The Gordons are an ancient
and distinguished family, originally from Normandy, where their
ancestors are said to have had large possessions. From the great
antiquity of the race, many fabulous accounts have been given of the
descent of the Gordons. Some derive them from a city of Macedonia,
called Gordonia, whence they went to Gaul; others find their origin
in Spain, Flanders, &C. Some writers suppose Bertrand de Gourden
who, in 1199, wounded Richard the Lion-heart mortally with an arrow
before the castle of Chalus in the Limoges, to have been the great
ancestor of the Gordons, but there does not seem to be any other
foundation for such a conjecture than that there was a manor in
Normandy called Gourden. It is probable that the first persons of
the name in this island came over with William the Conqueror in
1066. According to Chalmers, the founder of this great family came
from England in the reign of David the First (1124-53), and obtained
from that prince the lands of Gordon (anciently Gordun, or Gordyn,
from, as Chalmers supposes, the Gaelic Gordin, "on the hill"). He
left two sons, Richard, and Adam, who, though the younger son, had a
portion of the territory of Gordon, with the lands of Fanys on the
southern side of it.
The elder son, Richard de Gordon,
granted, between 1150 and 1160, certain lands to the monks of Kelso,
and died in 1200. His son, Sir Thomas de Gordon. confirmed by
charter these donations, and his son and successor, also named
Thomas, made additional grants to the same monks, as well as to the
religious of Coldstream. He died in 1285, without male issue, and
his only daughter, Alicia, marrying her cousin Adam de Gordon, the
son of Adam, younger brother of Richard above mentioned, the two
branches of the family this became united.
His grandson, Sir
Adam de Gordon, Lord of Gordon, one of the most eminent men of his
time, was the progenitor of most of the great families of the name
in Scotland. In reward for his faithful services, Bruce granted to
him and his heirs the noble lordship of Strathbolgie (now
Strathbogie), in Aberdeenshire, then in the Crown, by the forfeiture
of David de Strathbogie, Earl of Athole, which grant was afterwards
confirmed to his family by several charters under the great seal.
Sir Adam fixed his residence there, and gave these lands and
lordship the name of Huntly, from a village of that name in the
western extremity of Gordon parish, in the Merse, the site of which
is now said to be marked only by a solitary tree. From their
northern domain, the family afterwards acquire the titles of Lord,
Earl, and Marquis of Huntly, and the latter is now their chief
title. Sir Adam was slain, fighting bravely in the vanguard of the
Scotch army at the battle of Halidonhill, July 12, 1333. By
Annabella, his wife, supposed to have been a daughter of David de
Strathbolgie above mentioned, he had four sons and a daughter. The
eldest son, Sir Alexander, succeeded him. The second son, William,
was ancestor of the Viscounts of Kenmure.
Sir John Gordon,
his great-grandson, got a new charter from King Robert the Second of
the lands of Strathbogie, dated 13th June 1376. He was slain at the
battle of Otterbourne in 1388. His son, Sir Adam, lord of Gordon,
fell at the battle of Homildon, 14th September 1402. By his wife,
Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Keith, great mareschal of
Scotland, he had an only child, Elizabeth Gordon, who succeeded to
the whole family estates, and having married Alexander Seton, second
son of Sir William Seton of Seton, ancestor of the Earls of Winton,
that gentleman was styled lord of Gordon and Huntly. He left two
sons, the younger of whom became ancestor of the Setons of
Meldrum.
Alexander, the elder, was, in 1449, created Earl of
Huntly, with limitation to his heirs male, by Elizabeth Crichton,
his third wife, they being obliged to bear the name and arms of
Gordon. George, the sixth earl, was created Marquis of Huntly, by
King James, in 1599. George, the fourth marquis, was made Duke of
Gordon in 1684. George, fifth duke, died without issue on 28th Mary
1836. At his death the title of Duke of Gordon became extinct, as
well as tha of Earl of Norwich in th British peerage, and the
Marquisate of Huntly devolved on George Earl of Aboyne, descended
from Charles, fourth son of George, second Marquis of Huntly, while
the Duke of Richmond and Lennox, son of his eldest sister, succeeded
to Gordon castle, Banffshire, and other estates in Aberdeenshire and
Inverness-shire.
The clan Gordon was at one period of the
most powerful and numerous in the north. Although the chiefs were
not originally of Celtic origin, as already shown, they yet gave
their name to the clan, the distinctive badge of which was the rock
ivy. The clan feuds and battles were frequent, especially with the
Mackintoshes, the Camerons, the Murrays and the Forbes.
The
Duke of Gordon, who was the chief of the clan, was usually styled
"The Cock of the North". His most ancient title was the "Gudeman of
the Bog", from the Bog-of-Gight, a morass in the parish of Bellie,
Banffshire, in the centre of which the former stronghold of this
family was placed, and which forms the site of Gordon castle,
considered the most magnificent edifice in the north of Scotland.
The Marquis of Huntly is now the chief of the clan Gordon. Of the
name Gordon, there are many ancient families belonging to
Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and the north of Scotland.
Another Account of the
Clan
BADGE: Eidhean na craige
(hedera helix) rock ivy. SLOGAN: A Gordon! a Gordon! PIBR0CH:
Failte, and Spaidsearachd nan Gordonich.
THOUGH the origin of the name and family of Gordon has
often been debated, the weight of evidence favours the assumption
that the ancestor of the house came from the manor of Gourdon in
Normandy about the time of the Norman Conquest, and that he or a
descendant was one of the feudal settlers encouraged to come to
Scotland in the days of Malcolm Canmore and his sons. Early in the
twelfth century, at any rate, according to Chalmers’ Caledonia,
the ancestor of the race is found settled on the lands of Gordon
in Berwickshire. A tradition runs that the first of the name to
cross the Tweed was a valiant knight, a favourite of Malcolm
Canmore, who, having killed a wild boar which seriously distressed
that district of the Border, obtained from the King a grant of these
lands, to which he gave his own surname, and, settling there,
assumed the boar’s head for his armorial bearing in commemoration of
his exploit. For three centuries at least the heads of the house
were most closely associated with Border history, and when at last
they removed their chief seat to the North of Scotland they left
scions of the race, like the Gordons of Lochinvar, afterwards
Viscounts Kenmure, and Gordon of Earlston, to carry on the
traditions of the name in the south. In the Berwickshire parish, a
little north of the village of West Gordon, a rising ground now
covered with plantation, but still called "the Castles," and showing
the remains of fortification, is pointed out as the early seat of
the family. The original Huntly was a village now vanished in the
western border of Gordon parish, where two farms are still known
respectively as Huntly and Huntly-wood.
In 1270 Adam de Gordon took
part in the Crusade organised by Louis XI. of France. From this fact
the Adam family are said to derive their crest and motto.
In 1309 Sir Adam de Gordon,
in return for giving up certain temporal claims, obtained from the
monks of Kelso leave to possess
a private chapel with its oblations here. It was this Sir Adam de
Gordon who along with Sir Edward Mabuisson was sent to Rome by King
Robert the Bruce in 1320 as the bearer of the famous letter to the
Pope drawn up at Arbroath by the Scottish barons, to declare the
real temper and rights of the Scottish people as against the claims
of the English Edwards. And it was this same Sir Adam who, in
recognition of his services, appears to have received from Bruce a
grant of the lands of Strathbogie in Aberdeenshire, which had
previously belonged to that king’s enemies. Strathbogie was one of
the five ancient lordships or thanages which comprised
Aberdeenshire, and covered an area of a hundred and twenty square
miles. Sir Adam fell at the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333. In 1357
Sir Adam’s grandson, Sir John de Gordon, obtained a confirmation
from David II. of King Robert’s grant of these lands, and he or his
successor obtained another confirmation from Robert II. in
1376.
The chief interests of the
family, however, were still on the Border, and in the following year
the Earl of March, with whom was Sir John de Gordon, having burned
the town of Roxburgh, and the English Borderers having retaliated on
Sir John de Gordon’s lands, the latter crossed the Border, carried
off a great booty; and, when intercepted by a force twice the
strength of his own, in a desperate affray overthrew Sir John de
Lilburn at Carham. In the following year, after another fierce
conflict, Sir John had a chief hand in defeating and taking captive
Sir Thomas de Musgrave, the English Governor of Berwick. Finally, he
was one of the knights who took part with the young Earl of Douglas
in the famous encounter with the forces of the Earl of
Northumberland on the moonlit field of Otterbourne in 1388, and
there he fell.
In that famous encounter,
as the well-known ballad puts it,
The Gordons good, in
English blood They steeped their hose and
shoon.
Fourteen years later, in
the days of King Robert III., took place the great battle of
Homildon Hill, in which again the leaders on the two sides were an
Earl of Douglas and Hotspur, son of the Earl of Northumberland. On
this occasion occurred a chivalric episode. Sir John Swinton, seeing
the carnage made in the close Scottish ranks by the English bowmen,
couched his lance and was about to charge. At that moment Sir Adam
de Gordon, who had long been at deadly feud with him, knelt at his
feet, begged his forgiveness, and asked the honour of being knighted
by so brave a leader. Swinton gave him the accolade and tenderly
embraced him, then the two, at the head of their followers, dashed
upon the English. Alas! their bravery was not followed up; they both
fell, and the battle was lost.
Sir Adam, who was the son
of Sir John de Gordon mentioned above, was the last male of his
line. By his wife, daughter of Sir William de Keith, Marischal of
Scotland, he had an only daughter, Elizabeth. This lady married
Alexander, second son of William Seton of Seton, and from that day
to this the heads of the great house of Gordon have been Setons in
the male line, these Setons being, like the Gordons themselves,
descended from one of the Norman settlers planted in Scotland by
King David I.
In right of his wife,
Alexander Seton was known as Lord of Gordon and Huntly, and his son,
another Alexander, assuming the name and arms of Gordon, and
marrying a daughter of Lord Crichton, Chancellor of Scotland, was
created Earl of Huntly by James II. in 1449 with limitation to his
heirs male by Lord Crichton’s daughter. The Earl had been twice
previously married, first to a granddaughter of the first Earl
Marischal, by whom he acquired a great estate, but had no children,
and secondly to the heiress of Sir John Hay of Tullibody, by whom he
had a son, Sir Alexander Seton, who inherited his mother’s estates
and was ancestor of the Setons of Touch.
The Earl had in 1424 been
one of the hostages sent to England as security for the ransom of
James I., and his son George, the second Earl, married the Princess
Joanna, daughter of that King, from whom all the later heads of the
house have the royal Stewart blood in their veins. Earl George’s
second son, Adam, Lord of Aboyne, marrying Elizabeth, Countess of
Sutherland, became Earl of Sutherland in her right, and ancestor of
the great Sutherland family, while the third son, Sir William
Gordon, became ancestor of the Gordons of Gight, and so of George
Gordon, Lord Byron, in the nineteenth century. The eldest son,
Alexander, the third Earl of Huntly, was he who before the battle of
Sauchieburn, counselled James III. to come to terms with his
rebellious nobles, but, his advice being overruled, retired like the
Earl Marischal and other nobles to his estate. Huntly nevertheless
took part at Sauchieburn. Two years later Huntly was appointed
Lieutenant of James IV. north of the Water of Esk, and from this
time the Gordon family figures as perhaps the most powerful in the
north of Scotland.
Shortly afterwards occurred
the curious episode of Perkin Warbeck’s visit to Scotland. This
"Prince of England," as he was called, was received with royal
honours by James IV. as one of the sons of Edward IV., slain by
Richard III. in the Tower. The Scottish King addressed him as
cousin, gave tournaments and other courtly entertainments in his
honour, and bestowed upon him the hand of the Earl of Huntly’s
daughter, the beautiful Catherine Gordon, who was through her mother
daughter of James I. of the blood royal of Scotland. It is of
interest in this connection to note that when Perkin Warbeck was
finally sent out of the kingdom, setting sail from Ayr in the ship
of Robert Barton, he was accompanied by his beautiful wife, who
remained faithfully by his side throughout all his future reverses
of fortunes. After his execution in 1498 she was kindly treated by
Henry VII., who placed her in charge of his queen and gave her a
pension. She was known by the English populace as the White Rose of
Scotland, and afterwards married Sir Matthew Craddock, ancestor of
the Earls of Pembroke. Her tomb is still to be seen in the old
church at Swansea.
When insurrection broke out
in the Western Isles in 1505, the Earl of Huntly was sent to quell
the northern area, and he stormed and took Torquil MacLeod’s
stronghold of Stornoway. Lastly, on Flodden’s fatal field, Huntly,
along with the Earl of Home, led the Scottish vanguard, and opened
the battle with the furious charge which routed the English van, the
only part of the action in which the Scots were successful. Sir
William, the Earl’s younger brother, fell in the battle, but Lord
Huntly himself survived till 1528. His eldest son John, Lord
Gordon, who died in 1517, married Margaret, natural daughter of
James IV., and it was his elder son, George, who succeeded as fourth
Earl.
This nobleman took an
active part in the affairs of Scotland in the times of King James
V., Mary of Lorraine, and Mary Queen of Scots. He was made
Chancellor of the kingdom in 1546. He also, two years later,
obtained a grant of the earldom of Moray, but the acquisition led to
an act which has left a stain upon his name, and it ultimately for a
time brought about the complete eclipse of his house. Among other
things, the new earldom made him feudal superior of the Clan
Mackintosh lands in Nairnshire, in addition to those he already
controlled in Badenoch. Huntly
appears to have endeavoured to secure complete control of his feudal
vassal by getting him to sign a bond of manrent, but the chief,
William Mackintosh, refused to bind himself. The Earl then proceeded
to deprive Mackintosh of his office of Deputy Lieutenant. Presently
a certain Lachlan Malcolmson, who owed Mackintosh a grudge, saw in
the difference between him and the Earl a means of possible profit
and revenge. He accordingly brought a charge against the chief of
conspiring to take Huntly’s life. Mackintosh was accordingly seized,
and thrown into a dungeon at Bog of Gight. Thence Huntly carried him
to Aberdeen, tried him there in a court packed with his own
followers, and had him condemned to forfeiture and execution. The
provost, it is said, convened the town in arms to prevent the
execution, and accordingly Huntly carried his victim to his own
castle of Strathbogie. There, it is said, he left him to his lady to
deal with, and that lady—Elizabeth, daughter of Robert, Lord
Keith—promptly had him beheaded. This was in 1550. Sir Walter Scott
and Skene in his Highlanders of Scotland give a highly
picturesque account of this incident, but the fact as above stated
appears to be authentic. Nemesis came to Huntly later. He was looked
upon as the main champion of the Catholic faith. In this character
his interests were opposed to those of the Queen’s brother, James,
and when Mary conferred upon the latter the northern earldoms, first
of Mar and then of Moray, Huntly felt compelled to support his own
interest by force of arms. His grandfather had been made hereditary
keeper of the castle of Inverness in 1495, and when Queen Mary went
thither in the course of the royal progress which she undertook to
establish her brother in his earldom, she found the gates of the
castle closed in her face by Huntly’s castelan. In the upshot the
castle was taken and the castelan hanged, and Mary, marching
eastward through Huntly’s country, encountered him with her army on
the slopes of Corrichie on Deeside. The struggle ended disastrously
for the Gordons. The Earl, a stout and full-blooded man, having been
taken prisoner, was set upon a horse before his captor, when he was
suddenly seized with apoplexy and fell to the ground dead. His body,
produced in Parliament in a mean sackcloth dress, was condemned to
forfeiture of titles and estates. His son, Sir John Gordon, was
butchered by a bungling executioner at the Cross of Aberdeen, while
Mary was compelled by her brother to look on at the horrid end of
the man whom, it is said, she had once dearly loved. At
the same time George, the
eldest surviving son, sentenced in the barbarous fashion of the time
to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, only escaped by the special
clemency of the Queen, who, however, appointed him Chancellor in
1565. and reversed the sentence of forfeiture against his
house.
This fifth Earl married Ann
Hamilton, daughter of the Regent Earl of Arran, herself a descendant
of King James II., and so established still another connection with
the royal house of Stewart.
Amid the feuds between the
houses of the north at that time a striking incident stands out, and
forms the subject of a well-known ballad, "Edom o’ Gordon." Details
of this incident and its sequel will be found in the account of Clan
Forbes on a previous page.
The rivalry, however,
between the houses of Huntly and Moray was not over, and at the
hands of George Gordon, the sixth Earl, it culminated in a deed
which has left a vivid record in ballad and tradition. The Regent
Moray’s only daughter had married James Stewart, a descendant of
that Murdoch, Duke of Albany, executed by James I. on Stirling
heading hill, and in right of his wife Stewart had assumed the title
of Earl of Moray. From his handsome appearance he is remembered as
the Bonnie Earl o’ Moray. Popular tradition, enshrined in the
ballad, asserts that James VI. was jealous of his Queen’s admiration
for the Bonnie Earl, and that Huntly was afforded facilities for
accomplishing his family revenge. The subject was dealt with by the
late Andrew Lang in an interesting paper. The upshot was that while
Moray was staying at his house of Donibristle near Culross on the
Forth, it was suddenly assailed by Huntly. Moray escaped, but as he
fled along the shore his long yellow hair caught the light of the
burning mansion, and betrayed him. After he was struck down Huntly
reached the spot, and being called upon by his followers to take an
active part in the slaughter, slashed Moray across the face;
whereupon the latter is said to have exclaimed bitterly, "You have
spoilt a better face than your own." Colour is lent to the popular
tradition of the King’s concern in the act by the circumstance that,
eight years later, in 1599, Huntly was created Marquess, as well as
Earl of Enzie, Viscount Inverness, and baron of seven other
lordships.
In 1594 Huntly had been
accused, along with the Earls of Angus and Errol, of conspiring with
the King of Spain for the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion
in Scotland. The young Earl of Argyll was sent against him with
four or five thousand men, but on his way towards Strathbogie, on
the confines of Glenlivet, he was confronted by Huntly and Errol at
the head of a force of fifteen hundred. Argyll took up a good
position on the side of Benrinnes, but he proved an indifferent
leader, and in the end himself carried the tidings of his defeat to
the king at Dundee. As a result the King himself was forced by the
Protestant nobles to lead an army into the north, where he
demolished Errol’s castle of Slaines, and Huntly’s stronghold of
Strathbogie, said to have been the finest house of the time in
Scotland. It was not long, however, as we have seen, till Huntly
received the ample amends of the King. Perhaps one of the reasons
for the favour shown him was the fact that he married Lady Henrietta
Stewart, eldest daughter of the King’s favourite, Esme, Duke of
Lennox.
His son George,
second Marquess, was a staunch adherent of Charles I. In early life
he commanded a company of gens d’annes in France, and in
1632, during his father’s lifetime, was created Viscount Aboyne. He
refused to subscribe the National Covenant in 1638, and in
consequence was driven from Strathbogie by the Marquess of Montrose,
then a general on the Covenant side. For two days at that time the
Marquess’s second son, James, held the Bridge of Dee at Aberdeen
against Montrose, but in the end the latter succeeded by stratagem.
He sent his cavalry up the river bank, as if to cross at a higher
point, and the Gordons on their side rode up to oppose the crossing.
While doing so they were cut to pieces by the cannon of Montrose,
and as a result the bridge was lost and Aberdeen captured by the
Covenanters. A Covenanting ballad, "Bonnie John Seton," which
celebrates the occasion, refers curiously to the effect of the
unaccustomed cannon fire upon the Highlanders of that
time.
The Highland men
are clever men At handling sword and gun; But yet are they
too naked men To bear the cannon’s rung.
For the cannon’s roar in
a summer night Is like thunder in the air; There’s not a man
in Highland dress Can face the cannon’s
rair.
Huntly was captured and
carried to Edinburgh, and afterwards outlawed and excommunicated,
but, along with Montrose, who by this time had taken the King’s
side, he stormed Aberdeen in 1645.
After the defeat of Montrose at Philiphaugh in that year he raised
forces for Charles I. in the north, but was captured by Colonel
Menzies at Delnabo, and though his wife was a sister of the Marquess
of Argyll, then head of the Scottish Government, he was beheaded at
Edinburgh by the Covenanters in 1649.
The Marquess’s eldest son,
George, Lord Gordon, had joined Montrose and fallen at the battle of
Alford in 1645, and his second son, James, who had inherited his
father’s Viscounty of Aboyne, and had also joined Montrose in the
interest of Charles I., had fled to France and died of grief after
the execution of the king in 1649. It was therefore the third son,
Lewis, who was restored to the family honours and estate, as third
Marquess, by Charles II., during that young monarch’s short reign in
Scotland in 1651.
It was his only son George
who succeeded as fourth Marquess in 1653, when he was no more than
ten years old. After seeing military service with the French under
Turenne at the battle of Strasbourg and afterwards under the Prince
of Orange, he was, at the recommendation of Claverhouse, created
Duke of Gordon in 1684. James VII. appointed him a Privy Councillor
and captain of Edinburgh Castle, but at the Revolution in 1689 he
surrendered the stronghold to the Convention of Estates. His wife, a
daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, retired to a convent in Flanders,
whereupon the Duke brought an action against her for restitution of
conjugal rights. It was she who in 1711 sent the Faculty of
Advocates a medal bearing the head of the Chevalier, with the motto
"Reddite."
Naturally her son,
Alexander, the second Duke, was an ardent Jacobite. During the
Rising of 1715, while Marquess of Huntly, he joined the forces of
the Earl of Mar at Perth with two thousand three hundred men, and he
was present at the battle of Sheriffmuir; but he received pardon and
succeeded to the Dukedom in 1716. He was on intimate terms with the
King of Prussia and with Cosmo di Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany,
after whom he named his eldest son, and he received presents from
Pope Clement XII.
It was his eldest son,
Cosmo George, who was head of the house during the critical period
of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. While the Duke himself did not
join the rising under Prince Charles Edward, his brother, Lord Lewis
Gordon, did, and led a strong contingent of the clansmen in the
campaign which ended at Culloden. The importance in popular
estimation of the part he played is commemorated in the well-known
ballad, "Lord send Lewie Gordon Hame." Another of the Duke’s
brothers, Lord Adam Gordon, was afterwards M.P. for Aberdeen-shire
and Kincardineshire and Commander of the Forces in Scotland. The
Duke himself died in France in 1752.
His eldest son, Alexander,
the fourth Duke, was described by Kaimes as the greatest subject in
Britain. He was made a peer of the United Kingdom in 1784 and was a
Knight of the Thistle and Lord Keeper of Scotland. But he probably
remains most famous as the author of the well-known song, "Cauld
Kail in Aberdeen," and by reason of his wife, the "Gay Duchess of
Gordon," who was the chief figure in Edinburgh society at the close
of the 18th century. A daughter of Maxwell of Monreith, she is said
to have shown her high spirit as a girl by riding with her sister
down the High Street of Edinburgh on a sow’s back. When the Duke was
raising his regiments of Gordon Highlanders to take part in the
American war, she is said to have recruited a battalion in a single
day by standing at the cross of Aberdeen with the King’s shilling
between her lips as a prize for every lad bold enough to come and
take it. And it was she who, when Robert Burns paid his last
momentous visit to Edinburgh in 1786, set the seal upon his fame by
her countenance and hospitality.
A strange contrast to Duke
Alexander was his third brother, that Lord George Gordon who,
beginning life in the Navy, and afterwards entering Parliament,
acquired notoriety as an agitator and leader of the No-Popery Riots
of 1780, afterwards becoming a Jew, and dying at last in Newgate
Gaol.
The fifth Duke, George, a
general officer, Governor of Edinburgh Castle, and G.C.B., was the
last of his line. His statue as "The Last Duke of Gordon," erected
by his Duchess, stands at the cross at Aberdeen. As Marquess of
Huntly he had a distinguished military career, commanding the
regiment now known as the Gordon
Highlanders, in Spain, Corsica, Ireland, and Holland, where he
was severely wounded, and commanding a division in the Waicheren
expedition of 1809. At his death in 1836, the dukedom became
extinct. Most of the estates, including Gordon Castle near
Fochabers, passed to his eldest sister, Charlotte, wife of the
fourth Duke of Richmond, whose son, a distinguished statesman, was
in 1876 created Duke of Gordon.
In 1836 the Marquessate
passed to the late Duke of Gordon’s kinsman, George, fifth Earl of
Aboyne. This nobleman was descended from Lord Charles Gordon, fourth
son of the second Marquess, who, in consideration of his loyalty and
service, was created Earl of Aboyne by Charles II. at the
Restoration in 1660. Aboyne Castle on Deeside, from which he took
his title, had belonged in early times to the Bissets, the
Knights-Templar, and the Earl of Mar, but had been in the possession
of the Gordons since 1388. A popular ballad, "The Earl of Aboyne,"
appears to refer to some incident of the first Earl’s time at the
Court of the Merry Monarch. It describes the Earl’s return from
London, and the great preoarations made by his wife to receive him;
but alas! he let slip a word of his too gay goings on with some fair
damsel in the south. The result is a quarrel, the Earl rides away,
and the lady’s pleadings are sent after him in vain. It is only when
these are followed by news of her death that he turns northward
again.
Mv nobles a’, ye’ll turn
your steeds That that comely face I may see then: Frae the
horse to the bat a’ maun be black, And mourn for bonnie
Peggy Irvine!
It was the first Earl who
built the present castle of Aboyne. The Earl of Abovne, who
succeeded as ninth Marquess of Huntly, was K.T.. and Colonel of the
Aberdeen Militia. The present peer, who succeeded in 1863, and who
is his grandson, is the premier Marquess of Scotland. He was a
Lord-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria from 1870 to 1873, was appointed
captain of the Hon. Corps of Gentlemen at Arms in 1881, and was
thrice chosen Lord Rector of Aberdeen University. He is a Privy
Councillor and LL.D., and personally one of the best-liked
personages of the north.
There are of course many
branches of the great house of Gordon throughout Scotland. Of these
the chief is that of the Gordons of Haddo, which has for its head
the Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair. This branch claims to represent
the original house of Gordon in the male line, by descent from
Gordon of Coldingknowes, celebrated in song. Its remote ancestor was
Patrick Gordon of Methlic, slain at the battle of Arbroath in 1445.
His great-grandson, James Gordon of Methlic and Haddo, was a warm
supporter of his chief, the fifth Earl of Huntly, in Queen Mary’s
interest. His grandson again, Sir John Gordon of Haddo, was made a
baronet of Nova Scotia by Charles I., in whose service he
distinguished himself at the battle of Turriff. Captured at
last by the Covenanters, he was confined in a church in Edinburgh,
known from this fact as "Haddo’s Hole," and was executed at the
Cross of Edinburgh in 1644. His second son, Sir George Gordon of
Haddo, was President of the Court of Session and Lord Chancellor of
Scotland, and was made Earl of Aberdeen in 1682. George, the fourth
Earl, was the distinguished statesman who was Queen Victoria’s Prime
Minister at the time of the Crimean War; and the present head of the
house, who is his grandson, has also held many high offices,
including those of Governor-General of Canada and Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland. At the end of his second tenure of this last high post he
had the honour of the Marquessate conferred upon him. His Lordship
was High Commissioner to the General Assembly from 1881 to 1885, and
has been Lord Lieutenant of Aberdeen-shire since 1880. For a
considerable time his Lordship’s succession to the Earldom was
regarded as uncertain, till it was declared proved that his elder
brother, George, the sixth Earl, had been drowned while voyaging as
an ordinary seaman from Boston to Melbourne in 1870.
Of all the bearers of the
name of Gordon, however, perhaps the most romantic and tragic figure
is that of Charles George Gordon—"Chinese Gordon"—who, after the
most amazing and beneficent career of his time in many parts of the
world, was overwhelmed and slain on the steps of the Government
House at Khartoum, which he had defended alone against a siege by
the Dervish hordes for three hundred and seventeen days, just as the
British Expedition sent out too late for his relief came in sight
fighting its way up the Nile.
Septs of Clan Gordon: Adam,
Adie, Edie, Huntly. |