David Maitland Makgill Crichton (4 March 1801 – 11 July 1851) was a Scottish lawyer who inherited his father's estate at Nether Rankeilour in Fife to become a country gentleman.

About the year 1837, David established his claim to become heir to the first Lord Frendraught,- a Scottish peer who owed his title to Charles I., and had been one of the officers of the Marquis of Montrose.

[2] He married Miss Hog of Newliston, and during their short wedded life he was impressed by those solemn views of sacred things which ever after moulded his character.

[3] Scotland, under Thomas Chalmers, was entering upon one of those great religious revolutions which in every age have left their mark upon her national history.

Maitland Makgill Crichton threw himself into the movement with all the zeal of an earnest man, and continued to the end of his life to devote all his powers to the cause.

[2] Throughout Scotland he travelled, visiting every town, village, and almost every rural parish, and stirring the hearts of thousands by his powerful pleadings.

He was successful as a rearer of stock, converted a large extent of whinny moor into arable land, and acted with his usual energy in the capacity of president of an agricultural society, a deputy-lieutenant and as a captain of yeomanry.

He introduced a sweeping reform into the management of the road-trusts of Fife; lectured on British poetry to the Philosophical Association of Cupar; secured a bridge instead of a level crossing over the railway at that town; and obtained a reduction of the plough-gate rate in the county, for which the farmers presented him with a handsome dinner service, emblazoned with his crest.

It stands overlooking the Railway Bridge, which his energetic exertions forced reluctant Directors to erect in the place of a level crossing.