensuing February to hear themselves ‘decerned of the crime of lese
