David Crawford

David Crawford (or Crawfurd or Craufurd) (1665–1726), of Drumsoy, was a Scottish Historiographer Royal.

Life and death Crawford was the son of David Crawford of Drumsoy. He was educated at the University of Glasgow and called to the bar.

He was appointed Historiographer for Scotland by Queen Anne.

Crawford died in 1726, leaving an only daughter and heiress, Emilia, who died unmarried in 1731.

For more than a century, Crawford's work was taken as a genuine unedited transcript of the manuscript, and relied on by David Hume, William Robertson and other historians. Another version of the original text, the Newbattle manuscript of the Historie of James the Sext, in the possession of the Marquis of Lothian, was published by the Bannatyne Club in 1825.

Crawford was also the author of three novels and two dramas: His works include:

Courtship-a-la-mode, a comedy, 1700. Ovidius Britannicus, or Love Epistles in imitation of Ovid, 1703. Love at First Sight, a comedy, 1704.