Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/301

 11 8. VJ. SEPT. 28, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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addition to these, there are standing and occasional committees for Antarctic meteo- rological observations, Challenger Reports, for observing eclipses, for advising the Indian Government on matters connected with scientific inquiry in that empire, tropical diseases, and various other subjects. JOHN COLLINS FBANCIS.

(To be continued.)

ADAM LINDSAY GORDON'S FATE.

IT has frequently been stated that Adam Lindsay Gordon, the Australian poet, niet a tragic end by his futile atteftipt to succeed to the Aberdeenshire estates of his ancestors, the Gordons of Hallhead and Esslemont, which had been entailed by Robert Gordon in 1731.

A typical example of the mistaken notion is given by the author of ' The Development of Australian Literature,' who says :

' ' The Barony of Esslemont had for a long time been in the possession of a Mr. Huntley Gordon [really Robert Gordon], who on his death be- queathed it to his daughter [which he did not], a certain Mrs. Wooldridge [really Wolrige]. If the entail was still valid, this bequest was beyond his power, for none but male heirs, however remote, could succeed to it ; and the Gordon family generally regarded the will as a piece of calm self-assertion on the part of the late owner. Nevertheless the lady had occupied the estate for four years ere the poet heard anything of the matter. It was in October, 1868, that his uncle, Hamilton Gordon, wrote to him advising him to assert his claim as being beyond all doubt the nearest heir."

The real facts of the case are as follows : Robert Gordon, the entailer, anxious, like Scott, to found a family, drew up a deed in London, 22 March, 1731, entailing his estates of Hallhead and Esslemont and eight others in the parishes of Cushnie, Tarland, Tough, and Ellon, all in Aberdeen- shire :

1. In favour of himself in life rent, and after his death (which occurred in 1737) to

2. George Gordon, his eldest son, and the heirs male of his body ; whom failing, to

3. Alexander Gordon (died in 1778), his third son. and the heirs male of his body ; whom failing, to

4. Heirs male of the body of the granter, and the heirs male of their bodies ; whom failing, to

5. Robert Gordon, his nephew, and the heirs male of his body ; whom failing, to

6. William -Gordon, another nephew, and the heirs male of his body ; whom failing, to

7. John Gordon, another nephew, and the heirs male of his body ; whom failing, to

8. Alexander Gordon, the granter's brother, and the heirs male of his body ; whom failing, to various general heirs.

The estates were duly inherited by the granter's son George, the latter's son Robert (d. 1793), and then by this Robert's son George, colonel of the local militia, and uncle of Lindsay Gordon's father. Col. Gordon (who had been trained in a lawyer's office, and who fell into debt) got legal opinion in 1809 that the entail was

" essentially defective in so far as the case of selling or alienating is totally omitted in the Resolutive Clause, which .... renders the entail altogether ineffective to prevent an onerous sale."

Acting on this advice, he sold his lands of Rannas in Tarland and Ardgows in Tough.

But that did not end the matter. Col. Gordon's son Robert (d. 1828), major in the North British Fusiliers, married in 1825 Henrietta Hope, daughter of the Hon. Charles Napier, R.N., of Merchiston Hall, and this lady bought Hallhead (apparently to pay off debt). It remained in her hands till her death in 1867 at the age of 84, when it came to her granddaughter, Ann Gordon, who had married Mr. Henry Perkins Wolrige in 1856.

Meantime the estate of Esslemont had passed to Col. George Gordon's second son, Charles Napier Gordon, an officer in the Navy. On 9 March, 1849, he granted a trust disposition of Esslemont to his heirs general, on the ground that the entail was invalid owing to its " irritant clauses." When he died, Esslemont went to his niece Mrs. Wolrige, who thereupon took the name of Gordon- Wolrige, and, nine years later, that of Wolrige- Gordon ; on the death of her grandmother, Mrs. George Gordon, she also got Hallhead.

It is quite true that on the death of Charles Napier Gordon, in 1864, Adam Lindsay Gordon was the senior male of the family ; but it is also true that the entail had broken down nearly half a century before. There- fore he had no claim, no matter what the view of his Australian legal advisers may have been.

But more than that while there was no luck for the poet, there was more good fortune in store for Mrs. Wolrige-Gordon. Her eldest son, Robert, succeeded to the estate of Liberton and Craigmillar in Mid- lothian, and took the name of Gordon- Gilmour. Hallhead and Esslemont then went to his .second brother, Col. John Wolrige-Gordon, whose only son, in turn, has recently succeeded to the estates of Irnhani and Corby, in Lincolnshire.

These successions have resulted in a com- plicated change of name. Thus Henry Perkins Wolrige became in 1864 Gordon-