Item 20 - Letter, from Earl of Crawford

David Alexander Edward Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford and 10th Earl of Balcarres, KT, PC, DL, FRS, FSA, styled Lord Balcarres or Lord Balniel between 1880 and 1913, was a British Conservative politician and art connoisseur.
Crawford was elected Member of Parliament for Chorley in 1895 and served as a Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1903 to 1905 under Arthur Balfour. After the Conservatives went into opposition in 1905 he was Chief Conservative Whip in the House of Commons between 1911 and 1913. The latter year he succeeded his father in the earldom and took his seat in the House of Lords (in virtue of his junior title of Baron Wigan, which was in the Peerage of the United Kingdom). In July 1916 Crawford was admitted to the Privy Council and appointed President of the Board of Agriculture, with a seat in the cabinet, in the coalition government of H. H. Asquith.
When David Lloyd George became Prime Minister in December 1916, Crawford became Lord Privy Seal. In January 1919 Lloyd George appointed him Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but removed him from the cabinet. He was made First Commissioner of Works in April 1921, and in April of the following year he was also made Minister of Transport, and restored to the cabinet. He retained these two posts until the coalition government fell in October 1922.
Apart from his political career Crawford was Chancellor of the University of Manchester between 1923 and 1940, a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and a Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire. He became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1900 also of the Royal Society in 1924 and was made a Knight of the Thistle in 1921.