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- BIOGRAPHY
Andrew Hay, 8th Earl of Erroll, was the son of George Hay, 7th Earl of Erroll, and Margaret Robertson.
On 16 June 1552 he was contracted to marry his cousin, Lady Jean Hay, daughter of William Hay, 6th Earl of Erroll, and Lady Helen Stewart. By her had three sons, the eldest and youngest both deaf and dumb but the other very able. After her death, he married Lady Agnes Sinclair, daughter of the ferocious George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness, and Lady Elizabeth Graham, and had more children.
He started giving his second wife blank charters, and the Hays feared he might disinherit his first wife's sons. As a result his own brothers and the Hays of Megginch surprised Slains Castle with scaling ladders by night, captured the Earl and held him prisoner in the dungeon-tower for a month.
King James VI intervened personally, temporarily entrusting the whole Erroll fief to Alexander Hay, Lord Clerk Register. A special Act of Parliament was passed fixing the succession on the Earl's second son, Francis Hay, and the unfortunate Master of Erroll was placed in the custody of the Captain of Edinburgh Castle in 1584, being 'cognosced' insane a dozen years later.
Andrew Hay, 8th Earl of Erroll, died 8 October 1585 at Slains. His second wife, the cause of the family upheaval, was still attractive as a widow and, in 1587, had to be rescued by the Earl of Atholl from 'Mad Colin' Campbell of Glenlyon, who wounded her men and burnt her house at night, carrying her off 'to use her according to his filthy lust and inclination'. However, about 1588, she married Alexander Gordon, of Stradoun.
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