Few people know much about the noble title of Spynie or those who bore that name. There were several Lord Spynie's in the late 16th and early 17th century, though the title went extinct after a few generations. It was held by a branch of the powerful Lindsay family who were powerfully represented in the county for several centuries.
The first Lord Spynie, Alexander Lindsay, was a sometime favourite of King James VI, though he fell out of favour with that mercurial monarch (more on this below). He was the fourth son of the 10th Earl of Crawford and also a grandson of the famous/infamous Cardinal Beaton, a pre-eminent prelate from Fife who spent much of his life in Angus.
His early career was fairly standard for a well-connected nobleman of the era and he became vice-chamberlain to the king. He was also embroiled in a complicated adultery involving the wife of Alan Leytoun, a laird from Fife. This lady, Helen Hunter, was also involved romantically, or at least carnally, with his brother, David Lindsay, 11th Earl of Crawford.
Lindsay's fortune was largely linked to his accompanying James VI on his marriage expedition to Denmark. Before the trip Lindsay was able to assist the king with a loan of 10,000 gold coins, financing the expedition and assuring his own advancement. The king promised him a peerage on their return to Scotland:
Sandie. Quhill (till) youre goode happe furnels me sum better occasion to recompense youre honest and faithfull service utterid be youre diligente and cairfulle attendance upon me, speciallie at this tyme, lett this assure you, in the inviolabill worde of youre awin prince and maister, that quhen Godd randeris me in Skotlande, I sall irrevocabilie, and with consent of parliament, erect you the temporalitie of Murraye in a temporall lordship, with all honours thereto appertaining, and left this serve for cure to your present disease. From the castle of Croneburg, quhare we are drinking and dryving our in the auld manner. J.R.” In fulfillment of this promise, and in acquittance of the 10,000 gold crowns lent to him, the king granted a charter of the lordship of Spynie, Kinnedder, Rafford, and other lands in the counties of Elgin, Banff, and Inverness, formerly belonging to the see of Moray, united into the free barony of Spynie, with the title of Baron Spynie, to Alexander Lindsay and his heirs and assignees, dated 6th May 1590.
In 1590, Lindsay was accordingly made Lord Spynie, taking his title from lands near Elgin. Although his lands were in north and his family were largely located in Angus, he took as his principal seat Aberdour Castle in Fife, which came to him via his wife Jean Lyon. Jean was a daughter of the house of Glamis and Spynie was her third husband. She had achieved some nororiety by being implicated (by relatives of Angus) of her second husband's death, possibly involving poison or witchcraft. Given the climate of the times, she was lucky to escape death.
The relationship between young Lindsay and the king has been open to question by historians, with some thinking that Alexander was a lover of king James. This has never been proven, despite much innuendo and analysis and I stand guilty to a certain extent myself by not coming to any cast iron conclusion in my recent book on King James. It is true that the ruler almost certainly had male lovers when he took over the kingdom of England, most notably the Earl of Somerset and the Duke of Buckingham. His love life in Scotland is less clear. In his youth he was clearly besotted by his French relative Esme Stuart, but subsequent affairs (if there were any) were well disguised.
Aberdour Castle
The Englishman Thomas Fowler reported in the late 1580s that the king was believed to be overly influenced by young men who slept in his chamber. Fowler said one such man, Alexander Lindsay, was ‘the king’s best beloved minion’. Another source states that Lindsay was ‘his nightly bed-fellow’, while Sir James Melville stated that Lindsay made other jealous because he was ‘in great favour with his Majesty, and sometimes his bedfellow’.
Physical proximity to the king of course was no guarantee that physical intercourse took place and we will never know if the two men were intimate. It has been argued that the fact that James pressed for Jean Lyon to marry hos favourite Lindsay is evidence that there was noting between the men. Yet the king provided the same matrimonial encouragement to other men he was almost certainly physically involved with.
Lord Spynie's fall from grace with his majesty had nothing to do with his marriage, but an accusation that he was conspiring - or at least allied with - one of the king's most turbulent subjects, Francis Stewart, the Earl of Bothwell. The latter was a long-term thorn in the side of King James, and had threatened the monarch with violence in order to support his own ends. He would also, perhaps wrongly, be implicated in the North Berwick Witch trials at the end of the 16th century. Spynie sheltered Bothwell at his house at Aberdour and was accused of supporting this rebellious subject by another courtier. No official action was taken against Spynie and he remained a member of the privy council, but he lost the trust of the monarch.
As well as Aberdour, Spynie maintained his lands in Angus, where his principal house was Kinblethmont in Inverkeillor parish. The house was severely damaged and ransacked in November 1602 by the Master of Ogilvy and his kinsmen as part of a long-running, though intermittent local feud between the Ogilvys and the Lindsays. (I detailed some of this inter-family violence in an earlier post here.) Luckily, Spynie and his wife had left the house two hours before the raid.
Kinblethmont in the late 18th century
Spynie's death, ironically, did not involve his kindred's traditional enemy, but members of his own immediate family. On 5 June 1607 he was at the foot of the stairs of his lodging in the High Street of Edinburgh and he witnessed a violent encounter between David Lindsay, 12th Earl of Crawford, and another David Lindsay, of Edzell. The latter was the son of Walter Lindsay of Balgavies who had been murdered by Crawford. Attempting to intervene between his relatives, Spynie was fatally stabbed by the laird of Edzell.
The death of Spynie became the subject of the ballad bellow, which is one of the few genuinely old ballads which deal with people or themes which are associated with Angus. In true traditional fashion, the ballad mixes up the facts to make the story more entertaining. The ballad would have us believe that Spynie was a dastardly wooer who seduced and then abandoned his distant female relative, a daughter of the Lindsay house of Edzell. The lady's outraged brother then killed Spynie in Edinburgh and, to escape justice, fled to Glenmark Castle in Angus before fleeing even further north. Such a narrative is romantic nonsense.
Arms of the first Lord Spynie
Spynie's eldest son Alexander fought in the Swedish army under Gustavus Adolphus and later became an ally of Montrose. He died in 1657. According to the ascerbic Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, in his Staggering State of Scottish Statesmen, the second Lord Spynie was 'a noble spendthrift and exquisite in all manner of debauchery'. George Lindsay, 3rd Lord Spynie, was a royalist adherent during the civil wars and died childless in 1671.
