Robert Gordon 1580-1656

Sir Robert GORDON of Gordonstoun 1580-1656

Biographical Note

Gordon was born at Dunrobin Castle, Sutherland on 14 May 1580, the fourth son of Alexander Gordon, 12th earl of Sutherland and his second wife Lady Jean Gordon, daughter of the 4th Earl of Huntly. After school at Dornoch he briefly attended the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh in the late 1590s. In 1603 he went to France and studied law at Poitiers for a year, returning to Scotland in 1605. The next year, he became a courtier as a gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber, and in 1609 was knighted. In 1613 he married Louise Gordon (1597-1680), daughter of John Gordon, Dean of Salisbury, a prolific author of theological and polemical works, who was a cousin of Robert Gordon’s mother. Gordon became an MA of Cambridge University in 1615. His home base for many years was Salisbury but he travelled frequently to Scotland on family business: between 1615 and 1631 he was tutor to his nephew, the young 14th Earl of Sutherland (b.1609), and this involved a lot of work on his part in the unruly north of Scotland. On 28 May 1625 Gordon became the first ever baronet of Nova Scotia.

In succeeding years Gordon was in Scotland for extended periods, becoming sheriff of Inverness in 1629, a vice-chamberlain for Scotland in 1630, and a member of the Scottish Privy Council in 1630. He retired from court life in 1642, when the king’s power struggles were becoming ever more acute. He moved his family and possessions, including his extensive library, which incorporated most of the books of his father-in-law (despite the latter having willed them to the cathedral), from Salisbury to Scotland in May 1643: he had purchased the Gordonstoun lands in 1638, and these were made into a barony in 1642. He lived there in retirement until his death in March 1656. His main work was A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland, which was written in the 1620s but not published until 1813.

Books

The Gordon family library remained intact at Gordonstoun until the early nineteenth century, by which time the estate had been inherited by the Cummings of Altyre. It was sold by auction in London in 1816, and the printed catalogue stressed that most of the contents comprised the first baronet’s library. Certainly, most items are before 1656 in date, although the third baronet (1647-1704) was a politician and scientist (nicknamed ‘Sir Robert the Warlock’) and fellow of the Royal Society, who must have added to the library; and some material emanates from Robert Gordon’s father-in-law, the Dean of Salisbury. There were 2421 lots, and material included, as the sale catalogue stated, ‘an extraordinary number of rarities of the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’; these delighted early nineteenth century bibliomanes. There were also twenty-three volumes of tracts of the reign of Charles I, and some early English newspapers.

There is an earlier Gordon of Gordonstoun family library catalogue in manuscript dated 1743 in the National Library of Scotland.

Sources

• A Catalogue of the Singular and Curious Library, Originally Formed Between 1610 and 1650, by Sir Robert Gordon, of Gordonstoun … With some Additions by his Successors; Comprising an Extraordinary Number of Rareties of the Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Which will be Sold by Auction, by J. G. Cochrane … Strand, on Thursday, March 14, 1816, and Eleven Following Days … [Weybridge, 1816].
• ‘Catalogue of Books Belonging to Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun, Baronet [i.e. the fourth baronet, 1696-1772], 1743’. National Library of Scotland MS 3804
• Birrell, T. A., ‘Reading as Pastime: the Place of Light Literature in some Gentlemen’s Libraries of the 17th Century’, in Myers, R. and Harris, M., eds, Property of a Gentleman: the Formation, Organisation and Dispersal of the Private Library, 1620-1920 (Winchester: St Paul Bibliographies, 1991), pp. 113-131 (for Gordon see pp. 121-123).
• Stevenson, David ‘Gordon, Sir Robert, of Gordonstoun, first baronet (1580-1656), historian and courtier’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Information from Murray Simpson.