Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/222

  operations in England, while he upheld the authority of parliament in the north. He was one of the leaders at the battle of Auldearn in 1645. His estates suffered severely from ravages made upon them by Lord Reay and the clan Mackay, who took the royalist side, and had a special feud with Sutherland on account of his acquisition of the territory of Strathnaver. Sutherland invoked the aid of parliament, and at length surprised Lord Reay in the castle of Balveny, Banffshire, and sent him a prisoner to Edinburgh. Parliament decreed that he should be detained in the Tolbooth until he had made good the damage he had caused to Sutherland. He also had to oppose Montrose in Sutherlandshire. Sutherland was active both in parliament and in the general assembly. He served on several parliamentary committees and commissions, one of the latter of which, in 1641, was concerned with the trial of his former fellow-student at St. Andrews, the Marquis of Montrose. In that year he was chosen a member of the privy council for life, and on 10 March 1649 parliament conferred on him ad vitam aut culpam the office of lord privy seal in room of Robert, earl of Roxburgh, who had been deprived.

In 1648 Sutherland declined a proffered command in the army levied for the rescue of Charles I under the 'engagement' of the Duke of Hamilton. But in 1650 he raised a thousand men to assist Leslie against Cromwell. When he reached Edinburgh he learned that the battle of Dunbar had just been lost, and at the request of Charles II, who wrote to him from the camp at Stirling, he carried his men thither, and received the royal command to return and raise additional levies. Charles acknowledged the services of Sutherland at this time in a special letter of thanks. On the departure of the expedition under Charles into England, Sutherland was sent north for the protection of the northern parts of Scotland.

During the Commonwealth the earl retired from active public service. After the Restoration, however, he again appeared in parliament. In 1662 he settled the earldom on his eldest surviving son, George, afterwards Earl of Sutherland, and died in the following year, aged 54. His piety is commemorated by Wodrow in his 'Analecta' (iii. 316), who relates that this 'good old Earl of Sutherland' was a very close and regular attender on sermons in his own church, and when the precentor was absent on any occasion he was wont from his own loft to raise the tune and read the line to the congregation.

His first countess, Lady Jean Drummond, who was a highly accomplished and beautiful lady and her father's heiress, having died at Edinburgh on 29 Dec. 1637 of consumption, Sutherland married, as his second wife, on 24 Jan. 1639, Anna, daughter of Hugh Fraser, lord Lovat. Of the first marriage only was there issue, namely, three sons and one daughter: John, who died young, George, who succeeded, Robert, and Jean.

George's heir, John, (fifteenth or) sixteenth earl, is separately noticed.



GORDON, JOHN, D.D. (1644–1726), bishop of Galloway, born in Scotland in 1644, was a member of the Gordon family of Coldwells, near Ellon, Aberdeenshire,and was royal chaplain 'apud New York in America,' when, on a vacancy in the see of Galloway, a congé d'élire in his favour was issued 3 Dec. 1687. He was accordingly elected bishop 4 Feb. 1687-8, and consecrated at Glasgow by Archbishop Paterson. At the revolution he followed James II to Ireland and France, and while residing at Saint-Germain he read the liturgy of the church of England to such British protestants as resorted to his lodgings. Subsequently, however, he was converted by Bossuet. It appears that he was privately received into the Roman church during his sojourn in France, though at a later period he made a public abjuration of protestantism at Rome, before Sacripanti, the cardinal protector of the Scotch nation. At his conditional baptism he took the additional name of the reigning pontiff, and ever afterwards signed himself John Clement Gordon. The pope, wishing to confer some benefice pension on the new convert, caused the sacred congregation of the inquisition to institute an inquiry into the validity of Gordon's protestant orders. After a long investigation his orders were treated as if they were null from the beginning. The decree of the inquisition to this effect was issued 17 April 1704. After this Gordon received the sacrament of confirmation, and Clement XI conferred on him the tonsure, giving him the benefice of the abbey of St. Clement, by reason of which Gordon commonly went by the name of the Abate Clemente. It is observable that he never received other than minor orders in the Roman catholic church. He died at Rome in 1726.

He was the author of a controversial piece entitled 'Pax Vobis, or Gospel Liberty.'

[Le Quien's Nullité des Ordinations Anglicanes, ii. 312, Append, p. lxviii; Francisque Michel's