Page 37 - Scottish Alchemists

monks of Newbattle. But this resource was found unproductive, or at least
the necessary preliminary outlay was too expensive.

The jealousy of Sir Archibald Napier, “General of the Cunzie House”, at
this appointment has been before referred to. While Sir Archibald was not
slow to call attention to his own qualifications, and to animadvert upon the
‘Parson’s’ mining schemes, the latter attacked Sir Archibald’s qualifications
in these bitter words - “He may be better versed in bellices and fornaces nor
I, and to have more knowledge; but virtue is in action and not in
contemplation; and I believe that I shall shew better effects of my office in
ane year nor he has done in nine.” Several memorials addressed to the
Scottish Privy Council are still extant relative to this dispute.

Lord Menmuir died in 1598, and was succeeded by his youthful son
John Lindsay, who only survived till 1601. His second son, David,
succeeded his brother at the age of 14. His estates of Balcarres, Balneill,
Pitcorthy, etc., were united into the free barony of Balcarres in 1603. When
King Charles I visited Scotland, Sir David Lindsay was advanced to the
peerage by the title of Lord Lindsay of Balcarres, and his patent was dated at
Holyrood House in 1633, “in regard of the good services done to His
Majesty and his late Royal Father, of blessed memory, by him and his
predecessors.” He married a daughter of the first Earl of Dumfermline, Lord
High Chancellor of Scotland.

Shortly after he attained his majority, he travelled on the Continent,
where he had ample opportunities for study, and on his return to Scotland he
devoted himself to the pursuits of science. He added to his father’s library till
it became one of the best then to be met with in Scotland. “He thought a day
misspent,” says his daughter-in-law, “on which he knew not a new thing.
Natural philosophy, particularly chemistry, and the then fashionable quest of
the elixir vitae, and the philosophers’ stone, occupied much of his attention;
but it was the spirit of science and philanthropy, not of lucre, that animated
his researches. Ten volumes of transcripts and translations from the works of
the Rosicrucians and others, models of correct calligraphy, which I
remember seeing, says one of his descendants, in our library, covered over
with the venerable dust (not gold dust) of antiquity, suivived their author, but
have now dwindled to four, which still hold their place in the library of his
representative along with his father’s well-read Plato-the favourite author, I
have little doubt, of the son likewise.” This love for mysticism and occult
science may probably have been imbibed during his early travels on the
Continent. “It is not impossible indeed that he may have become,” says Lord
Lindsay, “a brother of the ‘Rosy Cross,’ if indeed that celebrated society

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