Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/228

Rh  Easter Day, 1861,' Oxford, 1861, 8vo.
 * 1) 'The Great Commandment and Education,' London, 1870, 8vo.
 * 2) 'A sermon delivered by the Rev. Osborne Gordon, B.D., to his congregation at Easthampstead, on the deficiency of religious instruction in connection with certain proposals for national education.' Gordon also addressed a letter, 'School Boards and Religious Education,' to Lord Sandon (now Lord Harrowby) when the latter was first elected to the London School Board.

 GORDON, PATRICK (fl. 1615–1650), poet, published in London in 1614, 4to, 'Neptunus Britannicus Corydonis,' a Latin poem, deploring the death of Prince Henry, and congratulating Prince Charles on succeeding his brother as Prince of Wales and the Princess Elizabeth on her marriage with the elector palatine. In 1615 two long narrative poems by 'Patrick Gordon, gent.,' were issued at Dort by George Waters. The first was 'The Famous Valiant Historie of the renouned and valiant Prince Robert, surnamed the Bruce, King of Scotland, &c., and of sundrie other knights both Scots and English, done into heroik verse.' A prose preface and prefatory verse by A. Gordon, Crage, Th. Mitchell, and others, showed much patriotic fervour. The poem, which is of no literary value, was reprinted at Edinburgh in 1718, 12mo, and at Glasgow in 1753. Gordon's second poem was 'The First Booke of the Famous Historye of Penardo and Laissa, otherways callid the Warres of Love and Ambitione … Doone into Heroik verse.' The first editions of these two poems are extremely rare. Only two copies of the 'Penardo' are known to be in existence. One has lately been acquired by the British Museum, where are also copies of the poem on Bruce and the 'Neptunus.'

It is possible that the author is identical with the Patrick Gordon of Ruthven who wrote, about 1650, 'A Shorte Abridgment of Britenes Distemper,' from 1639 to 1649, a prose account of the part played by Scotland in the civil wars. This work was first printed in 1844 for the Spalding Club, under the editorship of John Dunn. The writer was second son of Sir Thomas Gordon of Cluny, Aberdeenshire, by his first wife, Lady Elizabeth, daughter of, ninth earl of Angus [q. v.] The father was a devoted adherent of the chief of his clan,, sixth earl and first marquis of Huntly [q. v.] Patrick was admitted burgess of Aberdeen on 23 March 1609 at the special request of the first marquis. He married a kinswoman named Murray, daughter of the laird of Cobairdy, by whom he left issue. He was a staunch royalist, and probably wrote his 'Short Abridgment' as a vindication of the Marquis of Huntly, whom he thought Bishop Wishart had used unjustly in his 'Memoirs of Montrose,' issued in 1647. The work is valuable for its firsthand descriptions of both Montrose and Huntly.

 GORDON, PATRICK (1635–1699), general, and friend of Peter the Great, was born in 1635 at Auchleuchries in Aberdeenshire, where his father was a small laird. His mother's name was Mary Ogilvie. He wrote his autobiography in six thick quarto volumes, which are still preserved in Russia in the archives of the foreign office. These have never been published in the original English, but were translated into German by Dr. Maurice Posselt, and appeared in three volumes in Russia, as cited at the conclusion of the present article. In 1859 selections from those parts of the diary which related to the author's native country and some of his foreign adventures were transcribed verbatim by Dr. Posselt for Mr. Joseph Robertson, who edited them for the Spalding Club. The diary is very interesting in parts but dull in others, for it was a custom with Gordon, among other things, to put down the price of every article he purchased. Unfortunately the volumes narrating the events between 1667 and 1677 and between 1678 and 1684 are lost.

In 1651 Gordon, as the younger son of a poor laird, resolved to push his fortunes in a foreign country. He soon found his way into Poland, then swarming with Scots, and entered the service of Charles X of Sweden, who was invading that country. In the following year he was taken prisoner by the Poles; he joined their army as a dragoon, and quitted the Swedes, but in the same year, when captured by the latter at Warsaw, he again entered their service. He was clearly a genuine Dugald Dalgetty.

In 1658, in company with others, he planned at Werder the assassination of [q. v.], the English ambassador to Moscow, whom he had mistaken for the president