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THE cadets of the
Gordon family are numerous and influential, especially in the
north of Scotland, and not a few of them have acquired great
distinction in the service of their country.
The Gordons of
Earlston, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, are descended from
Alexander Gordon, second son of the sixth Lord of Lochinvar. He
embraced the doctrines of Wicliffe, and used to read the New
Testament in English to some of his followers at their meetings in
the woods of Aird. Alexander, the head of that family in the time
of Charles I., strenuously opposed the attempt of that monarch to
establish Episcopacy in Scotland. His son, William Gordon,
suffered severe persecution for his adherence to the cause of the
Covenanters, and was killed by some English dragoons when on his
way to join the insurgents at Bothwell Bridge. His eldest son,
Alexander, was sentenced to death in his absence in 1680. He was
afterwards captured on board ship in 1683, but his life was spared
by the intercession of the Duke of Gordon. He was detained a
prisoner successively in the castle of Edinburgh, on the Bass
Rock, and in Blackness Castle, till the Revolution, when he
obtained his liberty and the restoration of his estates.
The Gordons of
Pitlurg, in Aberdeenshire, are descended from John de Gordon, who,
in 1376, received a grant of Strabolgie from Robert II. In the
same county are the Gordons of Abergeldie, Wardhouse, and Fyvie,
the Gordons of Gordonstoun and Letterfourie, in Banffshire, the
Gordons of Embo in Sutherlandshire, &c. &c. The GORDONS OF GIGHT,
now extinct, sprang from the second son of the second Earl of
Huntly, and the Princess Jane, daughter of James I. They seem to
have been men of a fierce disposition and passionate temper, and
were repeatedly guilty of outrages of the most violent nature. On
one occasion, in September, 1601, a messenger was sent to deliver
letters to the Laird of Gight, summoning him to answer for his
conduct in not only destroying the crops of certain persons
against whom he had ‘conceived mortal wrath,’ but wounding them to
the imminent peril of their lives. The messenger, after delivering
the letter, was returning quietly from the house, ‘lippening for
nae harm or pursuit,’ when he was seized by a number of armed
servants of Gight, and dragged before the laird, who would have
shot him but for the interposition of ‘some one, who put aside the
weapon. He then harlit him within his hall, took the copy of the
said letters, whilk he supposed to have been the principal
letters, and cast them in a dish of broe [broth], and forcit the
officer to sup and swallow them,’ holding a dagger at his breast
all the time. Afterwards the laird, being informed that the
principal letters were yet extant, ‘came to the officer in a new
rage and fury, rave [tore] the principal letters out of his
sleeve, rave them in pieces, and cast them on the fire.’ For this
scandalous outrage the Laird of Gight was put to the horn. A much
more serious crime was committed by the laird in 1615. His
brother, Adam Gordon, was killed in a single combat by Francis
Hay, cousin-german to the Earl of Errol. Gordon, resolved to
revenge this deed, seized Hay, without any warrant, and brought
him to Aberdeen, where, at an irregular, and, indeed, illegal
trial, presided over by the sheriff-substitute, who was also a
Gordon, he was condemned to death. Next morning he was led out to
a solitary place, and there butchered by the Gordons. No
punishment seems to have been inflicted on the perpetrators of
this bloody deed, which caused a fierce quarrel between the Earl
of Errol, the chief of the Hays, and the Marquis of Huntly.
It is instructive
to learn that the men who were guilty of these shocking crimes all
the while firmly adhered to the religion of their fathers. In
1661, George Gordon, the young Laird of Gight, who had hitherto
evaded all the demands of the Church Courts that he should abandon
his Popish errors, was threatened with immediate excommunication,
unless he should without further delay subscribe the Covenant. He
pleaded sickness, and inability to leave the country; offered to
confine himself within a mile of his own house, ‘and receipt nane
wha is excommunicat (my bedfellow excepted); or he would go into
confinement anywhere else, and confer with Protestant clergymen as
soon as his sickness would permit.’ He says in conclusion, ‘If it
shall please his Majesty, and your wisdoms of the Kirk of Scotland
sae to take my blude for my profession, whilk is Roman Catholic, I
will maist willingly offer it; and gif sae be, God grant me
constancy to abide the same.’ Gordon’s offer, however, was not
deemed satisfactory, and he was informed by the Presbytery of
Aberdeen that unless he should within eight days give sufficient
surety for either subscribing, or leaving the kingdom, he would be
excommunicated. The laird would have been entitled to great
sympathy under this odious persecution, if his religious
principles had kept him from robbery and murder. In 1641 the Laird
of Gight retaliated upon his tormentors. He and the Lairds of
Newton and Ardlogie, with a party of forty horse and musketeers,
‘made a raid upon the town of Banff, and plundered it of buff
coats, pikes, swords, carbines, pistols, yea, and money also,’ and
compelled the bailies to subscribe a renunciation of the Covenant.
Towards the close
of last century the family ended in an heiress, Catherine Gordon,
who seems to have inherited the fierce and unruly passions of her
family. She married, in 1785, Captain John Byron, a worthless and
dissolute spendthrift, by whom she became the mother of the famous
poet, Lord Byron. As she espoused Captain Byron without any
‘settlement,’ her estate was seized by his creditors, and sold to
Lord Aberdeen for £18,500, while she and her son were left in
penury.
The castle of Gight
is now a complete ruin, with the exception of two modern rooms,
which are preserved for the accommodation of parties visiting the
glen. There is a prophecy regarding it and the family, as usual
ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer, which says—
‘When the heron
leaves the tree,
The Laird o’ Gight shall landless be.’
It is said that
when the Honourable. John Byron married the heiress of Gight, the
denizens of a heronry which, forages, had fixed their airy abode
among the branches of a magnificent tree in the immediate vicinity
of the house, at once left their ancient habitation, and migrated
in a troop to Kelly, where it is certain a family of herons is now
domiciled. ‘The riggs soon followed’ is a familiar saying, which
aptly enough fills up the tradition, for the estate of Gight is
now in the hands of the Earls of Aberdeen.
Another prophecy is
even more remarkable, since its complete verification has been
accomplished within a very recent period :—
‘At Gight
three men by sudden death shall dee,
And after that the land shall lie in lea.’
‘In 1791 Lord Haddo
met a violent death on the Green of Gight by the fall of his
horse; some years after this a servant on the estate met a similar
death on the Mains, or home farm. But two deaths were not
sufficient to verify the seer’s words. A few years ago the house,
preparatory to the farm being turned into lea, was being pulled
down, when one of the men employed in the work casually remarked
on the failure of the Rhymer’s prediction. But, as if to vindicate
the veracity of the prophet’s words, in less than an hour the
speaker himself supplied the fated number, lying crushed to death
beneath the crumbling ruins of a fallen wall! We need scarcely add
that the local fame of the Rhymer is now more than ever in the
ascendant.’
Pratt adds: ‘We
cannot take leave of the grey romantic towers of Gight in language
more appropriate than that of the noble bard whose maternal
ancestors occupied them for nearly four hundred years:-
‘And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind—
Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd,
All tenantless, save to the crannying wind,
Or holding dark communion with the cloud,
Banners on high, and battles passed below;
And they who fought are in a bloody shroud,
And those who waved are shredless dust ere now,
And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow.’ |
