David Lindsay (1531–1613) was one of the twelve original ministers nominated to the "chief places in Scotland" in 1560. In 1589 as one of the recognised leaders of the Kirk and as chaplain of James VI of Scotland, Lindsay accompanied James to Norway to fetch home his bride. He was appointed bishop of Ross and a privy councillor in 1600. He was five times Moderator of the General Assembly: 1577, 1582, 1586, 1593 and 1597. Biography Lindsay was the son of Alexander Lindsay and Rachel Barclay, and nephew of David, ninth Earl of Crawford. He was said to have been a student of the University of St Andrews, though his name does not appear as such in any of the university records. He appears to have been an associate of John Knox in Geneva. During travels in France and Switzerland Lindsay imbibed Reformation principles, and he was one of the twelve original ministers nominated in July 1560 to the "chief places in Scotland", the town assigned him being Leith. He was present in December following at the first meeting of the general assembly of the kirk, and thenceforth was one of its recognised leaders. He was moderator of the assembly which met in February 1568, and subsequently held the same office on five different occasions. He visited Knox on his deathbed in 1572, and at Knox's request, though "he thought the message hard", went to the castle of Edinburgh to warn William Kirkcaldy of Grange that unless he gave it up he "should be brought down over the walls of it with shame and hang against the sun". Lindsay visited Kirkcaldy after his condemnation, and was sent by him to Morton to intercede for his life, being empowered to offer Kirkcaldy's whole estate as a ransom. The intercession having failed, Lindsay, at Kirkcaldy's special request, attended him on the scaffold, and thus, according to Calderwood, became witness of the literal fulfilment of the doom pronounced by Knox. Always inclined to moderate counsels, Lindsay in 1579 took part in the successful mediation between Morton and the dissentient lords. On the arrival shortly afterwards of Esmé Stuart, the secret catholic emissary from France, Lindsay, at the king's request was, on account of his knowledge of French, appointed by the kirk to attend on him with a view to his conversion to protestantism. By Lindsay's nominal success, he became the unconscious tool of