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Gordon
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Gordon

the spot by his reconciled enemy. They charged the English at the head of a hundred horsemen, and inflicted much slaughter, but were overpowered and slain. Gordon left two daughters, one of whom died early; the other, Elizabeth de Gordon, married Alexander, son of William Seton of Seton, Edinburgh. On 28 July 1408 the Duke of Albany, regent of the kingdom, granted a charter confirming to Alexander Seton and Elizabeth Gordon, heiress of Gordon, the barony of Gordon and Huntly, Berwickshire, with other lands which had formerly belonged to Gordon there and in Aberdeenshire. From this couple descended the earls of Huntly, the dukes of Gordon, the dukes of Sutherland, and other noble families.

[Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, pp. 295-6; Gordon's History of the Family of Gordon; Gordon of Gordonstone's Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland; Reg. Mag. Sig., printed 1814, p. 235; Wyntonn's Cronykil, book ix. c. ii. p. xxvi; Fordun's Scotichronicon, ed. Goodall, ii. 384, 434; Tytler's History of Scotland, iii. 15, 131.]

J. T.

GORDON, Lord ADAM (1726?–1801), general, colonel of the 1st royal regiment of foot, governor of Edinburgh Castle, fourth son of Alexander, second duke of Gordon [q. v.], by his wife Lady Henrietta Mordaunt, daughter of the famous Earl of Peterborough, was born about 1726, and entered the army as ensign in the 18th royal Irish foot, in Scotland, soon after Culloden. In 1753 he became lieutenant and captain 3rd foot guards, and was returned to parliament as member for Aberdeenshire the next year. He sat for that constituency till 1768, and afterwards represented Kincardineshire from 1774 to 1788, when he vacated his seat. In 1758 he served with his company of the guards in the expedition to the French coast under General Bligh. In 1762 he became colonel 66th foot, and took that regiment out to Jamaica. Returning home in 1766 he was entrusted by the Florida (?) colonists with a memorial of grievances to lay before the secretary of state. He was made colonel of the Cameronians in 1775, governor of Tynemouth in 1778, and colonel first royal regiment of foot in 1782. The same year he was appointed commander of the forces in Scotland (North Britain), when he took up his residence at Holyrood Palace, which he repaired extensively. In 1796 he became a full general and governor of Edinburgh Castle. In 1798 he vacated the command of the forces in Scotland, in which he was succeeded by Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and died at his seat, The Barn, Kincardineshire, on 13 Aug. 1801.

Gordon married Jane, daughter of John Drummond of Megginch, Perthshire, and widow of James Murray, second duke of Athole, by whom he left no issue. She is said to have been the heroine of Dr. Austen's song ‘For lack o' gold she left me, O.’

[Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 319; Foster's Members of Parliament, Scotland, 150; Cannon's Hist. Record 1st Royal Regiment of Foot.]

H. M. C.

GORDON, ADAM LINDSAY (1833–1870), Australian poet, son of Captain Adam Gordon, was born in 1833 at Fayal in the Azores. He was educated at Cheltenham College, where his father was for some time professor of Hindustani, and after passing on to another school was for a short time at Woolwich, and afterwards kept some terms at Merton College, Oxford. After a somewhat stormy youth he left England on 7 Aug. 1853 for South Australia, where he joined the mounted police as a trooper. Leaving the police he became a horsebreaker, and in 1862 married a Miss Park. In 1864 he received some 7,000l. on his father's death, and in 1865 was elected to the colonial House of Assembly as a member for the district of Victoria. He was an occasional speaker in the house, but did not retain his seat long. In 1867 he migrated to Victoria and opened a livery stable at Ballarat. During this period of his life he was noted as an adventurous steeplechaser. In 1869 he went to Melbourne, and, with the desire of getting free from the associations of the turf, determined to settle at New Brighton. His first volume of poems, published in 1867, had achieved a considerable reputation, and there was every prospect that his succeeding years would be spent happily, when an unfortunate attempt to secure the reversion of the estate of Esselmont, in Scotland, ended in failure, and induced a return of his former morbid restlessness. In 1870 his second volume of poems was published, but, despite their success, on 24 June of the same year he committed suicide.

His chief works were the following:

  1. ‘Sea Spray and Smoke Drift,’ 1867.
  2. ‘Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes,’ 1870.
  3. ‘Ashtaroth: a Dramatic Lyric.’ A collected edition of his poems was published in 1880 under the editorship of Marcus Clarke.

Some additional poems, prose sketches, and his political speeches are printed in a memoir by Mr. J. H. Ross, entitled ‘Laureate of the Centaurs.’ As a poet he was vigorous and musical, but exhibited little true poetic originality.

[The Laureate of the Centaurs, a Memoir of Adam Lindsay Gordon, by J. Howlett Ross. 1888; Clarke's preface to his poems.]

E. C. K. G.

GORDON, ALEXANDER, third Earl of Huntly (d. 1524), was the eldest son of George, second earl [q. v.], by the Prin-