Tour Scotland Winter photograph of Lordscairnie Castle in North East Fife, Scotland. This Scottish castle was constructed in around 1495 by Alexander Lindsay, 7th Earl of Crawford who died in 1517. It was originally an L-plan tower house with five storeys. Earl of Crawford is one of the most ancient extant titles in Great Britain, having been created in the Peerage of Scotland for Sir David Lindsay in 1398. The title descended to the first Earl's descendants without much incident, until the death of David Lindsay, 8th Earl of Crawford in 1542. The eighth Earl had a son, Alexander, commonly called the Wicked Master, who frequently quarreled with his father and even tried to murder him. The Wicked Master was sentenced to death for his crime, and the eighth Earl conveyed his title to a cousin, also called David Lindsay, a descendant of the third Earl of Crawford, and excluded from the succession all of the Wicked Master's descendants. However, the ninth earl, although he had his own sons, named the Wicked Master's son David as his heir; thus, in 1558, at the ninth Earl's death, the earldom returned to the main branch of the family.
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