A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank
The
Gordon family in Scotland had numerous branches and titles, which are
sometimes almost impossible to sort. Equally confusing are the numerical designations given to the Sutherland Earls.
When we began our analysis in July
our primary interest was Col. David Barclay, who married Katherine Gordon in 1647. We dug deeper in time in order to fit Katherine into the context of her time in relationship to her Sutherland family.
She was the daughter of Sir Robert Gordon, the fourth son of Alexander Gordon (12th Earl of
Sutherland). Her grandmother was Jean Gordon, daughter of George Gordon, the Earl of Huntly. George was
the son of John Gordon, Master of Huntly, whose wife was the
illegitimate daughter of King James IV and his mistress (Margaret Drummond), who ruled Scotland at the time.
Robert was educated for six months at St. Andrews before completing his studies in
Edinburgh. In January 1603 he went to France to study civil law, and
remained there until October 1605. In the course of his life, Robert
wrote a treatise called Genealogical history of the Earldom of Sutherland from its origin to the year 1630. With a continuation to the year 1651 (1813). The original manuscript was not published until 1813.
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Alexander Gordon (1516–1575), Jean Gordon's uncle, was Lord Chancellor of Scotland, presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament and the Privy Council located at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh at that time. He was also the father of Dr. John Gordon, a
noted religious scholar known as the Bishop of Galloway, succeeding Alexander his father as Bishop in the Scottish Church, which had broken its allegiance to the Catholic Church in 1560.
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| Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh |
Earls of Sutherland to 1733
Alexander
Gordon (the 12th Earl) had married his cousin Jean Gordon of the Huntly
branch of Gordon around 1570, and their son, John
Gordon (born 1576) was named 13th Earl of Sutherland in 1594. John's marriage to Agnes
Elphinstone was an elaborate double wedding at what was then "fashionable and aristocratic quarter" of Edinburgh's Cowgate in 1600 with her sister Jean (whose bridegroom was Arthur, Master of Forbes). Their father was Lord Treasurer,
Alexander Elphinstone.
The wedding at was attended
by King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark and occurred three
years before he became King James I of England. John and Agnes Gordon had five children, including John the 14th Earl who was appointed Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland in 1649. An arch defender of King Charles I, who was beheaded
in January 1649 after his trial for treason, John,
the 14th Earl watched as Oliver Cromwell ended "divine right
of kings" in favor of the power of Parliament.
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| Robert Gordon |
On
16 Feb. 1613, Robert married "Louise, or Lucie [Gordon], born 20 Dec.
1597, only child and sole heiress of John Gordon, D.D. (1544-1619), with
whom he received the lordships of Glenluce in Scotland and of Longorme
in France." We now know this couple became the parents of a baby girl named Katherine Gordon, who married David Barclay in 1647.
Dr. John Gordon's
father Alexander Gordon (1515-1575) was a protege of Mary
Queen of Scots, and he had been named Bishop of Galloway in the Scottish Church, fleeing to France in 1560 to act as a veritable spy on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, and his son John was appointed to serve as "Gentleman-in-Waiting to
Charles IX of France until 1568. While they were in France, they met
Queen Mary's son, the exiled king of Scotland,
James VI, who named Alexander to the position of Dean of Salisbury Cathedral
in Wiltshire, working there with John, who replaced him in 1572.
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| Dr. Gordon, Dean of Salisbury |
After
Dr. John Gordon's first wife died in France in 1591, John married
Genevieve Pétau, who was the mother of only one child--a daughter, Lucy
Gordon, born in 1597. Lucy was about six years old when her mother,
Genevieve, became the French tutor of Princess Elizabeth, as discussed in the previous segment of this series. The two girls
were very close in age and great companions. They also married the same
year. Lucy married Robert Gordon, whose maternal grandfather George
Gordon, 3rd Earl of Huntly, was the brother of Dr. John Gordon's
father, Alexander. This was the same Robert Gordon who was the older brother of the 13th Earl of Sutherland and guardian of his brother's son. Simply reiterating here for added clarification. Just in case you are confused, as I was.
We began this series with Colonel David Barclay,
who had returned to Scotland in 1636, having fought in the Thirty
Years' War that began in 1618 in the Palatinate. King James had five
years earlier given his eldest daughter Elizabeth in marriage to the son
of Prince-Elector Frederick IV.
In 1619 Frederick V was named King of Bohemia at about the same time
Ferdinand II became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Bohemia
was a part.
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| Execution of Charles I |
That
event triggered a long bloody war in which Col. David
Barclay had fought under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden on behalf of the
Protestant cause. Now we are beginning to see how all the characters we
have been following were linked to each other both familially and politically
by their support for the royals.
Charles
I had been born at Dunfermline Palace (which is north of the Firth of
Forth and Edinburgh's Holyrood Palace) in 1600, three years before his
father, James VI, became King of England and left Scotland for St. James Palace in London, northeast of Buckingham Palace (not built until the next century).
Almost as
soon as James was dead, his son Charles had married a French Catholic, who
refused
to be crowned alongside him in a Protestant ceremony. That did not, of
course, bode well.
Birth of The Rule of Law
The next years were taken up by the "Bishops' Wars," finally resolved in 1641. During those years Scotland had been under the control of a political faction known as the Covenanters, led by Oliver Cromwell, also known as the Protector, who opposed the king. Charles' great crime, which infuriated Parliament, was to barge into the House of Commons to arrest five members of that body. As a consequence,
Charles claimed that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch. The king was above the law. But Parliament countered, sayingCharles was accused of treason against England by using his power to pursue his personal interest rather than the good of the country, The charge stated that he was devising "a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people." In carrying this out he had "traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament, and the people therein represented," and that the "wicked designs, wars, and evil practices of him, the said Charles Stuart, have been, and are carried on for the advancement and upholding of a personal interest of will, power, and pretended prerogative to himself and his family, against the public interest, common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the people of this nation."
Charles I, after bursting into Parliament to arrest 5 members
"the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern 'by and according to the laws of the land and not otherwise'."
The
decision was that Charles be executed, and he was beheaded on January
30, 1649. Oliver Cromwell took control of the government from that point
until Parliament was reinstated, and the monarchy was restored to
Charles I's eldest son, Charles II, in 1660.
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| Cromwell |
Not surprisingly, historians have discovered several of the regicides
ended up in Puritan-colonized Massachusetts, according to an enlightening
2019 book review in The Guardian.
Rule by King, but Subservient to Parliament
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| Sutherland castles |
The Sutherland-owned castles lined
up on the most northerly northeast coast of Scotland, as shown on the
map. They had fallen into debt by 1621, which was paid off by
David Barclay's father-in-law, Robert Gordon.
His eldest son, George
Gordon, was born in 1633, the same year the previous two earls died. George had been named to the office of Lord Privy Seal 20 years before he succeeded his father as 15th Earl.
According to Peerage Records,
"On 24 June 1681 he obtained a regrant of the Earldom, with special
remainder to his son and in default to the heirs female of his son
without division and their heirs male."
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| Dornoch Palace |
But in 1681, the year of
the alleged Regrant, the future military general was only 20 years of
age, and his marriage to Helen Cochrane had so far resulted in one
child, a baby girl. Possibly fearing no son would be born, the titles were regranted to allow passage to a daughter as a last resort.
Two
years after the deeds were modified, ironically, Gen John Sutherland's
wife began having sons; three died before reaching
adulthood.
A fourth son, William Sutherland, was born
in 1708 and succeeded his father as MP for
Sutherland as a Whig for five years beginning in 1727, but in 1733 both his father, the military General John, and his grandfather George the 16th Earl, died. William succeeded as the 17th Earl of Sutherland, whose biography, written by Eveline Cruikshanks for The History of Parliament was less than omplimentary:
Lord Strathnaver was the grandson and heir of the 16th Earl of Sutherland, who advised him, while he was on the Grand Tour in 1727, to go to Hanover to pay his court to Frederick, the new Prince of Wales, in the hope of becoming a gentleman of his bedchamber.1 Though he was only 18, his grandfather put him up for Sutherland at the general election that year, expressing the hope to the Duke of Argyll that the resolution that the eldest sons of peers of Scotland should not sit in the House of Commons would not be invoked, as Strathnaver was a grandson, not a son.2 Taking his seat without difficulty, he voted with the Administration on the Hessians in 1730 and on the excise bill in 1733. In 1730 he claimed repayment for arms surrendered to the Government, under the Act for disarming the Highlands, but his claim was deferred on the ground that ‘some of the receipts for arms produced for the Lord Strathnaver are attended with very suspicious circumstances’.3
Lord Strathnaver's gout
On succeeding his grandfather as Earl of Sutherland in 1733, he was said to have made a bargain with Walpole and Ilay under which, in return for voting for the court list of representative peers, he was made one of them himself, appointed a lord of police in Scotland at £800 p.a., and granted a pension of £1,200 p.a.4 Promoted to be first lord of police in 1744, during the Forty-five he raised two independent companies on behalf of the Government, and was present at the battle of Culloden.5 Having apparently connected himself with Frederick, Prince of Wales, he lost his post in 1747...
William, Lord Strathnaver
The "Ilay" referred to above was Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Ilay (later 3rd Duke of Argyll), who, according to Britannica, was "treasurer of Scotland in 1705 and the following year was one of the commissioners for negotiating the union of the two kingdoms, Scotland and England. Raised to the peerage of Scotland as Earl of Ilay, he was among the 16 Scottish peers chosen to sit in the first Parliament of Great Britain. He became a privy councillor in 1711, keeper of the privy seal of Scotland in 1721, and keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland in 1733. He played an important part in the movement led by Duncan Forbes of Culloden to promote Scottish loyalty to the Hanoverians by raising Highland regiments from among the Whig clans."
Another brief biography, this one written by D. W. Hayton, is as condescending as the previous one, castigating him as follows:
Lord Strathnayer seems to have sacrificed his bright prospects to a love of the bottle, which even before he reached his majority had given his face ‘as many colours as the rainbow’. Already a colonelcy of foot had been secured for him, and soon afterwards a lucrative match was arranged with the daughter of an influential political associate, William Morison of Prestongrange. Once the marriage had taken place [1632] his father handed over to him responsibility for the great Sutherland estate....
... The part played by the Sutherland family in securing the Hanoverian succession in the north of Scotland resulted in Strathnaver’s appointment in September 1715 to the vacant chamberlainry of Ross. In resisting the subsequent Jacobite invasion he surmounted another bout of ill-health to take command of a regiment of Sutherland clansmen the Earl had raised. Although in private Sutherland was disappointed at the leniency Strathnaver had shown to individual rebels, in public no praise was too high for his son’s efforts, and, arguing that the family estates had contributed heavily to the raising and equipping of local volunteers, Sutherland also obtained for him a warrant for a pension of £500 p.a. to be added to the place of chamberlain of Ross, ‘in consideration of the eminent services performed by him to his Majesty and the royal family’.
Spoils of War
I never fully realized before that what was being fought for during the Jacobite Risings was whether or not the United Kingdom would be ruled by the Stuart "Pretender," son of the feared Catholic, James II, exiled in France, who landed with a "tiny force of about a dozen men on the west coast of Scotland in July 1745 and raised the Highlands in revolt."
The landed gentry were each fighting for ancestral lands claimed by their respective families. One faction would have benefited by removing the German protestants from the British throne, the downside being the possibility of more religious wars, while another faction would retain the lands acquired by their families by virtue of the 1688 Act of Settlement, which had placed William of Orange and Queen Mary in power. As we wrote in Part V, the family which gained the most from the Act in 1688 was the Russell/Bedford family. Nevertheless, the 1st Duke of Bedford had assistance from other groups in the shadows, most notable of which was the East India Company's officers and directors. Symbolic of that important connection was the 1695 wedding that took place at Streatham, also shown in Part V.
What I also never considered before was how quickly a generation becomes ignorant of what happened in the previous generation. The American colonies had by then been the home of the colonists for no more than 150 years--roughly five generations. During that time of peace in the colony, Britain had been constantly engaged in one war or another--in Europe (30 Years' War), Spain, France, Portugal, several wars in India, wars against the Dutch, and most recently in Scotland and Ireland. Each side had its own limited perception.
Frederick, the Prince of Wales, the
eldest son of King George II, was the heir apparent Strathnaver had been advised to cozy up to, but he died in 1751, and it was his son who became King George III, the same king our American founders railed against when signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, setting up yet another very expensive foreign war for Great Britain to find funding for.
It was during the years after 1695 that Scotland's importance became ever more important to what had become the United Kingdom and why those in the British Parliament turned its eyes to the Earls of Sutherland to finance the war against the invading heirs of a prior regime. Scotland had figured out how to launder money at a time when a washing machine was only a dream of the future. But that is a subject for the next chapter.
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[Note: There seems to be no agreement about the numbering of the Earls of Sutherland. Sir Robert Gordon's book used two numbers for each, but William Fraser in his genealogy used the lower numeral, while The Peerage uses the higher number. In this series, I have used the numbers used by The Peerage and by Parliament's History.]
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