Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/379

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SIR ANDREW WOOD.
643


commander. After the disastrous battle of Flodden, Sir Andrew again appears in the character of ambassador at the court of France, whither he was sent to invite the Duke of Albany, nephew of James III., to assume the regency of Scotland. In 1526, he was present at the battle of Linlithgow Bridge, one of those feudal conflicts that were so frequent during the minority of James V.; and so late as 1538 he was still alive, as appears from a deed of remission of that date. By this time he must have been a very aged man, and perhaps the perplexed witness of those striking events by which the reformation of religion in Scotland was heralded, and a new world introduced. But during his retirement from active life, his affection for the sea appears to have clung to him like a first love, and he evinced it by causing a canal to be made from his castle to the kirk of Upper Largo, on which he was rowed in a barge every Sunday by his old boat's crew, when he went to the church to attend mass. The year of his death is uncertain, as no record can be found of it. He was buried in Largo kirk, where his family tomb still arrests the eye of the historian and antiquary.