History and traditions of the land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns

THE LINDSAYS OF PHESDO. 313
family) regarding their confiscation of the property, is neither
devoid of interest, nor, it may be presumed, awanting on the
score of authenticity. The last Lindsay of Phesdo, "and another
gentleman being out sporting near Montrose, the one with his
greyhound the other with his hawk, the greyhound of the one
killed the hawk of the other, ' which presently,' says the Rev.
William Lindsay, his great-grandson, ' occasioning a fray among
the servants, it ran through the whole clan on both sides, which
used to be pretty numerous on such-like occasions. A baillie,
which is a magistrate of good authority in Scotland, rushing too
hastily in, to appease it, had his arm cut off by John Lindsay,
who was in the heat of the quarrel — for which he took advantage
of law and confiscated his estate.' "* The representative of the
Phesdo family is Captain Ignace Lindsay, who fought in all the
wars of Poland from 1791 to 1830, and was resident in France,
an exile, in 1849. According to this veteran's account, his great-
grandfather was the first emigrant from Scotland to America,
and the rank of nobility was secured to his descendants in Poland,
by the diet of 1764. f
It is probable that Phesdo, after its confiscation from Lind-
say, came into the possession of the Keiths, for about 1612,
Robert Stuart of Inchbreck, is said to have married a daughter
of Sir Alexander Keith of Phesdo.\ The Keiths had probably
been followed by Archibald, second son of Sir Alexander Fal-
coner of Halkerton, ancestor of the unfortunate Sir John, who,
on being charged with malversation in his office of Warden of
the Mint, committed felo de se at his residence of Phesdo in
1682.§ His son, James, was a lawyer of great eminence — " one
of the privy coimcil of King William and Queen Anne, and one
of the first treaters for an Union. "|| He died in 1705, at the
age of fifty-seven, and in an elegy on his death it is said
" that he came almost,
Astrca like, for to eiilight dark dayes
Of vices all, with his clear shyning rayes."
Lord Phesdo's last surviving son died in 1764, and his estates
passed to Captain George Falconer, (fifth son of the fifth Lord
Halkerton), who was long in the Royal Navy. He died Com-
• Lives, vol. ii., p. 280. t Ibid., p. 281. J Prof. Stuart's Antiq. Essays, p. 13.
§ Haig and Brunton's Acct. of Sen. Coll. of Justice, p. 445.
Epitaph in Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh.
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