Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lindsay, Patrick (d.1589)
LINDSAY, PATRICK, sixth Lord Lindsay of the Byres (d. 1589), a prominent supporter of the reformers in Scotland, was the eldest son of John, fifth Baron Lindsay [q. v.] of the Byres, by Helen Stewart, daughter of John, third earl of Atholl. He is said to have been the first of the Scottish nobility who openly joined the reformers. He was one of those who, in May 1559, took up arms to prevent Perth falling into the hands of the queen-regent (Knox, i. 339), and after the treaty at Cupar Muir had a principal share in the expulsion of the French garrison from the city (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1558–9, entry 908). On the evacuation of Edinburgh by the lords of the congregation in the following spring, he rendered invaluable assistance to Kirkcaldy of Grange in holding the French in check in Fife, distinguishing himself by slaying in single combat La Bastie, a French captain of repute (Knox, ii. 11). In February 1559–60 he took part at Berwick in the negotiations for a treaty with England (ib. p. 45). On 27 April he subscribed the band to ‘defend the liberty of the Evangell of Christ’ (ib. p. 63), and he also subscribed the ‘Book of Discipline’ (ib. p. 129). He observed the obligations into which he thus entered with greater faithfulness than discretion. He was one of those deputed by the general assembly on 28 May 1561 to suppress ‘Idolatrie and all monuments thereof’ (ib. p. 163), and when Queen Mary, after her arrival from France in the following August, made known her intention of having mass said in her private chapel, he and his followers gathered in front of it, exclaiming that ‘the idolater priest should die the death’ (ib. ii. 270). Claude Nau [q. v.] asserts that he ‘drove the chaplain from the chapel and overthrew all the memorials’ (Life of Queen Mary, ed. Stevenson, p. 326), but Knox states that ‘Lord James’ (afterwards Earl of Moray) kept the door and prevented Lindsay entering the chapel (Works, ii. 270). To Lord James, who was his brother-in-law, Lindsay was specially devoted, and through his mediation Lindsay and the queen became reconciled shortly afterwards. Rough as he was in manners, Lindsay may also not have been altogether proof against the queen's personal charm. ‘It would well have contented your honour,’ writes Randolph to Cecil from St. Andrews, 25 April 1562, ‘to have seen the queen and the Master of Lindsay shoot at the butts against the Earl of Marr [afterwards Earl of Moray] and one of the ladies.’ On the rebellion of Huntly during the queen's progress in the north of Scotland in the following September, Lindsay and Kirkcaldy of Grange were, with their followers, specially summoned to her assistance (Randolph to Cecil in Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1562, entry 718); and Lindsay seems to have had a considerable share in winning the battle of Corrichie (Buchanan, bk. xvi.; Knox, ii. 275: ancient ballad on the battle).
Shortly after succeeding to the title on the death of his father, in December 1563, Lindsay had a contention with the Earl of Rothes as to his right to the sheriffdom of Fife (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1563–4, entry 1523). Rothes obtained the sheriffdom, and although on 12 Jan. 1564–5 he agreed that Lindsay should be exempted from its jurisdiction (Reg. P. C. Scotl. i. 315), Lindsay was never reconciled to the loss of the office. Being related to Darnley, Lindsay, in opposition to Moray and the stricter reformers, favoured Darnley's marriage to the queen. In the ‘roundabout raid’ against Moray he ‘accompanied the king in leading the battle’ (ib. p. 379). The subsequent policy of the queen made him a zealous supporter of the plot for the murder of Rizzio, and on the night of the murder he accompanied Morton to the palace court with a band of armed followers. When Mary escaped to Dunbar Lindsay fled to England with the other contrivers of Rizzio's murder, but the queen pardoned him, Morton, and others shortly before the murder of Darnley (Bedford to Cecil, 30 Dec. 1566, in Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1566–8, entry 872). There is no evidence that he was made aware of any scheme to ‘get rid’ of Darnley, and the presumption is that, like his kinsman Atholl, he deeply resented Darnley's murder. His resentment partly accounts for the prominent part assigned him by the queen's enemies in their proceedings against her. He signed at Stirling the bond against Bothwell, and was one of the principal actors in the strange proceedings at Carberry Hill on 15 June. He besought the lords as a special favour to permit him to accept Bothwell's challenge to single combat ‘in regard of his nearness of blood to the defunct king,’ and Morton presented him with the famous two-handed sword of Archibald Bell-the-Cat, but the queen's interference prevented the encounter (Hume of Godscroft, House of Douglas, p. 297; Knox; ii. 561; Sir James Melville, Memoirs, p. 184). Lindsay was largely responsible for the hard terms made with the queen. After her surrender, when she was given to understand that she was practically the prisoner of the confederate lords, she sent for Lindsay, and, giving him her hand, exclaimed, ‘By the hand which is now in yours I'll have your head for this’ (Drury to Cecil, 18 June 1567). Lindsay, along with Lord Ruthven, conveyed Mary to Lochleven, and they and the lord of the castle were jointly made her guardians. Lindsay was deputed to obtain her signature to the deed abdicating the crown. According to a catholic account, Lindsay told her ‘that if she did not sign the document she would compel them to cut her throat, however unwilling they might be’ (‘Report upon the State of Scotland by the Jesuit Priests’ in Stevenson's edition of Nau's Queen Mary, p. 60). Sir James Melville, however, states that she was informed that Lindsay was in a ‘boasting humour’ before his arrival, and that she subscribed the document without demur (Memoirs, p. 190). At the coronation of the infant prince Lindsay and Ruthven testified that the resignation was voluntary; but Lindsay found it necessary to compel the keeper of the privy seal to attach it to the resignation (for the document see Reg. P. C. Scotl. i. 531–4). Subsequently Lindsay was one of the staunchest supporters of the Regent Moray. In a forged ‘Conference about the Regent Moray’ he is represented as saying: ‘My lord, ye know of ould that I was moir rude than wyse. I can nought gyve you a verie wyse counsell, but I love you weill aneuche’ (Bannatyne Miscellany, i. 38; Calderwood, ii. 516).
After Mary's escape from Lochleven Lindsay appeared against her at Langside, and by reinforcing the right wing of the regent as it was about to give way turned the tide of battle against her (Sir James Melville, Memoirs, p. 202; Hist. of James the Sext, p. 26; Calderwood, ii. 364). He was one of the four commissioners appointed to accompany the regent, in August 1568, to those conferences regarding the queen at York which were subsequently adjourned to Westminster. At Westminster on 1 Dec. Lord Herries asserted that the real contrivers of Darnley's murder were the regent and his colleagues, and Lindsay challenged him to maintain this statement by single combat; but Herries, in reply, specially excepted Lindsay from the accusation (see documents printed in Appendix to Keith's Hist. of Scotland). He assisted in carrying the corpse of the Regent Moray at his funeral (Randolph to Cecil, 22 Feb. 1569–70, printed in Knox's Works, vi. 571). Subsequently he contrived to support the king's party, rendering invaluable service during the period of internecine strife. On 16 June 1571 the forces under him and Morton slew Gavin Hamilton, commendator of Kilwinning, and took Lord Home and others prisoners (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 224; Calderwood, iii. 101). On the last day of the same month he also intercepted at Wemyss a quantity of gold sent by order of Queen Mary, for the defenders of the castle, from her dowry out of France (ib. iii. 105). Shortly afterwards he was taken prisoner, but on 12 July he purchased his liberty (ib. p. 113). A few months later a party of horsemen from Edinburgh went to his estate of the Byres and seized a large number of his cattle (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 241; Richard Bannatyne, Memorials, p. 179), but on the following day Lindsay, in a victorious skirmish with the enemy in the High Street of Edinburgh, took Lord Seton prisoner (ib. p. 180). During the absence of the regent at the parliament at Stirling Lindsay on 23 Aug. was chosen lieutenant in Leith. Here on the last day of August a powerful attack was made upon him, but he beat it off and drove the enemy ‘in again at the ports’ (ib. p. 138). The king's party in 1572 elected him provost of Edinburgh, while the siege of the castle was in progress. Knox, whom he visited on his deathbed, advised him to have no dealings with the damnable house of the castle (Calderwood, iii. 235). This advice Lindsay followed with strict faithfulness until the conclusion of the siege; but after its surrender he made strenuous efforts to induce Morton to spare the life of his old companion-in-arms, Kirkcaldy of Grange.
During the remainder of Morton's regency Lindsay played a less conspicuous part, partly because opportunities did not arise for utilising his talents as a man of action. But he probably was no keen supporter of Morton. At any rate, in March 1577–8, he combined with other noblemen to effect Morton's overthrow. It was to him and Ruthven that the castle of Edinburgh was surrendered on 1 April 1578, and he was chosen one of the council in whom the administration of affairs was vested till the meeting of parliament. When Morton, after regaining possession of the king and the castle of Stirling, summoned a convention to be held there, Lindsay and Montrose, as deputies of the discontented nobles, protested that a convention held in an armed fortress could not be regarded as a free parliament (Hist. of James the Sext, p. 167; Calderwood, iii. 413; Moysie, Memoirs, p. 6). They were thereupon committed to ward in their lodgings in Stirling Castle (Reg. P. C. Scotl. iii. 8), but either Lindsay departed without a license (Calderwood, iii. 417), or else his ward was extended to the ‘bounds of Fife’ (Moysie, Memoirs, p. 13). In any case, he and Montrose joined the dissentient lords, who, with about seven thousand followers, marched in arms towards Stirling. A compromise, by which Morton was permitted nominally to return to power, was effected, and Lindsay became a member of the new privy council. On 1 Dec. 1579 he was appointed a commissioner for the ‘reformation of the university of St. Andrews’ (Reg. P. C. Scotl. iii. 243). He loyally adhered to Morton till the latter's fall in 1580, when he retired to his own house much discontented. He was concerned in the Ruthven raid in 1582, and after the king's rescue at St. Andrews fled with other raiders to England. On his return he took part in the Gowrie conspiracy in 1584, and was committed to Tantallon Castle, but on the fall of Arran in November obtained his release. He died on 11 Dec. 1589.
By his wife Euphemia, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Douglas of Lochleven, and sister uterine of the Regent Moray, he had a son, James, seventh lord Lindsay, and two daughters: Margaret, married to James, mastar of Rothes, and Maulslie, married to William Ballingall of Ballingull. James Lindsay, seventh Lord Lindsay (d. 1601),like his father, was a zealous supporter of protestantism. He was chiefly responsible for the protestant tumult in the Tolbooth, 17 Dec. 1596, and was fined in large sums of money. He died 5 Nov. 1601, By his wife Euphemia Leslie, eldest daughter of Andrew, fifth earl of Rothes, he bad two sons — John, eighth lord, and Robert, ninth lord — and three daughters: Jean, married to Rohert Lundin of Balgony; Catherine, married to John Lundin of Lundin; and Helen, married to John, second lord Cranston.
[Reg. P. C. Scotl. vols. i-iii.; Cal. State Papers, For. Ser.. reign of Elizabeth; Cal. State Papers. Scott. Ser.; Histories of Calderwood, Buchanan, Spotiswood, and Keith; Knox's Works, ed. Laing; Diurnal of Occurrents (Bannatyne Club) Hist. of James the Sext (Bannatyne Club). Sir James Melville's Memoirs (Bannatyne Club); Lord Horries's Memoirs (Bannatyne Club); Moysie's Memoirs (Bannatyne Club); Richard Bannatyne's Memorials (Bannatyne Club); Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 385-6; Pedigree of the Lindsays, by W. A. Lindsay, in the College of Arms.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.182
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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