George Gordon , In 1661 the attainder of his grandfather, who was executed in 1649, was reversed by Act of Parliament. Charles was educated in France at a Catholic seminary, and joined the French army in 1673. He served under Turenne and the Prince of Orange and with the east of manner characteristic of his family made a number of friends in Europe. In 1675 he returned to England, and in the following year, married Elizabeth Howard, the eldest daughter of the 6th Duke of Norfolk, returning with her to Scotland. As a Catholic he was barred from public employment, but he was appointed Commander of the Northern Forces against Argyll's rebellion in 1685. The collection includes a number of letters relating to this event. After the landing of William of Orange, the Duke held Edinburgh Castle for James II, but surrendered it to the Convention on 14 June 1689. William had written to him on 6 February 'In persuance... of my design to restore the Laws of both Kingdoms by which no man that is a Roman Catholick is capable of any Publick trust Civil or Military I desire you to leave the Castle of Edenburgh and the Garison with the Regalia Magazines and arms... In the hands and custodie of Mr. Achmoutie... as being the next Protestant Officer under you', which contrasts nicely with James II's remark in a letter to Queensberry shortly after he had made the Duke of Gordon Custodian, that he wished the town to be 'civiler to Catholics by seeing it in the hands of one of that persuasion'. After his ambiguous conduct of the seige, the 1st Duke was coldly received at the Courts of St. James and St. Germain, and returned to Scotland, where he was treated with considerable suspicion and occasionally imprisoned. His correspondence at this time is no longer dominated by official letters from the Council, but by letters from peers with Jacobite sympathies. In 1697 the Duchess retired to a convent in Flanders. The Duke who was visited by and received letters from Nathanial Hooke, was classed by Hooke as 'a Catholic and entirely devoted to the King', and in March 1708 he was arrested, together with other Scottish Lords as a Jacobite suspect, and confined in Edinburgh Castle. Letters to the Duke from James Stuart, the Old Pretender, are among the Royal letters. hit[from Scope and Content] There are more than a hundred letters from the Duke to Mr. Dunbar, his agent at Gordon Castle, written while the Duke was at Edinburgh, showing his interest in the family estates. The Duke was confined to the City of Edinburgh on the accession of George I, and died at Leith in 1716. Macky, in his Characters, describing the 1st Duke when he was past fifty, says that 'he hath a great many links in him, but they do not all make a complete chain; is certainly a very fine gentleman and understands conversation and the belles letters; is well bred; made for the company of ladies, but is very covetous, which extremely eclipses him. The priests and new converts represented him to be a libertine and a fop; he is a Roman Catholic, because he was bred so, but otherwise thinks very little of revealed religion. He had a good estate which, notwithstanding his turns, he improves. He is handsome and taller than the ordinary size; thin; dresses well; but is somewhat finical, resembling the French'.
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