Page 36 - Scottish Alchemists

Sir David Lindsay, First Earl of Balcarres.

Among the Scottish nobility, the art of alchemy has a representative in
Sir David Lindsay, afterward created Earl of Balcarres. Sir David was the
second son of John Lindsay, better known by his judicial title of Lord
Menmuir, who again was the second son of Sir David Lindsay of Edzell and
Glenesk, ninth Earl of Crawford. Lord Menmuir was born in 1552, and in
his early life was provided for by being appointed to the Rectories of
Menmuir, Lethnot, and Lochlee in Angus, which were in the gift of the
Edzell family, and from the first of these he was well known by the title of
Parson of Menmuir. The law, however, was his pursuit, to which he applied
himself with such success that before he was thirty years of age he was
appointed one of the Lords of Session. He was afterwards created Lord
Privy Seal, Secretary of State, and one of the Octavians, or eight
Commissioners of Exchequer, who for a time ruled Scotland. He discharged
the important duties confided to his care so well that scarcely any
commission connected with the Government - the improvement of the
finances, the regulation of the taxation, etc. - was considered complete
without his name being included in it. The attention of Lord Menmuir was
early directed to the subject of mining, with a view to the improvement of
the public revenue, and he entered eagerly into the project of working the
lead mines and other minerals on his brother’s estates. Workmen, says Lord
Lindsay, were procured from Germany, smelting furnaces built, and large
sums expended on the lead-mines in Glenesk, which were supposed to be of
great value.

In 1592 Lord Menmuir was created by the king ‘Master of the metals
and minerals within the kingdom’, “knowing the qualification,” says His
Majesty, “of his weill beloved councillor, and his travels in seeking out and
discovering divers metals of great valour within this realm and in sending to
England, Germany, and Denmark to get the perfit assay and knowledge
thereof“ - an appointment supported by extensive powers, and the object of
which was the increase of revenue to the Crown by the exploration of the
mineral wealth of Scotland, more especially the gold mines of Crawford
Muir, on the lands granted by the Lindsays above 350 years before to the

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