With their mother, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Samuel Johnston, 1st Baronet of Elphinston, they were driven from their house which was plundered, and the whole rents of their estate seized by the Covenanters.
[citation needed] He represented Aberdeenshire in the Scottish Parliament in 1681, 1685, and 1686, and for his boldness and independence in opposing the repeal of the Test and Penal Laws proposed by King James VII, he was deprived by that monarch of his seat on The Bench.
[1] Upon the 1688 Revolution King William III offered to reinstate him as one of the Lords of Session, which Sir Alexander declined feeling it inconsistent with his previous Oaths of Allegiance to James VII.
[1] He published an edition of Sir George Mackenzie's Law of Scotland in matters Criminal, with a treatise on Mutilation and Demembration, annexed.
[1] A painting of Sir Alexander Seton, Lord Pitmedden, hung in the ancient manor house of The Grange, Edinburgh for centuries.