Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford, 8th Earl of Balcarres, styled Lord Lindsay between 1825 and 1869, was a Scottish peer, art historian and collector.
Background
Lindsay was born at Muncaster Castle in Cumbria, the son of James Lindsay, 24th Earl of Crawford. On 23 July 1846 he married Margaret Lindsay, daughter of Lieutenant General James Lindsay and sister of Robert James Loyd-Lindsay Venture capital Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, 1st and last Baron Wantage of Lockinge.
Education
He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford.
Career
They had 7 children, including his heir, James Ludovic. He travelled widely studying art He published "Progression by Antagonism" in 1846 and "Sketches of the History of Christian Art" in 1847.
He became an avid art collector and many of his acquisitions are on display in galleries around the world.
He travelled to the Middle East in 1837/38, writing Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land. His other passion was genealogy.
He was the author of the three volume Lives of the Lindsays on the genealogy of his family. In 1868 he published A memoir of Lady Anna Mackenzie, countess of Balcarres and afterwards of Argyll, 1621-1706 which recorded the life of Lady Anna Mackenzie.
Lindsay died in 1880 in Florence, Italy and his coffin was brought home for burial in a new family crypt at Dunecht House, near Aberdeen.
Some time afterwards the body was stolen and eventually recovered from a shallow grave 14 months later. A monument marks where the body was found at Dunecht but the Earl"s remains were buried again in the family vault in Wigan. A local poacher was convicted of grave-robbing.
The bulk of the library was kept at Haigh Hall in Lancashire with a part at Balcarres.
The 26th Earl issued an extensive catalogue of the library in 1910: Catalogue of the Printed Books Preserved at Haigh Hall, Wigan, 4 volumes folio, Aberdeen University Press, printers. Companion volumes to the catalogue record the royal proclamations and philatelic literature.
The cataloguing and organization of the library was a major task for a team of librarians led by J. P. Edmond. The manuscript collections (including Chinese and Japanese printed books) were sold in 1901 to Enriqueta Augustina Rylands for the John Rylands Library.