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Rh weighty and impressive. Without genius or ambition he showed a remarkable love of justice, honesty, and simplicity, and singular courage in expressing unpopular opinions. Despite his cold exterior he was a delightful companion. With the exception of the Greek intervention in 1829, Aberdeen, while foreign secretary, resolutely followed a policy of nonintervention. His cautious and conciliatory foreign policy contrasted strangely with Palmerston's methods, and the friendly relations which he had established with the foreign courts often led to unjust suspicions of his sympathy with continental despotism. Aberdeen married first, on 28 July 1805, Lady Catherine Elizabeth Hamilton (who died on 29 Feb. 1812), third daughter of John, first marquis of Abercorn, by whom he had one son, who died in infancy, and three daughters, all of whom died unmarried; secondly, on 8 July 1815, Harriet, daughter of the Hon. John Douglas and widow of James, viscount Hamilton, by whom he had four sons and one daughter. In November 1818 he obtained a royal license to assume the surname of Hamilton immediately before that of Gordon, 'as a last memorial of his respect for the memory of his late father-in-law, John James, Marquis of Abercorn, K.G., deced.' (London Gazette, 1818, ii. 2225-6). His second wife died on 26 Aug. 1833, and he was succeeded in his titles and estates by the eldest of his four surviving sons, George John James Hamilton-Gordon. There is a bust of Aberdeen by Noble in Westminster Abbey. The best portrait of Aberdeen is a three-quarter length by Sir Thomas Lawrence, belonging to Sir Robert Peel. It was painted in 1828. Another portrait, by the same painter, painted in 1807, is in the possession of the present earl. A portrait by John Partridge was exhibited in 1868 at the Loan Collection of National Portraits at South Kensington (Catalogue No. 401). An engraving by T. Woolnoth, after a portrait of Aberdeen by A. Wivell, will be found in the third volume of Jerdan's 'National Portrait Gallery' (1832).

He wrote: 1. The preface and notes to the Rev. G. D. Whittington's 'Historical Survey of the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of France,' London, 1809, 4to. 2. 'An Introduction containing an Historical View of the Rise and Progress of Architecture amongst the Greeks,' prefixed to a translation by William Wilkins of 'The Civil Architecture of Vitruvius,' London, 1812, 4to. This introduction was afterwards printed and published separately under the title of 'An Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture,' London, 1822, 8vo. It was again reprinted in 1860 as No. 130 of Weale's 'Series of Rudimentary Works for the use of Beginners,' London, 12mo. 3. 'The Earl of Aberdeen's Correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Chalmers and the Secretaries of the NonIntrusion Committee from 14th January to 27th May 1840,' Edinburgh, 1840, 8vo. 4. 'The Correspondence of the Earl of Aberdeen,' privately printed, not published, 1858-88, 8vo. This collection was arranged by his youngest son, the Hon. Sir Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, G.C.M.G., the present governor of Ceylon, and contains a complete record of the more important transactions of Lord Aberdeen's life. Two of his speeches upon the church of Scotland were published in 1840 and 1843.

[Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort; Greville Memoirs; Spencer Walpole's Hist. of England, vols. ii. iii. iv. v.; Spencer Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell, 1889; Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, 1863, vol. i.; Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by the Earl of Malmesbury, 1884. The Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh (1853), 3rd ser. vol. i., contains several letters written by Lord Aberdeen while abroad, 1813-14. The British Cabinet in 1853, 1853; Macknight's Thirty Years of Foreign Policy, a History of the Secretaryships of the Earl of Aberdeen and Viscount Palmerston, 1855; Thornton's Foreign Secretarics of the XIX Century, 1851-2, ii. 269-306, iii. 63-105 (with portrait); Edinburgh Review, clviii. 547-77; Annual Register, 1860. 376-83; Gent. Mag. 1851, new ser. x. 205-7, 238; Times, 15 and 22 Dec. 1860 ; Doyle's Official Baronage, 1886, ii. 36-7; Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, 1812, i. 23; Grad. Cantabr. 1856, p. 1.] 

GORDON, HENRIETTA, called (fl. 1658), maid of honour to the Princess Henrietta, youngest daughter of Charles I, was the only daughter of John Gordon, created Viscount of Melgum and Lord Aboyne in 1627, by Lady Sophia Hay, fifth daughter of Frances, ninth earl of Errol. She was born about 1628. Her father was second son of George Gordon, first marquis of Huntly [q. v.] by Henrietta, eldest daughter of the first Duke of Lennox. He was burned to death in his house at Frendraught in October 1630; and, his widow dying on 22 March 1642, Henrietta was left an orphan. She had been bred in the catholic faith, and, her uncle and natural guardian, the second Marquis of Huntly, being a protestant, her mother on her deathbed commended her to the care of her father confessor, Gilbert Blackball or Blakhal, who forthwith repaired to Paris in the hope of obtaining from Henrietta's grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Huntly, instructions how to act in the matter. The marchioness, however, pleading poverty as an excuse for taking no step to have the child brought to Paris, as Blakhal desired she should be, he