Barclays Bank History Series VII

 A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank 

 

PART VII--THE SUTHERLANDS

CONTINUED from Part I, Part II, Part III, Part III-A, Part III-B, Part IV, Part V, Part VI

 

See

The Trail from Gordon to Sutherland

 

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. 

 

Katherine's mother, Louise (Lucy) Gordon, was the daughter of Dr. John Gordon, who came from a related but distinct branch of the Gordon clan and had spent many years as a student in France, where he married twice. Lucy's mother was Genevieve, the second wife, who became French tutor to Princess Elizabeth in 1603, as discussed in Part VI. When Elizabeth was married to Frederick V in 1613, her tutor's daughter, Lucy Gordon, married Robert Gordon, son of Alexander, the 12th Earl.

 

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.

 

Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh

Before replacing his father at Galloway, John Gordon studied extensively in France and married his first wife there in 1576: Antoinette (widowed daughter of Rene de Marolles). From Antoinette, who died in 1591, Gordon acquired an estate which gave him the style of Sieur of Longorme.  [Source: Fasti ecclesiae scoticanae: the succession of ministers in the Church of Scotland from the reformation (1915, p. 344]. John had four children with Antoinette, all of whom died before reaching adulthood.  John married his second wife, Genevieve Petaw (daughter of "Gideon Petaw, Lord of Maulet" after returning to France. Another spelling of the name appears as Petau.

 

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.  

 

Robert Gordon

John's younger brother, Robert, born in 1580, was sent off to France when he turned 18 in 1598 to study civil law, returning to England in October 1605, when he was appointed a gentleman of the privy chamber to James I in 1606. 

 

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.

 

Sir Robert Gordon attended the coronation of Charles I in Scotland in 1633. Then acting as vice-chamberlain, along with four earls' sons, he carried the King's train from the castle to the abbey. 

 

John and Agnes' son, John Gordon, became 14th Earl in 1615 when he was only six. His uncle Robert became guardian, and John grew up alongside Robert's daughter, Katherine Gordon, once she was born in 1621. She was only ten years old when her cousin John Gordon married Jean Drummond in 1632 and was named the 14th Earl in 1633, the year Katherine's paternal uncle and grandfather both died. The first son of the 14th Earl was named George when he was born in 1633, still more than a decade before Katherine Gordon would marry David Barclay. 

 

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. 

 

Dr. Gordon, Dean of Salisbury

[As an interesting aside, it should be mentioned here that James VI's father was Henry Darnley, murdered by Lord Bothwell, who had briefly been married to our Lady Jean Gordon--and quickly divorced so Bothwell could marry Mary Queen of Scots. Jean Gordon thereafter became the wife of Alexander Gordon, the 12th Earl of Sutherland.]

 

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. 

 

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 I, after bursting into Parliament to arrest 5 members

Charles 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 claimed that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch. The king was above the law. But Parliament countered, saying 

"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. 

 

Cromwell

In the meantime, many of the "regicides who had signed his [Charles II's] father’s warrant of execution–40 of whom were still alive–lay beyond the pale. Soon the trials and executions of the living regicides began, and the corpses of Cromwell and other deceased regicides were dug up, beheaded and put on display." 

 

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 

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.

 

As stated previously, the 13th Earl of Sutherland died in 1615 at Dornoch Castle in the Highlands only six years after the 14th Earl was born at Dunrobin, and he lived until 1679. 

 

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."

 

Dornoch Palace

At the time the regrant of the Earldom was signed in 1681, George Gordon, the 15th Earl, and his wife Jean Wemyss already had a son who had been born also at Dornoch. That son (later Lt.-Gen. John Sutherland) would eventually be named 16th Earl of Sutherland. 

 

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's gout

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

William, Lord Strathnaver

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...

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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