Alexander Crichton of Brunstane, (died before December 1558), was a Scottish Protestant laird who advocated the murder of Cardinal David Beaton and supported the plan for the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots and Prince Edward of England. In contemporary letters and documents Alexander is known by variant spellings of "Brunstane," his territorial designation. The original House of Brunstane was near Penicuik, and another Crichton estate at Gilberstoun near Portobello, Edinburgh later became known as Brunstane.
Career
Affair of the Cardinal's letters
Alexander Crichton went to France carrying royal letters in 1539 and as a servant of Cardinal Beaton. On his return in February 1540 his ship was forced by a storm to anchor in an English harbour. Subsequently, the English ambassador in Scotland Ralph Sadler tried to embarrass and discredit Cardinal Beaton in front of James V of Scotland with compromising letters captured from Brunstane's bag. James V however argued in favour of the Cardinal that he had a separate spiritual authority in Scotland apart from the King's own temporal powers. Later, when the Cardinal was present, James and Ralph compared the captured letters with Beaton's copies, and found a discrepancy. James V thanked Sadler and his uncle Henry VIII but would not find fault in the Cardinal's actions.
Messages to France
Alexander Crichton remained in the Cardinal's favour and sailed with him to France in 1540. He returned before his master in 1541 to meet James V. The King, Crichton, and the secretary, Thomas Erskine of Haltoun, played tennis at St Andrews on 3 April 1541. In November 1542 he sailed to France from Dumbarton on the business of rents owed to the Cardinal and Mary of Guise. He returned with money for James V from Francis I of France and was later accused of keeping some of it. An English spy said of Alexander's return in December 1542 that he had brought "little comfort." On 19 November 1542 he and his son John were rewarded for Alexander's services and expenses in France with a new charter for part of their Gilberstoun estate.
War of the Rough Wooing
Assured Scot
After the death of James V in December 1542, Scotland was ruled by a Governor, Regent Arran. By now Alexander Crichton of Brunstane was receiving an English pension as a supporter of English political and Protestant religious policy in Scotland. In July 1543 Cardinal Beaton and his allies who opposed Regent Arran and pro-English initiatives camped with up to 6,000 armed men at Linlithgow, where Mary, Queen of Scots was kept in the Linlithgow Palace. Alexander Crichton told Ralph Sadler that the principal cause of this rebellion was to break the peace with England, the recently signed Treaty of Greenwich. This peace agreement provided that Mary, Queen of Scots would marry the English Prince Edward when she was of age. In his report to England, Sadler contrasted Crichton's and George Douglas's account of the situation with the statement of the Earl of Glencairn, that the rebel party were happy with the marriage plan and only concerned with the detail of when Mary would be sent to England.
The Governor and the Cardinal were reconciled. Crichton continued to correspond with Ralph Sadler. In November 1543, when Sadler had been forced to move from Edinburgh to Tantallon Castle and the English marriage plan was losing support in Scotland, Brunstane wrote that he was continuing to recruit supporters for English policy, and mentions John Charteris and John Sandilands of Calder. He persuaded Sandilands's neighbours to refuse offers of French payments.