Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lindsay, Alexander (d.1639)
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 assembly ‘in write his simple submission’ (Robert Baillie, Letters and Journals, i. 153), abjuring episcopacy (see The Recantation and Humble Submission of two Ancient Prelates of the Kingdom of Scotland, subscribed by their own Hand, and sent to the General Assembly; the Bishop of Dunkeld his Recantation, the Bishop of Orkney his Recantation, 1641). He was deposed from his bishopric, but allowed to retain his parochial charge of St. Madoes. He died in October 1639, aged about seventy-eight. By his wife, Barbara Bruce, who died in October 1626, he had two sons—Alexander, who succeeded to the estate of Evelick, and William, who succeeded to that of Kilspindie—and two daughters: Catherine, married to John Lundie of Lundie, and Helen, to Sir Patrick Hay of Balfour.
[Calderwood's History; Spalding's Memorialls of the Trubles (Spalding Club); Gordon's Scots Affairs (Spalding Club); Robert Baillie's Letters and Journals (Bannatyne Club); Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. ii. 660, 837–8; Keith's Scottish Bishops; Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays.]