a cost of 3,300l., and the fund was left to accumulate till 1750, when the hospital was opened with thirty boys. A subsequent bequest by Alexander Simpson of Collyhill in 1834 increased greatly the resources of the charity; two wings were added to the building and forty boys to the beneficiaries. Between 1750 and 1880, 2,100 boys passed through the hospital.
The management of the charity was for a long time somewhat rigid and artificial, and though some improvements were effected from time to time, it did not undergo any material change till, under the Commission on Endowed Institutions (Scotland), a substantially new constitution was given to it. A provisional order was issued, dated 10 June 1881, with the sanction of the old governors, the object of which was to extend the usefulness of the hospital funds by converting the buildings to some extent into day schools, which should be mainly devoted to the higher branches of a commercial education; by reducing the number of foundationers and boarding them out in families; by admitting day scholars; by instituting competitive bursaries for higher education; by establishing evening classes, and by carrying promising boys on to the university. The order obtained the sanction of parliament and became the new constitution. In the day schools its objects are now prosecuted under a threefold division of classes—commercial, engineering, and classical. Under the charge of Dr. Ogilvie, head-master, the college rapidly rose to a high degree of prosperity. The number of boys receiving education at the college is about a thousand, and the entire number of students 1,250.
[Kennedy's Annals of Aberdeen; Smith's New Hist. of Aberdeenshire; Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen ; Anderson's Scottish Nation ; Provisional Order or Scheme for the Future Administration of Robert Gordon's Hospital in Aberdeen ; Prospectus and Prize List of Robert Gordon's College, Session 1888-9; Robert Gordon, his Hospital and his College (by Alexander Walker), privately printed, 1886.]
GORDON, ROBERT (1687–1764), biblical scholar, born in Scotland in 1687, was a member of the family of Kirkhill. He entered the Scotch College at Rome from the diocese of Aberdeen in 1705, was ordained priest, and left Rome in 1712. With the consent of the bishops he stayed at Paris as prefect of studies and procurator, and he did not proceed to the mission till 1718, when he was appointed chaplain to the Duke of Gordon. After the duke's death in 1728 he was sent to Edinburgh as procurator, which office he held till 1740. For many years he was engaged in translating the New Testament into English, and in 1743 he went to Rome to get his version approved before it was sent to the press. He was much opposed by the party called Campbellians, or Pilgrims, and he returned to England in 1745 without having obtained the desired authorisation. On his arrival in London he was apprehended and consigned to a messenger. On finding security for a large sum of money that he would never return to Britain without leave of the government, he was banished from the realm. He went to Flanders, where, and at Paris, he resided till 1749. In that year he returned to Rome, and having formed a hermitage for himself at Nerni, a village about twenty miles from that city, he remained there till 1753, when he went back to Paris, without having been able to get his translation of the New Testament approved. He lived for some time in the Scotch College at Paris, and then retired to Lens, where he died in 1764.
His manuscript translation of the New Testament, containing corrections of mistranslations in preceding catholic versions, was in 1786 in the possession of Dr. Alexander Geddes [q. v.]
[Abbé McPherson's MS. Cat. quoted in Gordon's Catholic Mission in Scotland, p. 559; Cotton's Rhemes and Douay, pp. 64, 170.]
GORDON, Sir ROBERT (1791–1847), diplomatist, was fifth son of George Gordon, lord Haddo, and brother of George Hamilton Gordon, fourth earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860) [q. v.], and of Sir Alexander Gordon [q. v.], who was killed at Waterloo. In 1810 he was appointed attaché; to the British embassy in Persia, and afterwards became secretary to the embassy at the Hague. He was associated with the Duke of Wellington as minister plenipotentiary at Vienna in 1815, 1817, and 1821. In July 1826 he was sent to the Brazils as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, being at the same time sworn a privy councillor. In 1828 he was sent to Constantinople as ambassador extraordinary with the object of re-establishing the friendly relations between this country and the Porte, which had been disturbed by the battle of Navarino. From this post he was recalled by Lord Grey's ministry in 1831, and took no further part in active life until he was appointed by Sir Robert Peel, in October 1841, ambassador extraordinary to Vienna, where he remained until he was replaced by Viscount Ponsonby in 1846.
Gordon was made a grand cross of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic order in 1819, and a Civil Grand Cross of the order of the
