stitution of the council in June 1592. On 15 Aug. following he was accused by Colonel Stewart of having resetted [i.e. harboured] the turbulent Earl of Bothwell [see Hepburn, Francis Stewart, fifth Earl]. Spynie offered to fight the accuser, but this the king would not permit, and after a day had been appointed for the trial, Stewart was committed to Edinburgh (Calderwood, v. 174) or Blackness Castle (Moysie, p. 96), and Spynie to Stirling Castle (ib.) At the trial the accuser failed to proceed to probation; and when after postponement he again declined to proceed, Spynie was set at liberty. Stewart's accusation had, however, so disturbed the king—who was always in mortal dread of being betrayed to Bothwell—that Spynie never regained his entire confidence. When, on 24 July of the following year, Bothwell made his appearance before the king at Holyrood Palace, Spynie was one of those who interceded for him (Calderwood, v. 256; Moysie, p. 103). On 27 Dec. 1593–4 he was denounced for not appearing to answer charges touching ‘certain treasonable practices and correspondence’ (Reg. P. C. Scotl. v. 114); and on 24 Feb. following proclamation was made against holding intercourse with him and ‘other adherents of Bothwell’ (ib. p. 132). Not long after he made his peace with the king, and on 27 Nov. 1595 was present at a meeting of the privy council (ib. p. 234), but their relations were never again quite cordial. On 18 Nov. 1599 he had to promise the council to present Sir Walter Lindsay of Balgavie [q. v.], a papal emissary, before the presbytery of Edinburgh, and was ordered to reside where they directed him until he satisfied them in reference to his religion (ib. vi. 33). In 1600 ‘ane greit trouble’ fell out between Lord Spynie and the Ogilvies which, though the council did its utmost to settle it, ultimately resulted on 30 Jan. 1602–3 in a night attack by the Master of Ogilvie and his brother on the house of Lord Spynie at Kinblethmont. After blowing up the principal gate with a petard, the assailants searched the house for Lord Spynie and his wife to ‘murder them.’ Finding they had escaped, the Ogilvies spoiled the mansion of its furniture and plate (ib. pp. 519–20). On the revival of the ancient bishopric of Moray in 1605, Spynie, at the request of the king, resigned the temporalities, but the patronage of the living was reserved to the family. While, on 5 June 1607, at the foot of the stair of his lodgings in the High Street of Edinburgh, ‘recreating himself after his supper,’ Spynie was witness to an encounter between his kinsmen, the Master of Crawford, and the younger Lindsay of Edzell. He endeavoured to interpose to prevent bloodshed and was slain by the young laird of Edzell by ‘a pitiful mistake.’ The incident, with much distortion of fact, is narrated in the old ballad of ‘Lord Spynie.’ According to Spotiswood, Spynie's death ‘was much regretted for the good parts he had, and the hope his friends conceived that he should have raised again that noble and ancient house of Crawford to the former splendour and dignity’ (History, Spotiswood Society, 3rd edit. p. 191).
By his wife, Jean Lyon, Spynie had two sons—Alexander Lindsay, second lord [q. v.], and John, who died young—and two daughters: Anne, married to Sir Robert Graham of Invermay, and Margaret, to John Erskine of Dun.
[Moysie's Memoirs (Bannatyne Club); Histories of Calderwood, Spotiswood, and Row; Reg. P. C. Scotl. vols. v–vi; Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland, vol. i.; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 517–18; Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays; Jervise's Lands of the Lindsays; Lindsay Pedigree, by W. A. Lindsay, in the College of Arms.]
LINDSAY, ALEXANDER (d. 1639), bishop of Dunkeld, was the younger son of John Lindsay of Evelick, Perthshire, member of a younger branch of the Lindsays, earls of Crawford. For some time he was regent in St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews, and on 7 Sept. 1591, he was ordained minister of St. Madoes, Perthshire. When the general assembly in May 1602 resolved to appoint certain of their number to wait on the popish earls to endeavour to convert them to protestantism, Lindsay was one of the two chosen to deal with the Earl of Errol (Calderwood, vi. 116; Reg. P. C. Scotl. vi. 380). In January 1606–7 he was appointed constant moderator of the presbytery of Perth, but they refused to accept him until 7 March, and various ministers were subsequently prosecuted for continued contumaciousness in the matter (ib. vii. 385–390). In October 1607 the bishopric of Dunkeld was bestowed on Lindsay after it had been refused by James Melville. He was a member of the ecclesiastical high commission appointed in 1610 (ib. viii. 419). He took part with several other bishops in the coronation of Charles I at Holyrood in 1633. He opposed the introduction of the service-books in 1638 (Spalding, Memorialls, i. 88), but together with other bishops was in the same year deposed by the general assembly, the special accusation against him being that he was avaricious, and that he had been guilty of a variety of ecclesiastical irregularities (for particulars see Gordon, Scots Affairs, ii. 145). Thereupon on 7 Dec. he sent to the
