CHAPTER IV

Gordonstoun—A Glorious Playground—The Great Picture—The Dungeons—The Charter Room—Old Letters—Ecclesiastical Censures—Successive Lairds—Window-tax.

And now to turn to that beloved old grey home which Cosmo Innes described as “the ghostly old palace of Gordonstoun.” Ghostly it well might be, could its very numerous builders appear to give us an inkling of all the changes it has undergone since those remote days ere drainage was thought of, and its site, known as the Bog of Plewlands, was a low, unhealthy swamp, but one which for security and concealment from the sea, owing to the rising ground, aided by belts of oak and fir wood, was selected by the Marquis of Huntly as a desirable site on which to build a strong keep. It was part of the marsh which bordered the Loch of Spynie, and which in rainy seasons was invariably flooded, so that the vaulted chambers of the lower story were at any time liable to inundation.

Marshland seems to have been greatly in favour in those troublous times, for the site of old Gordon Castle, near Fochabers, now richly cultivated land, was anciently called “The Bog of Gight,” and amongst the miscellaneous papers of Gordonstoun are numerous letters to both Cummings and Gordons from the old Dukes of Gordon, simply dated from “the Bog.”

[Illustration:

_C. F. Gordon Cumming._

GORDONSTOUN PRIOR TO 1900. ]

With the exception of the vaulted base, little, if any, of that ancient stronghold now remains, for each successive generation has altered and added to it. At one time it resembled an old French castle, and must have been a very stately house, embosomed in noble old trees. One of its owners, having been educated in Holland, surrounded it with straight terraces, avenues, and canals. Then the Sir Robert Gordon generally known as “the Wizard,” pulled down the middle of the old house and built the present centre, leaving the wings as they were, with turrets at the corners of the steep roof of grey stone slabs.

That describes the exterior of the house as it continued till within the last few years, when, alas! in the course of extensive internal improvements, the venerable slabs were ruthlessly broken by careless workmen, and replaced by modern slates. The long drawing-room, measuring 60 feet by 22, has seven tall windows, each 9 feet 6 in. by 4 feet, and the dining-room, 44 by 24 feet, has four tall windows. Not content with very heavy wooden frames, each of these upstairs windows was formerly protected by heavy iron staunchions. Of course all those on the ground floor were likewise guarded, and a most quaintly varied and irregular series they are.

At least one large window, still partially built up, recalls the lamentable tax on windows, which compelled so many people of small means to shut out the light of heaven. To this day in many old houses, dummy windows, half or wholly built up, are an abiding protest against that unwise legislation, finally repealed only in 1851.

Just outside the house, on one side, are two old buildings in which we delighted. One was a tall, conical white dove-cot (somewhat resembling the dove-cots of Egypt), thirty feet in height, and constructed to contain the nests of a multitude of pigeons.

The other was known as the Round Square—a title which sounds paradoxical till you remember that all farm offices are called “the Square,” and the peculiarity of these, which were used as stables, with an upper story of rooms, was that they form a perfect circle, enclosing about an acre of ground, which is laid out in a regularly concave pavement, in the very centre of which a round stone lies in a hollow on the top of a low pillar. When this stone is dropped into the hollow, the thud seems to run right round the circle, forming a perfect echo.

Within the house, in and under the older parts, most dreary dungeons told not only of sorrowful prisoners of war, but also of barbarously harsh treatment of tenants and other neighbours.

And in the more modern centre, curiously constructed secret stairs and hiding-places are abiding memorials of turbulent times, when kinsfolk of the laird himself had to seek sanctuary within the walls of the great house. Thus in my father’s dressing-room, two planks in the floor could be lifted and a flight of narrow stone steps led to a hiding-place ventilated only by a small eye-light opening into one of the courts. In a room occupied by one of my brothers, a door like a cupboard concealed a stone stair leading to one of the little turrets, and to the roof. In another room is an ordinary-looking cupboard, but beneath its lower shelf is a spring-bolt, by touching which the back of the press opens, and reveals a dark recess in which six or eight people can stand.

The most curious of all these hiding-places was entered from the ground floor of the west wing, where a movable stone in the pavement could be lifted and a refugee (or prisoner) descended to a long, narrow cell in the thickness of the foundation wall. This led into a large space wherein fifty or sixty people could hide.

But the real horror centred round the gruesome dungeons, especially one called the “Water Dungeon,” in which, so recently as 1880, and perhaps later, water has risen to the depth of a couple of feet, but which in the undrained days must often have filled to the level of the side-planks on which alone poor prisoners could rest. I remember the heavy iron gate of one dungeon, and great locks, the key of one was ten inches long. There was also a ponderous rusty iron bar with two heavy shackles attached for legs of prisoners, and smaller ones for their wrists and neck. There were also a few old man-traps.

[Illustration:

THE ROUND SQUARE, GORDONSTOUN. ]

When my grandfather succeeded to these estates everything was in a most dilapidated condition, all movables (except the mass of old papers in the charter-room) having been removed. So my elder brothers and sisters remembered how when they came to this glorious playground, prior to 1830, the family lived in one of the side wings, for the whole centre was uninhabitable: all the joists and rafters were bare, there were no ceilings nor any plaster on the walls, no glass in any windows, so it was the nesting-home of innumerable jackdaws and pigeons. Their sport was to enter one of the great rooms very gently, that they might startle the birds and see them fly out by the hundred.

I am afraid to say how many cart-loads of birds’-nests and refuse were removed from those rooms when, in 1830, my father turned in a regiment of workmen to make the house habitable. The upper story of fine rooms over the great drawing-room had apparently never been floored, the great space under the side roofs was unsafe, so half-a-dozen carpenters were at work here for two years, besides glaziers, plasterers, plumbers, painters, etc., ere the family could move into the central rooms. The large, very handsome doors can scarcely have been of local manufacture; they were probably imported from Italy, as were the many beautiful cabinets and other furniture, which so quickly transformed the long-neglected house into a home—a home which has ever since been accumulating treasures from all ends of the earth, trophies of the chase, savage ornaments, pictures, etc.

By far the most remarkable picture in the great drawing-room is a very large one by Gavin Hamilton of “Andromache bewailing the death of Hector,” while Helen of Troy stands at the foot of the bier in pitying sympathy. The beautiful Duchess of Hamilton (afterwards Duchess of Argyll, _née_ Elizabeth Gunning) stood for Helen; and strange to say, that picture came into the market and was sold at Christie’s Auction Rooms, where my grandfather, Sir Alexander, bought it, allowing it to remain in London for a while on exhibition, and then bringing it to Forres House, where it remained till Gordonstoun was renovated. He little dreamt that in securing the portrait of the stately “Helen” he was buying a family picture which would prove of such interest to all of us, her descendants.

Even the regiment of workmen could not rout all invaders. Successive swarms of bees had established themselves so securely in the high pitched roof of the wings that it was impossible to dislodge them without having recourse to smoke which was deemed unsafe, so the bees continued in possession. They were, however, dislodged in the recent extensive internal alterations, which included turning the waste space within the high roofs into a series of excellent sleeping-rooms.

Heretofore that space was one of our favourite playgrounds. Stowed away in a dark corner of one of these ghostly, gloomy roof-rooms (I cannot call them attics, seeing they each ran round three sides of a court), there lay an old coffin, which to our childish imagination was invested with supernatural awe, and was supposed to be associated with some dark tale of mystery. It was, however, only a shell, a piece of household furniture, ever ready to receive any inmate, during the interval between death and the manufacture of a permanent coffin. Apparently every great house was also provided with a pall for use at its funerals, as the public undertaker was only prepared to conduct the simple burial of the townsfolk.

This accounts for a letter from a bereaved widow to Sir Ludovick Gordon, dated January 1663, announcing that it has pleased the Lord to remove her husband, the Laird of Newtoune, “from this lyffe, to that eternall.” Therefore, writes the lady, “I do humbely entreat your honour for the leine of your mort-clothe; for it is mor to his credit to have it, nor the comone mort-clothe of Elgine, seing we expek sinderie of his friends to be heire.”

[Illustration:

_Emery Walker, ph. sc._

_Andromache bewailing the death of Hector (the beautiful Duchess of Hamilton as Helen of Troy)_

_Painted by Gavin Hamilton_ ]

This curious old letter is one of a multitude preserved in the charter-room, which is by no means the least interesting corner of the house. It is a small chamber between thick stone walls. We enter by a securely fastened door, opening off a narrow spiral stone stairway. Here were piled thousands of musty, mouldy old manuscripts, the accumulation of many generations, dating back to the reign of King David II.

The dusty shelves on which they lay heaped in the days of our childhood fairly fell to pieces from sheer old age, and have been replaced by substantial drawers of modern manufacture, wherein are stowed bundles without number; while on a hanging shelf overhead are ranged a multitude of old leathern bags, cunningly tied up with strips of leather, but all containing manuscripts, the work of many busy hands, and the expression of many an anxious thought, by eager, earnest men and women, whose very names have long since been wholly forgotten. Here are public records, letters concerning the movements of “the rebels,” and the claims of the Church; letters on the encroachments of rivers, the draining of marshes, the purchase of lands.

Here are political papers and family documents, cuttings from old newspapers, account-books, long, intricate judicial cases, memoranda of all sorts, half-written essays, carefully preserved letters, and even some scraps of poetry, couplets which, albeit deemed heavy by us their impatient descendants, were doubtless much esteemed by our ancestors.

Here are business letters from canny, close-fisted lairds, and here are feminine notes which prove the Gordon ladies to have been abundantly endowed with practical common-sense, and by no means lacking in “an eye to the main chance.” There are wills and marriage-contracts, notably the marriage-contract in French between Sir Robert Gordon and Louyse Gordon, dated 22nd February 1613. There are letters from Charles I. and II. There are permits to go and work plantations in New Jersey, and indentures of Sir Ludovick Gordon’s son, binding himself apprentice to Mr. Blaikwood, Edinburgh, Silk Mercer.

The fairly white paper on which they were inscribed has long since turned yellow and brown from sheer old age; the ink has faded and is well-nigh illegible, indeed in most cases only a long-practised eye, aided by powerful glasses, can decipher the crabbed, contracted old characters, with their strange and ever-varied spelling. In one charter the name of Comyn is spelt five different ways. Some are written on parchment, some in black letter.

To reduce such a mass of confusion to any sort of order long appeared an utterly hopeless undertaking, but much was done by the widow of my brother, Sir Alexander, and our cousin, Edward Dunbar-Dunbar of Sea Park, whose researches were rewarded by many a curious glimpse into the manners and customs of our forbears.[23]

A few specimens of these papers may prove interesting. For instance, now that Lord Lovat’s Scouts have done such good work in the Transvaal, and purpose being “Ready, Aye Ready” in time to come, it is curious to read a letter from the celebrated Simon, Lord Lovat, to his kinsman, Captain George Cumming, son of the Laird of Altyre, who had written to ask his assistance in raising recruits for the Hanoverian army. Lord Lovat’s loyalty was suspected, and he had been deprived of the command of his own company of Clan Fraser, his men being drafted into other regiments. But the old peer had not openly declared for the Jacobites, so he would have helped his cousin had it been in his power.

He writes:—

“BEAUFORT, _1st March 1745_.

“MY DEAR CUSIN,—I received with vast pleasure the honor of your very kind, polite, and oblidgeing well-writt letter, for which I give you my most sincere, humble thanks.... I am extreamly sorry and troubled that it is not in my power to serve you as I could wish ... but if it was to save my life, I could not pitch this day upon half a dozen, among all my common people, of the size that you desire, for there is no country in Scotland so drained of men of size as mine is.”

He then alludes to his having been so unjustly deprived of his command, and of having been compelled to give up

“my Company of a hundred men of my own, who had only engaged with me, for the love they had to me as their Chief. And besides those that I was oblidged to give in to make up my Lord Crawford’s regiment, now Semple’s, there were fifty more Frasers in the other few Companys, so that in Semple’s regiment, when they went out of Scotland, they had two hundred Frasers in it, and out of the estate of Lovat and all of them pretty handsome fellows about the size that you want, and fifty of them above it, so that there is no such thing to be now seen as a man of the size that you desire, among my common people, except it be a few old married men.”

Lord Lovat, however, promises to do all in his power by bidding all his bailies and chamberlains speak to all the gentlemen’s children of the size required—

“And let them know the handsome offers you make; and it will oblidge me mightily if they engage with you; and I will give them ane obligation under my hand, to give them any tack of land that they are capable of, when they come home with their discharge.”

Considering that the writer was seventy-eight years of age, his postscript is worthy of record:—

“I beleive you will not be ill pleased to know that I have kept my health better since the beginning of Jully last, than I have done these thirty years past, and notwithstanding of this extraordinary severe storm, that I do raly beleive that the like of it was never seen in this country. _I take the cold bath every day, and since I cannot go abroad, use the exercise of dancing every day with my daughter and others_ that are here with me, and _I can dance as cleverly as I have done these ten years past_.”

Two years passed by, and the active old dancer was led to execution on Tower Hill.

Here is a royal letter, “From our Court at Falkland, 10th July 1633.” It is from King Charles to James, Duke of Lennox, desiring that as Great Chamberlain of Scotland, he will “visit, or cause visit, our Wardrobe here, and make the master therof give an accompt and inventarie” thereof.

The duke writes to his loving cousin, Sir Robert Gordon, “Vice-Chamberlain of His Majestie’s Household in the Kingdom of Scotland,” to depute him to fulfil this behest. He writes from Holyrood Palace, which he calls the “Court at the Halyrudhouse.” He informs Sir Robert that—

“owing to his necessary attendance on His Majestie’s person and His other more weighty affairs, he has not leisure for this work and accordingly deputes him as Vice-Chamberlain to visitt the said Wardrobe, and make a full and perfect Inventory of the same, including all such bedding and hangings and the like, as shall be found therein requiring the Master of the Wardrobe to sett his hand ther-untill.”

In those days there were no British colonies as the natural destination of the younger sons of great houses; it was therefore nowise remarkable that such should enter trade as the most lucrative of professions. Accordingly we here find the indentures of “George Gordoun, sone laufull to Sir Lodovick Gordoun, Knight Barronett, as prentice to Mr. Robert Blaikwood, merchand burgess of Edinburgh, whose shop is situated at the east end of the Luckenbooths, whereby George Gordoun becomes bound prenteise and servand to Mr. Blaikwood, to his airt and trade of merchandizeing, and promises to serve his master leallie and truelie, night and day, holyday and workday, in all things godlie and honest, and shall not know nor heire of his master’s skaith, but shall reveal the same to him and remedy it to his power.”

He promises never to absent himself from his master’s service without special license, but should he do so, he vows to serve him “two dayes for ilk daye’s absense efter the expyreing of thir indentors.”

Very quaint indeed are the exceedingly plain terms in which allusion is made to matters of private moral life, such as do not usually enter into business contracts; in relation to these, the young man undertakes, that if it should happen him (as God forbid) to “comitt [any breach of the seventh commandment] during the course of these ffyve yeirs,” he binds himself to serve his master for three years extra, “in the same estate as if he were bound prentise, Sir Ludovick Gordon being bound suertie for him!”

Mr. Blaikwood on his part binds himself faithfully, “to instruct his prenteise in all the poynts, pratiques, and ingynes of his trade of merchandizeing, as well _without_ as _within_ the country, and to take him once to London and once to Holland in the course of the ffyve years.”

George Gordon must have got through his term of apprenticeship satisfactorily, for we find a statement to that effect, duly signed by Mr. Blaikwood, who next undertook the care of a younger brother, Charles Gordon, who, however, could not brook the restraint of the dull little shop in the Luckenbooths, with “bed and board” provided by the worthy merchant, who found he could make nothing of the wild youth, and so cancelled his indentures, whereupon he was bound prentice to a Writer to the Signet, to learn the routine of a lawyer’s office, in the hope that he might follow in the footsteps of his successful elder brother, Sir John.

The elder brother seems to have been a promising and enterprising youth, for we very soon find him starting with his Quaker cousin, Barclay of Ury, to assist in the colonisation of New Jersey, “a tract of land in America,” which had recently been purchased by William Pen of Worminghurst, in the county of Sussex, and eleven partners. Glowing accounts of the country had been received, but settlers were required to till the ground, so in order to supply these, application was made to Government for a grant of convicts. We accordingly find a document headed, “_Ane list of the hundred prisoners_, in the Castle of Dunnottar and under the Parliament House to be delyvered to Scott of Pitlochry, _in order to their transportation to East Jersey_.”

While Sir Ludovick’s sons were serving their prenticeship at the little shop in the Luckenbooths (so strange a contrast to the immense rooms of their father’s great country house), their cousin Viscount Tarbat, son of the Earl of Sutherland, went into partnership with Andrew Powrie, druggist, John Dehen, glass-maker, and others, and took a lease of the new Glasshouse in North Leith, where for many years they carried on business as bottle-makers. Lord Tarbat duly remitted his bottle-making accounts to Sir Ludovick, his trustee, so we know exactly what it cost to make the bottles, and at what profit they were sold.

As a not very aristocratic resource for turning an honest penny, we may next notice an advertisement in the Edinburgh papers for October 1760, wherein Lady Murray offers for sale a quack “insect destroying” mixture, “for effectually destroying that abominable vermin called the Bugs,” which, if rightly applied, will undoubtedly cleanse this country of that noxious vermin, with the whole sediment of them. To be had by applying to Lady Murray, at her calendar-house in Weir’s Close in the Canongate, who will show the performance of the same. This secret and infallible mixture was purchased from a Jesuit for a considerable sum of money, by a gentleman of distinction when on his travels in foreign parts. It is offered for sale at seven shillings each Scotch pint. No less quantity than a mutchkin is to be sold.

Very quaint are some of the revelations of family details. Here are letters from Sir Ludovick’s third son John Gordon, who afterwards received knighthood as an eminent lawyer, but who on arriving in London, after a course of study at Utrecht, has to appeal to his father for money to buy a “soot of cloaths to carrie me home”—and signs himself, “Your sone and humble servant.”

Judging from the above, how exceedingly limited was the supply of ready money at this young man’s disposal, it is curious to find a letter from his stepmother to the young student, requesting him, ere he leaves Utrecht, to buy her a necklace of fine pearls. She adds, “Let them not be dear.” She was a widow with considerable private fortune; but, like many persons who inflict troublesome commissions on their friends, she omitted to supply ready money, but fears she must rest his debtor for a while. She addresses him simply as “Sir,” but signs herself, “Your affectionate Mother, Jean Stewart.”

“_P.S._—If there be anie lett book set out by our Deivyns, send me a good one.”

This postscript, requesting the latest work on divinity, is a happy corrective of the hankering after the frivolities of dress. It will be observed that the lady (who was a daughter of Sir John Stewart of Ladywell) continues to sign her maiden name, which would, according to old Scots custom, be that eventually recorded on her tombstone.

Notwithstanding Dame Jean’s appreciation of theological books, the ecclesiastical powers were by no means satisfied with her husband’s laxity in church attendance. Consequently a formal remonstrance is addressed to “the Right Worshipfull Sir Ludovick Gordoune off Gordonstone,” stating that “the Synod att Elgin desire to take speciall notice of his contempt of publick worship and of his withdrawing himself from ordinances, which hath given a great scandal to the wholl land.” He is, therefore, summoned to appear at the next presbyterial meeting, and, if possible, vindicate himself.

The culprit having ignored the first summons, a second was sent to him, to which he seems to have replied with a lack of befitting reverence, for the Synod next despatched their officer to deliver to him a formal summons to appear at Inverness and there answer for his subscribing of “ane scandalous and sinfull protestatione against the Assemblie of Murray.”

As he still failed to appear, the matter was referred by the irate ecclesiastics to the Parliament assembled at Edinburgh, who inflicted on the irreligious laird a fine of 3600 pounds Scots, which was paid in the course of six months; but whether the culprit then amended his ways does not appear.

Such fines would appear to have been a fruitful source of revenue, His Majesty’s cash-keeper being ever on the alert to issue “letters of horning” against all “withdrawers from public ordinances of religion,” and very difficult it often was to shake off the persecution of these meddlesome harpies.

Here is “the Petition of Dame Elizabeth Chrightan, Lady Douadger of Frazer, unto the Right Honourable the Lords of His Majestie’s Privie Counsell” protesting against the fine of £1833, 13s. 4d. Scots, decreed against her on this pretext, before the Sheriff of Aberdeen. The old lady represents that she was bred from her infancy under loyal and regular parents, that she herself has never been at any Conventicle, that her jointure house of Cairnbulg is three miles from any church, and that as she has neither manservants nor horses, and is herself an aged, “seiklie” person, she has not been able frequently to attend.

“But fearing that offence might be taken, she long ago took ane lodging in the toune of Frazerburgh that she might the more conveniently wait upon the public ordinances; where, ever since, she has been ane frequent and constant hearer, and in particular, upon yesterday[24] last, did take the Sacrament, as a testificat under the Bishop of Aberdeen’s hand, heirwith produced, doeth testify. She therefore craves that their Lordships will annul the decree, founded upon groundless mistakes.”

Methinks those “good old times” cannot have been an era of unmixed joy even to the great folk, but still less to the poor, judging from the records of even this one old house.

Evidently no one was too great to be really independent of ecclesiastical censure or praise, for we find the first Sir Robert carefully preserving a testimonial from the presbytery of Elgin, bearing date A.D. 1646, setting forth that “since his residence among us, Sir Robert Gordon hath bein a main advancer off the true religion, and a great forderer and helpe in what concerned this present reformation; and is weill affected to the church and peace of this country, and hath yeelded full and constant obedience to all publick ordinances off the Church.”

Let us glance at the history of the successive owners of Gordonstoun as revealed by these voluminous documents.

The first Sir Robert Gordon was born A.D. 1580. He was the fourth son of Alexander, Earl of Sutherland, by Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly. She had been previously married to James, Earl of Bothwell, and was universally allowed to have all her life been a most virtuous and excellent woman; consequently when, at the early age of twenty, she was put away by Bothwell to make way for his marriage with Queen Mary, she was wooed and won by the Earl of Sutherland, by whom she had five sons and two daughters.

Bothwell’s ground for claiming to have his marriage with Lady Jane annulled was that, being within the prohibited degrees of relationship, he had never obtained a dispensation to sanction his marriage. Strange to say, Lady Jane appears to have allowed this statement to pass unchallenged, although the dispensation was actually in her own possession, and has been found amongst the Sutherland archives at Dunrobin.

She proved a careful mother, and trained her children in all goodness, though they lost their father at a very early age. Her son Robert proved to be “a youth of excellent parts” and a most accomplished scholar. He was educated at the University of St. Andrews, and was then sent to travel in France, whence he returned to London, to the Court of King James VI., with whom, “by reason of his singular endowments and remarkable affability,” he became a mighty favourite, and was appointed one of the Gentlemen of the Bed Chamber, A.D. 1606, and was endowed with a pension of two hundred pounds for life.

He likewise found favour with Charles I., who appointed him a member of the Privy Council and Vice-Chamberlain; and also made him premier knight baronet of the newly created order of Nova Scotia, an honour specially devised as a reward to be conferred on gentlemen of good birth who should assist in establishing a colony in that country.

In 1613, Sir Robert married Louyse, daughter of John Gordon, Dean of Salisbury and Lord of Glenluce, by whom he had a large family. The dean’s father combined the dignities of Bishop of Galloway and Archbishop of Athens. Louyse was brought up with Queen Henrietta Maria.

At the age of sixty-three, Sir Robert deemed himself entitled to devote his remaining years to the care of his own estates and his duty as tutor at law to his nephew John, Earl of Sutherland; so being heartily wearied and highly dissatisfied with the proceedings of those troublesome times, he returned to his own country, and spent the remainder of his days “in remarkable acts of benevolence.”

Travelling from London to the north of Scotland was in those days no easy matter. So great was the expense and trouble of a journey by land, especially for “a family man,” that it was deemed better to travel by sea. Being deeply attached to his widowed mother-in-law, Geneweiwe Petaw (whose skilful needlework he specially bequeathed to his “heyres male”), “he persuaded her, though far stricken in age, to accompanie him with his wyf and familie, took shipp at Gravesend 21st April and landed safely at Cowsoe the 31st of May.”

Thus the journey which we now accomplish in about fifteen hours, then took just forty days!

The old lady ended her days peacefully in her new home in the grey north; and here, at the age of eighty-three, she died and was buried; and the weather-worn stone which bears her name has recently been raised from the threshold of the old church, and placed within its shelter, where her name is also recorded on the monumental list of the principal members of the family there interred.

[Illustration:

_C. F. Gordon Cumming._

A CORNER OF THE OLD ROOF, GORDONSTOUN. ]

Judiciously profiting by the difficulties of some of his neighbours, Sir Robert contrived to build up for himself a very pretty estate. First he purchased the lands of Drainie from the old family of Innes; then, from Lord Huntly, he obtained the lands of Ogstoun and Plewland. Belornie, Ettles, and Salterhill were added one by one, and the estate thus built up was by Crown Charter under the Great Seal dated 20th June 1642, united into a barony, and called the Barony of Gordonstoun.

This was no empty title: it carried with it certain privileges, conferring on the holder rights of jurisdiction within his barony. He had power over life and limb with “the right of pit and gallows.”[25] The old Gallowshill at Altyre still tells of the days when a dempster (_i.e._ hangman) was a necessary appendage to each great family, and when offenders were hanged for very trivial causes. The pit wherein culprits were drowned seems to have been chiefly reserved for women, as there existed some prejudice against hanging a female thief.

At Gordonstoun the neighbouring Loch of Spynie acted as the pit, and one of the trials recorded is that of Janet Grant, who being taken red-handed in the act of extensive theft, was sentenced to be carried to the said Loch, and there be drowned under water till she be dead. The sentence was duly carried out, and Janet went down “evacuating curses on her persecutors.”

Besides the care of his own property, Sir Robert was, as we have seen, guardian of the young Earl of Sutherland—no sinecure, as it required a strong hand and a clear head to protect the large interests involved from the encroachments of the Mackays, Sinclairs, and other powerful clans, with whom there were constant feuds; and we must remember that Dunrobin was by no means so easy of access in those days as it is now.

Notwithstanding these various causes of anxiety, Sir Robert found some leisure for peaceful pursuits, notably for the compilation of a very curious _Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland_, a volume which contains many remarkable details of the times, and of the general condition of the country. It was published about a hundred and fifty years after his death, and is now very rare.

He commenced the formation of a very valuable library, which was largely increased by his grandson, the so-called Wizard, who collected all possible books on necromancy, demonology, alchemy, and other subjects.

Sir Robert died in 1656, and was succeeded by his son Sir Ludovick, who enlarged the estate by the purchase of lands in the parish of Duffus, and of the barony of Dallas from Robert Comyn of Altyre. His daughter Lucy, however, married the said Robert Comyn in 1666; and in virtue of this alliance, the lands, not only of Dallas, but the whole estate of Gordonstoun, were left to her descendants, after a lapse of a hundred and thirty years, by the last lineal baronet of the old race.

The Gordon methods of working for their own advantage did not find favour with their neighbours, and a popular rhyme classed them with the farmer’s worst enemies, namely the large beautiful yellow daisy which choked the corn, and the hooded crows which stole eggs and young chicks:—

“The gowd, the Gordon, and the hoodie craw Are the three worst ills that Moray ere saw.”

But whatever farmers thought, the “gowd” was a joy to us. I remember when all the fields near Gordonstoun were a feast of colour by reason of the abundance of scarlet poppies, golden gowans (_i.e._ daisies), blue cornflowers, lilac corn-cockles, purple and yellow vetch, and many another dainty flower. But, alas! for the destruction of natural beauty all over the world before the improvements of cultivation. As in tropical lands, miles of glorious forests with their fairy-like wealth of tree-ferns and blossoming creepers must utterly perish to make way for the planter with his prim little tea or coffee bushes, so in our own little isle must all the lovely wild flowers which rank as weeds be exterminated ere the farmer is satisfied with his clean land. So now in those same fields you may seek till you are weary ere you can gather one handful of wild blossoms.

In the same way in many moorland districts where sheep abound, the glory of purple heather is a memory of the past in consequence of their close grazing—in fact it is only within the belt protected by fences on either side of the railway that purple bell heather and the delicate “blue bell of Scotland” flourish undisturbed, so that the railway companies have become almost the sole preservers of our native flowers.

Sir Ludovick died in 1688, and his son Sir Robert reigned in his stead. This is the famous so-called Wizard, a name and character which in those days were readily bestowed on any man of scientific tastes. Sir Robert was undoubtedly a learned man. He had travelled much in foreign lands, and is believed to have studied at one of the Italian colleges where the occult sciences were much cultivated, so he was of course credited with dabbling in astrology and necromancy.

That he was skilled in chemistry and mechanics is certain, and much of his time was devoted to the perfecting of a wonderful nautical pump, which was to prove a priceless boon to the navy. Among the papers in the old charter-room are sundry letters from the celebrated Mr. Samuel Pepys on the subject of this pump. The Lords of the Admiralty do not, however, appear to have recognised its merits, for no encouragement was ever given to the inventor, whose descendant notes in 1740, that “this machine for raising water on board ships still remains a secret with the family.”

Sir Robert seems to have kept up a scientific correspondence with various philosophers of the day, and probably rather encouraged the popular belief in his power as a magician, which ensured him an immunity from idle visitors. Doubtless the red glare from the furnace in his laboratory was often seen at night by passing peasants, who interpreted it in their own fashion, and so came to look on the Laird of Gordonstoun and his mysterious doings with the awe due to the supernatural.

Of a studious man who busied himself with his books during the sunny hours, strange reports might be raised, and pass uncontradicted, so it was whispered that Sir Robert eschewed the sunlight to conceal the fact that in its brightest glare he walked alone, no faithful shadow bore him company. For he was believed to have studied the black art in a school where the devil himself was master, claiming for his fee that now and again one of the students should become his own for ever.

It was said that Sir Robert, like the rest, had signed this awful compact, and when lots were cast to decide who must be the victim of the year, the lot fell on him. But the canny young Scot proved a match for Satan, for as he stood ready to secure the last student who passed out of the hall as his lawful prize, Sir Robert pointed to his shadow on the wall and bade him take that fellow. Thus was the devil cheated of his dues. And so Sir Robert was thenceforth a shadowless man; and as he rode forth in the sunlight, his horse, his hat, whip, even his spurs, cast clear shadows, but he himself had none!

The peasants firmly believed that Sir Robert’s magic art enabled him to defy all natural laws. They told how one frosty morning he had occasion to drive to some place along the coast, but being too impatient to make the usual wide circuit round the shores of the Loch of Spynie (which in his time was a broad sheet of water, extending very nearly to Gordonstoun), he determined to drive right across the loch, which was covered only with a thin film of ice, the growth of one night. Bidding his servant look straight before him and on no account turn his head, Sir Robert urged his four fiery steeds, and drove lightly over the ice, which bore him safely till, just as he reached the further shore—a distance of four miles—the servant, inquisitive as Lot’s wife, looked back, and beheld a great black raven perched on the back of the carriage. As he turned, the foul fiend—for it was himself in the likeness of the bird—flew off with heavy wing, and immediately the hind wheels of the carriage sank, and it needed all the force of the good team to extricate it.

Having thus proven his human servant unreliable, Sir Robert sought means to secure a better one; and the people told with bated breath how, after keeping the fires in his stone vault burning day and night for seven years, he had succeeded in creating a salamander—a fire-imp—which, dwelling in the furnace, was thenceforth ever ready to do his unrighteous work.

Finally, a terrible story was told of how on two successive nights Sir Robert and his boon companion, the parson of Duffus, were hunted by the fiend, mounted on a jet-black horse, and attended by hell dogs, and both were captured, their dead bodies being left behind.

If it seems strange that such tales could have found ready credence, we must remember that even the civil and ecclesiastical teachers had the firmest belief in witchcraft. Just a hundred years after the time of “Ill Sir Robert,” as the Wizard was generally called, the Rev. Lachlan Shaw, in writing his history of Moray, A.D. 1775, affirms that _he has often been present_ when, four times in the year, all persons above the age of twelve years were solemnly sworn that they would practise no witchcraft, charms or spells; and we know what a multitude of poor old women were done to death under such accusations. In Scotland alone the number is estimated at fully four thousand, while in England three thousand were thus put to death during the sitting of the Long Parliament, and as many more soon afterwards. In Germany and Switzerland the proportion of victims was even larger.

So we need not wonder that the credulous folk believed the neighbourhood of Gordonstoun to be haunted by evil spirits, summoned by the laird, so that for many a long year it was deemed dangerous to pass the house after dark. Even the Memorial Chapel, which four years after his death was erected by his widow, Dame Elizabeth Dundas, above his grave, on the site of the ancient kirk of Ogston, was long shunned as “uncanny,” albeit consecrated in the name of St. Michael and all good angels, to whom also was dedicated St. Michael’s Well, near the house. There were also two good wells within the house, a very needful matter in the olden troublous times.

Notwithstanding his scientific pursuits, Sir Robert proved himself a very good man of business in the management of his estates, to which he made considerable additions. Moreover, his own two marriages and those of his children all tended to strengthen the family position in the north.

By the marriage of his daughter Lucy with David Scott of Scotstarvet, the Dukes of Portland, the Earls of Moray, and the late Viscount Canning all claim descent from this famous “Wizard of Gordonstoun,” who seems to have really been one of the most polished and agreeable men of his day.

The next baronet—also Sir Robert—was a mere child at the time of his father’s death. He held the estates for seventy-one years, _i.e._ till 1772, a long reign marked only by cruelty and oppression. He was a gloomy and austere man, and to judge from his portrait in Innes House, a man of most unprepossessing appearance. It is said that the artist entreated his unattractive sitter to look as cheerful as possible; so it is commonly said, “If this was his pleasantest expression, what must have been his frown?”

And yet the frown must have been his familiar expression, for his life’s history is one long story of evil. A very short experience of military life (when in his early youth he joined Lord Mar in the rebellion of 1715) sufficed to sicken him of the war, and he thenceforward lived almost entirely in his sombre, old, half-renovated house, most part of which was disused to avoid the payment of a heavy window-tax.

This much-detested laird seems to have been wholly occupied in lawsuits with his neighbours, and correspondence with lawyers, varied with tyrannous oppression of his unfortunate tenants and a good deal of smuggling. The latter was considerably facilitated by his receiving a large portion of his rents in the form of grain and other farm produce, which was shipped from Covesea or Burghead in large boats, and thence transported to Inverness, the purchasers bringing in exchange wines, spirits, clothing, groceries, and all other things needful.

But it was rumoured that oftentimes vessels not recognised by the Government contrived to deposit cargoes in the caves of Covesea, whence they were transported to Gordonstoun by a long, subterraneous tunnel. Whether the latter statement be fact or fiction, I cannot say. If such a tunnel did exist (nearly two miles in length) it has now fallen in, and even when, more than half a century back, my eldest brothers attempted to explore it with torches, by following the traditional entrance from the cave known as “Sir Robert’s Stables,” they were only able to go a very short distance. The “Stables,” however, was undoubtedly used, as a place of concealment, where horses were kept in safety during any time of special alarm, when royalists or rebels were likely to come and seize them.

The long list of Sir Robert’s interminable and vexatious litigations with his neighbours was not confined to the little lairds (some of whom he well-nigh ruined), but included such powerful names as the Duke of Gordon, William, Lord Braco, Dunbar of Duffus, and above all, Lady Elizabeth Sutherland, whose lands of Dunrobin, together with the earldom, were claimed by Sir Robert on the death of her father. A very lengthy and expensive suit, which was carried to the House of Lords, and in which all the great legal men of the day took an active part and keen interest, was at length decided in favour of the lady, and it was determined that the Sutherland peerage could go in the female line. After this Sir Robert, soured and impoverished, made himself more obnoxious than ever to all around him.

When this strange litigious mortal could find no other means of harassing his neighbours, he took advantage of a strong wind from the east, and proceeded to plough up a tract of worthless soil, or rather sand, in order that it might be blown all over the fields of Dunbar of Newtown, who, however, was able to repay the delicate attention with interest by ploughing a similar tract in a westerly gale. Pleasant, loving neighbours these!

This genial landlord turned his house into a regular prison, into whose horrid dungeons men and women were cast for the most trivial offences, and sometimes for no offence at all. To his wife, Dame Agnes, daughter of Sir William Maxwell of Calderwood, and the mother of his five children (a daughter and four sons) he was by no means a faithful spouse; and a skeleton, with long, fair, silken tresses, which was found by my grandfather in one of the lowest dungeons, is said to have been that of the wife of one of his poorer neighbours, who would not respond to his attentions. Another equally resolute lady was confined for many days in the horrible water-dungeon, so called because of its sympathy with the overflow from the neighbouring marches.

Thanks to a memorial presented to the Court of Session in 1740 by the friends of Alexander Leslie, tenant of the farm of Windy-hills of Gordonstoun, we have an authentic record of a few of the dark stories of cruel oppression connected with this gruesome dungeon.

As Laird of the barony of Gordonstoun, Sir Robert was empowered to hold courts for the trial and punishment of offenders within his barony; and this power he used most tyrannically and unscrupulously, rarely referring any case to the decision of a regular judge, but seizing whosoever displeased him, and causing them to be thrown into pits and vaults, as is shown in this memorial, which sets forth how, by Sir Robert Gordon’s constant acts and conduct in the shire of Moray, especially among his own tenants, he is a known oppressor, and “it is not possible to enumerate the whole instances of slavery he puts poor tenants to.” Seizure of horses and fines are recorded; as, for instance, when William Macgowan, sometime Sir Robert’s tenant in Dallas, was fined in forty pounds Scots for not spreading three heaps of burnt ground. We must, however, recollect that the pound Scots was only equivalent to about eightpence of our present coinage.

Those who imagine that in the good old times there was no law against trespassers may be interested by a remarkable notice of Sir Robert’s physical strength, preserved in a note from the Rev. Alexander Murray, who tells of much sickness among his parishioners, so that “severats are daily dieing, and we sometimes bury at the rate of three a-day. Sir Robert, I am told, was like to have gone to the Elysian fields, but _has so far recovered as to be able to thrash John Gow’s wife, for travelling on his forbidden ground_.”

But far more serious are the records of imprisonment. Thus, for some trifling offence was Alexander Lesslie, tenant of Windy-hills, dragged a prisoner to Gordonstoun and put in a prison, “which, in place of being a civil prison” (_i.e._ a debtors’ prison), “is a most nasty dark vault with an iron grate, having neither door, window, nor chimney, and where he lies in a cold and most miserable condition, and is in much danger of his life; for if it were in the winter time, he behoved to have a foot or two of stones _for keeping him from the water, because the vault is under ground about two feet_.”

Numerous other cases are cited as “facts which can all be proven and made such use of as the lawyer thinks fit.”

“Janet Grant, servant to James Forsyth in Crosshill, was, without any reason, put into the pit of Gordonstoun, and died soon after being released.”

“James Marshall, James Robertson, and William Robertson, three skippers in Covesea, a fisher-town of Sir Robert’s, were arrested and kept in the stocks a whole night, without any just cause assigned, and had not the privilege of a house, but were confined in the open air, in a back close, in a wild and stormy night, and the said James Marshall was thereafter put another time in prison, _in a most nasty pit far below ground_, where he lay several days, and _a short time thereafter died_, and upon his deathbed declared the imprisonment to be the reason of his death, which happened about a fortnight thereafter: and James Marshall, his son, was also imprisoned without any cause, and died also, some time thereafter.”

Tradition affirms that these luckless fishers had neglected to secure some of the laird’s boats which had got adrift from their moorings—hence his wrath. But tyrannous oppression would appear to have reached its widest possibilities when we learn that a poor old woman, Margaret Collie, spouse to Alexander Grant in Muir of Drainie, was cast into Sir Robert’s noxious dungeon solely for taking the head of a ling out of the midden or dunghill, believing that it was “good for curing the gout.”

[Illustration:

_C. F. Gordon Cumming._

OLD DOVE-COT AT GORDONSTOUN. ]

This, by the way, is not our sole glimpse of the “folk-medicine” of this period. Among the multitudinous “varieties” of old papers, we find a prescription by the learned Dr. Clark of Edinburgh, for Sir Robert Gordon’s son, who was suffering from an obstinate cough, suggestive of the east winds of the fair city. May 20th 1739.—“Give him twice a day the juice of twenty slettars, squeezed through a muslin rag, in whey: to be continued while he has any remains of the cough.” The _sletters_ which were to work this cure are those little, grey, armour-plated wood-lice which are found under old stones, and which, when alarmed, roll themselves up into hard balls.

Speaking of odd superstitions, there is one which somehow connected pigeons with death. It was said that a person lying on a bed of pigeon’s feathers could not die, and it was customary to apply living pigeons to the feet of a person _in extremis_. Thus Samuel Pepys speaks of a man whose “breath rattled in his throat, and they did lay pigeons at his feet, and all despair of him.” He also notes how the queen of Charles II. was so ill as to have pigeons put to her feet, and extreme unction administered. From this the birds would appear to have been applied as a last resource to prevent (or was it to facilitate?) death.

On the other hand, it was supposed that if a man wished to get rid of his wife he had only to build a pigeon-house. Sir Robert, who hated his wife, seems to have tried this remedy, for he built no less than four large dove-cots—circular towers of about thirty feet in height by sixty-three in diameter at the base, the interior being curiously fitted with hundreds of little compartments for nests. One of these still stands close to the house, and another at a very short distance. One of the four seems to have been built for the annoyance of his neighbours, being on a moorland marsh far from his own cultivated lands, but close to theirs, and especially to those of Brodie of Brodie, the Lord Lyon King of Arms. Hence we find a lawyer’s letter of remonstrance, showing that “Sir Robert’s doves in that dovecoat will be fedd by the Lyon’s tennant’s corns, especially the pease of Kinnedar.... The building of this fourth dovecoat is an iniquous burden levelled at the Lyon.”

How the aggrieved neighbours must have rejoiced when the Jacobite soldiers found their way to Gordonstoun and made a raid on the dove-cots! In the spring of 1746 Sir Robert writes: “The Rebells destroyed my pigeons at Gordonstoun by shooting the doves; and in the evening, when it was to be presumed the doves had entered the dovecott, they first stoped the dovecott, that the pigeons could not get out, then broke open the door, and entering, destroyed the doves within.... They also destroyed my dovecott of Bellormy.”

Whatever hope Sir Robert may have entertained of expediting the death of Dame Agnes, he failed signally, though he succeeded in making her life so miserable that she left Gordonstoun and went with two of her sons to live at Pitgaveny, beside the Loch of Spynie. Whereupon her loving spouse devised a very remarkable means to avoid being compelled to make her an allowance for aliment. _As he sat down to every meal he sent a servant to Lady Gordon’s deserted apartments to summon her._ Thus was Lady Gordon “called to her meals”!

When at length he was legally compelled to grant her maintenance, he assigned to her use the produce of certain outlying fields, on the verge of which (or, as the old record says, “on Lady Gordon’s extremities”) he built one of his great dove-cots with intent that the hungry birds should feed at her expense.

This much-aggrieved wife survived not only her loving spouse, but also her four sons, and even Sir Alexander Penrose Cumming of Altyre, who then succeeded to the estates, but died in 1806, SO THAT HER JOINTURE WAS PAID FOR SOME YEARS BY MY FATHER—a circumstance which certainly seems to bring us very near to all these strangely old-world doings.

In her later years she moved to a house at Lossiemouth, where she lived well into the nineteenth century, and was long remembered by the inhabitants as an energetic old lady with a gold-headed cane, living in great alarm of an invasion by the French, against whose approach she fortified herself by an expedient which was then deemed as ingenious as it was novel, namely, to crest her high garden walls with broken glass strongly embedded in lime.

Great was the rejoicing of rich and poor when in 1772 Sir Robert died, having, as aforesaid, actually been in possession of the estate for seventy-one years.

Gladly was the accession of his eldest son hailed, and great were the hopes that he might long be spared to hold his lands in peace and prosperity. For this young Sir Robert was an accomplished and kindly man, who, having escaped from his gloomy home, had spent much of his time in travel, and now gave promise of becoming a most useful county gentleman. Several very interesting and beautifully written diaries remain to prove his keen powers of observation at home and abroad.

But, alas! his career was hardly begun when, within three years, he died, and was succeeded by his brother William, who proved well-nigh as gloomy, retired, eccentric, and litigious as his father. Shutting up the greater part of the house, he lived entirely in one wing, practising strict economy. This measure was partly the result of the heavy tax on windows, which, having been first imposed in 1695, was considerably increased in 1784, in consequence of which many of the gentry resorted to the dismal expedient of building up several of their windows, while others gave up the use of half their houses, abandoning their empty rooms to the bats and owls. Nevertheless the obnoxious tax was still further increased in 1808, nor was it till 1823 that an alleviation was procured, and the final repeal was enacted in 1851. How quickly we forget pain when past! How few of the present generation remember the struggles of the last to secure the free use of light and air!

Sir William lived till 1795, and on his deathbed, knowing that the title must pass away to the family of Gordon of Letterfourie, and determined that they should not possess the estates, he made a will, leaving all his personal property and the valuable old library[26] to his natural son, and all his lands to Sir Alexander Penrose Cumming of Altyre, as the direct descendant of Lucy Gordon, the daughter of Sir Ludovick.

Knowing that such a will was liable to be disputed unless it could be proven that the writer was not only of sound mind but had also been seen “at kirk and mercat”[27] at a subsequent date to that of his signing the document, Sir William actually left his sick-bed to show himself publicly in the parish church, and on his return home wrote a letter to the father of the minister to say how much he had been gratified by the sermon preached that morning by his son. The cunning old gentleman was well assured that his carefully dated letter would be preserved by the proud father, and could be called for should any vexatious questions arise.

So the broad lands passed into the hands of Sir Alexander Cumming, who consequently assumed the name of Gordon. But he was by no means suffered to possess the estates unchallenged, the Duchess of Portland laying claim to them in right of her descent from another Lucy Gordon, of a later generation, the daughter of Sir Robert the Wizard. This Lucy had married David Scott of Scotstarvet, and some eminent lawyers maintained that her right by inheritance was sufficiently strong to upset Sir William’s will. So a tedious lawsuit commenced which wore on through weary years at an enormous expense to all concerned. The chances of the litigants appeared so well balanced that Sir Alexander, dreading the overwhelming costs that would be entailed on him should he lose his suit, strove to make some preparation for such a contingency by wholesale cutting of the fine old timber around the house—ornamental timber, which was so doubly valuable in this monotonously flat country.

[Illustration:

AN ATTIC WINDOW IN THE INNER COURT. ]

From that evil period, it is needless to say, the estate has never recovered, so far as its appearance is concerned, though, happily, enough of the ancestral trees remain to satisfy the rooks, those most faithful adherents to old rook-traditions, whose cawing chorus and eerie flight at sunrise and sunset awaken such multitudinous memories of the past.

##