Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.
Alexander Gordon 4th Duke of Gordon
18 June 1743 – 17 June 1827
Alexander Gordon
Alexander Gordon was born at Gordon Castle, Fochabers, on 18 June 1743, the eldest son of Cosmo Gordon, 3rd Duke of Gordon and his wife, Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Aberdeen. He was educated at Eton and also possibly at Harrow. He succeeded as 4th Duke of Gordon in 1752. His younger brother was Lord George Gordon who led the Gordon Riots.
He was elected as a Scottish representative peer from 1767. He was appointed a Knight of the Thistle in 1775 and was created a Peer of Great Britain as Baron Gordon of Huntley, of Huntley in the County of Gloucester, and Earl of Norwich, in the County of Norfolk, in 1784. His new titles were not universally popular. He was thought to have taken designations to which he had no right.
He was Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland from 1794 to 1806 and from 1807 to 1827. Between 1793 and 1827, he was Chancellor of King’s College, Aberdeen. In addition, he was Lord Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire until 1808. He received the Order of the Thistle from King George III on 11 January 1775. The Dictionary of National Biography described him thus: “At the time of his marriage the Duke was reputed one of the handsomest men of his day.”
He raised the 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) Regiment of Foot in 1794 for the French Revolutionary Wars. He was responsible for establishing the new village of Fochabers as well as for Tomintoul and Portgordon in Banffshire. He is also credited as the founder of the Gordon Setter breed of dog, having popularised a 200-year-old breed during the 18th century and then formalised its breed standard in 1820.
He was an enthusiastic supporter and patron of the music of William Marshall, a Scottish fiddler and composer, and famous for his many strathspeys, who acted as steward of the Gordon household.
Gordon married firstly in 1767, at Ayton, Berwickshire, and again Mr Fordyce’s house in Argyll Street, Edinburgh, Jane, the daughter of Sir William Maxwell, 3rd Baronet of Monreith, by his wife, Magdalen, daughter of William Blair, of Blair, Ayrshire. Duchess Jane was born at Hyndford’s Close, Edinburgh in 1748, she was described by the diarist Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, as a celebrated beauty. From 1787 she was the social centre of the Tory party and was described in the Female Jockey Club of 1794, as possessing “an open ruddy countenance, quick in repartée, and no one excelling her in performing the honours of the table, her society is generally courted”. It went on to say that “The Duchess triumphs in a manly mien; Loud is her accent, and her phrase obscene.” She resided for some years in Edinburgh, but eventually refused to renew her residence at George Square, Edinburgh, because it was “a vile dull place”. The poet Erskine wrote the following lines to her;- “That is, quoth he, as if the Sun should say, A vile dark morning this – I will not rise to-day.”
The Duke and Duchess’s marriage was tempestuous from the start and neither made any particular effort to be faithful to the other. For some years before her death she was bitterly estranged from the Duke. While the Duchess resided in the centres of society, the Duke lived in retirement at Gordon Castle. Elizabeth Grant mentions “The great width of the Spey, the bridge at Fochabers, and the peep of the towers of Gordon Castle from amongst the cluster of trees that concealed the rest of the building….the Duke lived very disreputably in this solitude, for he was very little noticed, and, I believe, preferred seclusion.”
The Duchess is best remembered for placing the King’s Shilling between her teeth to help recruitment to the Gordon Highlanders which were founded by her husband. However, she also possessed a capacity for match-making which was unrivalled. Of her five daughters, three were married to Dukes, (Richmond, Manchester and Bedford) and one to a Marquess (Cornwallis).
The Duchess of Gordon died at Pulteney’s Hotel, Piccadilly, Middlesex, in 1812 and was buried at her beloved Kinrara near Aviemore. The Duke, married secondly, in 1820, Jane [or Jean] Christie, who was a native of Fochabers and was then aged about 40. The Duke had previously had four children by Christie. After their marriage she lived in great style not at the Castle but at a town house in Fochabers. She claimed that by residing at the Castle, which the Duke had rebuilt and enlarged considerably, none of his friends would visit him.
One of the Duke’s illegitimate sons, Colonel Charles Gordon, was given the property of Glasterim near Port Gordon. Curiously, Colonel Gordon had been a great favourite with the late Duchess. Elizabeth Grant described Colonel Gordon as “much beloved by Lord Huntly, whom he exceedingly resembled, and so might have done better for himself and all belonging to him, had not the Gordon brains been of the lightest with him.”
His second duchess died in 1824 while the Duke died suddenly at Mount Street, Berkeley Square, exactly three years later, and was buried in Elgin Cathedral. He was succeeded by his son George Gordon, 5th Duke of Gordon.
The Duke had a total of seven children by his first wife:
- Lady Charlotte Gordon, married Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond
- George Gordon, 5th Duke of Gordon
- Lady Madelaine Gordon, married firstly Sir Robert Sinclair, 7th Baronet; married secondly Charles Fysche Palmer
- Lady Susan Gordon, in Edinburgh William Montagu, 5th Duke of Manchester
- Lady Louisa Gordon, married Charles Cornwallis, 2nd Marquess Cornwallis
- Lady Georgiana Gordon, married John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford
- Lord Alexander Gordon, served as an officer in the British Army, unmarried
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