David Leslie, 3rd Earl of Leven

Summary

David Leslie, 3rd Earl of Leven was a Scottish politician and army officer. The third son of George Melville, 1st Earl of Melville and his second wife Catherine, he shared the Whig political and the Presbyterian religious sympathies of his father. In 1681, with the death of the rival claimant, John Leslie, 1st Duke of Rothes, he was permitted to enter into the Earldom of Leven. In 1683, Leven and his father were suspected of complicity in the Rye House Plot, a Whig conspiracy to assassinate Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York. To escape arrest they fled to the Netherlands where they joined the band of British Protestant exiles at the court of Prince William of Orange.