Clan Gordon - Blood-feud and Rebellion Scotland's Clans

For hundreds of years, Clan Gordon was the dominant force in Scotland's northeast.

Their power and arrogance earned them the title Cocks of the North, but the Crown clipped their wings

in spectacular and gruesome fashion.

On the 28th May 1563, the citizens of Edinburgh lined the streets to see the embalmed corpse

of George Gordon, the dead Earl of Huntly, brought in chains to Parliament.

There, in front of the Lords of the realm, he was tried and found guilty of treason,

despite the fact that he'd been dead for nine months.

'In this series, I'm going on a personal journey

'to explore the great clan names of Scottish history,

'and there can be few that resonate with more greatness than Gordon, the Cocks of the North.'

'For centuries, the name Gordon has been associated with Scotland's northeast,

'so it's a surprise to learn that the clan's route to greatness began here, in the Borders.'

I've come to the old border county of Berwickshire,

where the rich agricultural lands around here

are still known as Gordon and Huntly.

Now, holding the titles to these lands gave the Gordons the name

we know them by today, and this is the site of their first castle.

700 years ago, long before Greenknowe Tower was built, a medieval castle stood here.

This was the home of the Gordon family, when they offered

their services to Robert the Bruce during the Wars of Independence.

As a reward for their loyalty, the Gordons received the lands of Strathbogie in the northeast.

The family took their border names with them and the Strathbogie lands

became Huntly lands, ruled over by a new dynasty, the Earls of Gordon.

The Gordons thrived in their new home and by the 16th century, they had no serious rivals in the north.

This is Huntly Castle, a dramatic display of Gordon power.

'To find out how this palatial building reflects the status

'of the Gordon Clan, I've come to meet castle expert, Chris Tabraham.'

Now, Chris, this is a truly magnificent building.

There's nothing else really like this in Scotland, is there?

It must say a lot about the Gordon Earls.

You're looking at the best front door anywhere in Britain,

not just Scotland,

and it does, it proclaims the wealth, the power and the standing

of the person who built it.

If you look at it from the top of the door lintel, in a rising order of importance, you have

the Earl and his good lady, above that, the King and Queen of Scots,

and then above that, Christ in His majesty.

Now, all this display of power smacks of a certain degree of arrogance, perhaps.

Is that how the Gordon Earls got the sobriquet Cocks of the North?

Yes, that was the 4th Earl, George Gordon,

and he was the man who got the sobriquet Cock of the North

when he had invited Queen Marie, Mary, Queen of Scots' mother, to stay at Huntly Castle with him.

She came, there was a guard of honour welcoming her, over 1,000 men strong.

About three days into the stay, the food and the wine, the game, were still coming in

from the hills and glens around, and she said, "Look, dear Earl, I'm imposing on you too much."

He said, "Don't hear of it, Madam, I've got much more," and he took her down to the cellars

in the palace of Huntly Castle and showed her these cellars, groaning with food and drink.

Um, and it was a little while later that her French Ambassador, who was accompanying her,

whispered into her ear, "Your Majesty, I think you'd be well advised

"to clip the wings of this Cock of the North."

Huntly was described as the Cock of the North

because of his huge territorial powers,

and with that land came kinship alliances and bonds,

so he had a vast army of men at his disposal as well.

He also had huge legal and jurisdictional powers

that were granted to him by the Crown,

and he was enormously wealthy,

and if it came to it, Huntly could effectively destabilise the Crown, should he choose to do so.

Scotland at the time was at a crossroads.

Mary of Guise was the French mother of Mary, Queen of Scots.

As Regent and acting Queen, she was the most powerful woman in the realm.

Leading the forces of the Catholic establishment,

Mary of Guise was locked in a deadly struggle with Protestant reformers over the destiny of Scotland.

But instead of supporting his Catholic Queen,

George Gordon, the most powerful Catholic noble in the north, joined the Protestant rebellion.

A decision that incurred her undying anger.

The fact that the 4th Earl would side with the Protestants

reflects that the Reformation wasn't just a religious movement,

it was also a political movement,

and it was, if you like, an anti-French movement.

Mary of Guise was not just running Scotland, but running it with importation

of major French courtiers, and the nobles felt that their noses were out of joint.

But Mary of Guise died before she was able to revenge herself on Huntly for his betrayal.

Now her Catholic daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, was poised to return,

just as the victorious Protestants swept to power.

This put the succession of the young Mary, Queen of Scots into question.

As a devout Catholic, she was therefore a potential enemy

of the new Protestant state, so how could she become its monarch?

The answer to this thorny religious question was provided by Mary's half-brother,

the talented but scheming Protestant Lord James,

a man who would become an implacable enemy of the Gordons.

Lord James was a very, very able politician, extremely able.

Probably the best politician of his generation in Scotland.

But he was also seeking to make an estate for himself in the northeast,

which would directly confront the Gordons, in particular, Huntly.

'Lord James became the young Queen's closest advisor.

'Before she even arrived in Scotland to take up the throne, he urged caution on matters of religion.'

Lord James wasn't the only relative to offer advice at this crucial time.

George Gordon, the Earl of Huntly, was Mary's second cousin, and he hoped and almost expected that

the young Queen would turn to him for sage advice, and when he heard that Mary was about to leave France

for Scotland, he urged her to sail north, where he promised to meet her with an army of 20,000 Catholics.

Together, he boasted, they would sweep the Protestants into the sea

and restore Scotland to the true faith.

'The young Queen had a decision to make - take up Gordon's offer and overthrow the Protestant order,

'or trust the word of Lord James, who advised a policy of neutrality.'

There were more important, dynastic interests at stake.

The key to Mary's actions at the time of the Scottish Reformation,

or just after it, is the fact that

she essentially has her sights fixed on the throne of England,

the throne of Protestant England, and by giving her support to the Protestant Reformation in Scotland,

she was looking to assure a safe and easy passage, eventually, she hoped, to the throne of England.

'In 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots returned to the country of her birth to take up the throne.

'It was important to her claim on the English throne to demonstrate

'that she could keep powerful Catholic Earls, like Huntly, in check.'

Guided by Lord James, Mary set about completing the job

begun by her mother, clipping the wings of the Cock of the North.

Her first move was to reward Lord James with the Earldom of Moray.

Now, this came like a slap in the face to George Gordon.

He regarded these lands as his by right, and their sudden loss was like a declaration of war.

Mary next piled on the pressure. Leading a royal army into the heart

of Gordon country, she declared George Gordon a rebel and an outlaw.

Huntly is extremely aggrieved that Lord James is put in,

and he takes that out on the Queen, you know,

he sees her as responsible and this is almost the last straw.

"You didn't come to me when you came home in 1561, and now look what you've done,

"you've given your half-brother Moray, and I'm just not having it."

'George Gordon had no option.'

Honour demanded that he defend himself.

Gordon tried to raise as many men as he could, but these were few.

Yet just a couple of years earlier, he'd boasted to the young Mary, Queen of Scots

that he could put together a Catholic army of 20,000.

Now, in defence of his own honour, he could only scrape together 800 members of his clan.

Lord James, now bearing the proud title of Earl of Moray,

personally led the Queen's army in pursuit of the Gordon rebels.

On the 28th of October 1562, he cornered them

on the slopes of the Hill of Fare, at a place called Corrichie.

Today, dense forest covers the ground where the two armies clashed,

making it almost impossible to imagine what took place here.

But this is where Clan Gordon bled, and where their chief,

the 4th Earl, was finally brought down by Lord James, the new Earl of Moray.

This monument was put up in the 1950s to commemorate

the hundreds of men from Clan Gordon who died at the Battle of Corrichie.

'But to see the wood for the trees, you have to leave the forest and get some distance.'

The Gordons took up a good defensive position, up there on the Hill of Fare.

But many of the Earl's normally loyal allies refused to join him,

because they saw his actions as open rebellion against the Crown.

As a result, his forces were outnumbered almost three to one by those of Lord James.

The royal army drove the Gordons off the summit with their superior firepower.

As soon as they left the heights, the Gordons got into boggy ground,

where they were overwhelmed by the royal cavalry, and finally, by the royal pikemen.

It was an utter disaster.

His army decimated and his hopes in ruins, the aging Earl was captured on the field of battle.

But the exertions of the fight and the stress of defeat

proved too much - he had a seizure and fell from his horse, stone dead.

'Death, it seems, was not enough to clip the wings of the Cock of the North.

'On the orders of the Crown, Huntly's body was disembowelled and preserved in a barrel of salt.

'The corpse was then shipped from Aberdeen to Edinburgh, where it was put on trial for treason.'

'This is the old Parliament Hall, which stands on the site of the court

'where, nine months after the Battle of Corrichie,

'the unfortunate Earl of Huntly's body was judged by his peers.

'I've come here to meet Kirsty McAlister,

'to find out more about this unlikely and gruesome trial.'

Kirsty, it seems a really bizarre and macabre thing to do,

to put a corpse on trial. Must be very unusual, surely?

Unusual, yes, but not unique.

And remember, it was highly ritualistic, highly symbolic, and it allowed judgement to be passed

on a person's status and character and reputation, and death was no escape from that enduring disgrace.

So they wanted to make this appear to be a very objective and independent trial?

Absolutely, and it was about the due process of the law.

It was necessary that Mary showed that she was using the proper channels

to establish Huntly's forfeiture,

and that she wasn't just arbitrarily declaring him a traitor to the realm.

Now, despite Mary's great show of being independent and objective over Huntly's trial and saying

Moray's got nothing to do with this, but her half-brother is in the background, is he not?

Absolutely, very prominently so.

He's her chief counsel and he has recently been gifted

that Earldom of Moray, which used to be administered by Huntly.

So there's a game of power politics going on in the northeast.

This whole affair must have really poisoned relations

between the Earls of Moray and the Earls of Huntly.

Well, as you can understand, there was a great deal of antipathy

between the two families, a blood feud, if you like, that would go on for generations.

The bad blood that now flowed between Lord James and the Gordons

was passed from father to son and grandson.

The feud reached a violent climax 30 years later,

with another George Gordon, the 6th Earl of Huntly.

He was a devoted friend of the new King, James VI, but also the King's most troublesome subject.

James VI saw Huntly as an epitome of what it was to be a Scottish noble,

the idea of a strong man, a refined man, an educated man.

The interesting thing about this Earl of Huntly's career

is that he gets forgiven for almost everything.

The 6th Earl should be remembered for a man who got away with it.

He is the man who got away with murder.

'The Catholic 6th Earl of Huntly made his appearance in history

'when the Protestant countries of northern Europe lived in fear of a Catholic Reformation.

'So why did the Protestant King James become the friend and protector

'of the dangerously Catholic Gordon Earl?

'The answer is partly explained by Huntly's role in rescuing King James from kidnap.'

Unlike his Catholic mother, James is brought up a Protestant.

His faith not only qualified him to be Elizabeth of England's chosen heir and successor,

but also the first monarch of a United Kingdom.

But there were some very powerful interests in Scotland,

who thought that James was not Protestant enough.

'In 1582, in a bizarre episode known as the Ruthven Raids,

'a group of hardline Protestants kidnapped the King and held him at Huntingtower Castle, near Perth.'

The type of Protestantism that was going to settle in Scotland

was as yet undecided, and there was a power struggle, if you like,

between the more moderate and the more radical Protestants,

and this was about who could sway James and who could have

their own form of the new religion put into place.

If you've got hold of the King, then you can control him.

You can tell him what's what. And so, having the King's person

is very important, and that's what the Ruthven Raids is all about,

actually physically getting hold of the King and taking him away

from all these bad influences and getting him back on the straight and narrow.

'After ten months of captivity, James was finally able to escape,

'thanks to the intervention of the young and very dashing Earl of Huntly.'

The relationship that developed between the young Protestant King

and the dashing Gordon chief was unusually deep and powerful.

At times the friendship seemed to stretch the limits of forgiveness,

especially when the King repeatedly absolved his favourite

for crimes which, for other mortals, would have incurred the death penalty.

'The first example of the King's extraordinary leniency towards Huntly occurred in 1589,

'when Huntly was implicated in a plot to land 60,000 Spanish troops in Scotland.

'At a time when fears of a Catholic counter-reformation

'were at their height, this amounted to high treason.'

Elizabeth of England certainly thought so, and expected King James,

as her nominated successor, to punish his friend, the Earl.

Incredibly, the King let Huntly off with just the minimum reprimand.

Admittedly, the Gordon Earl had to spend a short time as a prisoner here, in Edinburgh Castle,

where the King came to visit his recalcitrant friend

and tried to persuade him to become a better citizen.

He even went as far as spending the night with him.

I wonder if he got the point.

'All this raises the obvious question -

'was their relationship a gay one?

'Could this explain why the King was so quick to act as Huntly's protector?'

James would caress his favourites in public

and he would heap honours and titles and favours on them.

One of those favourites was the Duke of Lennox,

and one, of course, was Huntly, and rumours of homosexuality were regularly cast at James.

I think that James would appear

to have been somebody who was bisexual,

and the older he got, the more he became dependent

on good-looking young men as companions and associates.

He became increasingly estranged from his wife, Queen Anna,

and indeed, sometimes she only got an audience with him

when she could procure good-looking young men at the court.

It's easy to leap to the conclusion that he was gay.

I actually think it was more complicated than that,

and the relationship between men is something that happens throughout history,

in very male environments, including the military environment, where you're relying on these people,

you're with these people and they mean a huge amount to you,

and women, maybe in this context, don't mean so much at all.

'The depth of the King's feelings for Huntly allowed for his restoration

'to royal favour, despite his treacherous role in the Spanish plot.'

Huntly kept a low profile for a while, but then came a cry for help from the King.

For some months, the King had been subjected to a bullying assault

from the psychopathic Protestant Earl of Bothwell,

who tried to instigate a palace coup.

Now, the King was so terrified of Bothwell, that in self defence,

he'd been forced to barricade himself into his own royal apartments.

Obviously, something had to be done about Bothwell, and the King thought the man

to deal with him was his favourite, George Gordon, the Earl of Huntly.

'But instead of going after Bothwell, Huntly chose to go after Bothwell supporter,

'the Protestant Earl of Moray.

'What happened next reignited the age-old blood feud between the Earls of Moray and the Gordons.'

The key reason why Huntly went after the 2nd Earl of Moray

is simply because of the fact that they were major rivals

in the north of Scotland, and when the opportunity came along,

Huntly certainly grabbed it with both hands.

Moray, nicknamed The Bonny Earl on account of his good looks,

was staying at Donibristle Castle, overlooking the Firth of Forth.

One night, Huntly and a band of 40 Gordon clansmen landed here and then made their way

through the grounds of Donibristle, which is now occupied by this housing development.

This 18th century coach house now stands on the site of the original Donibristle Castle.

'On the night that Huntly and his men arrived,

'they surrounded the building, sealed the exits and set it alight.'

Moray managed to escape the burning building, but tragically,

a spark set fire to his hat, and he was spotted as he fled

to the water's edge, where he was quickly overtaken by his pursuers, who brutally hacked him to pieces.

# Ye Hielands and ye Lowlands

# Oh, whaur hae ye been?

# They hae slain the Earl o' Moray

# And laid him on the green... #

'The bloody murder of the Earl of Moray is immortalised

'in one of the oldest ballads of the folk repertoire.

'Its hauntingly beautiful melody and simple lyrics

'echo down the centuries, telling of a great injustice, a wrong that had to be righted.'

# And he played at the bar... #

James Stewart, the Bonny Earl of Moray,

was quite an important figure. He was quite well liked.

He was popular at the time, and I suppose the ballad was composed

to show the ordinary folks' anger at what happened,

and also to keep that anger alive, and that's why it's still sung to this day.

# He was a braw gallant... #

It's quite romanticised, I suppose, I mean, the Bonny Earl of Moray,

by all means, he was quite a looker,

but he was also a drinker and a gambler,

so I suppose that's overlooked in this and they want to keep the memory of him alive.

# Ere she see the Earl o'Moray

# Come a-soundin' through the toun. #

AUDIENCE APPLAUDING

'The ballad is obviously a poetic interpretation of what took place.

The bloody reality of the murder presented James VI with a major crisis.

For those inclined to think that way, the murder of a Protestant Earl

was, you know, evidence of papists under the bed,

counter-reformation, things going terribly wrong.

A whispering campaign now implicated the King in Moray's murder.

When public anger reached boiling point,

James was forced to move his court out of the capital.

In an attempt to calm the situation, Huntly gave himself up to royal mercy.

The Gordon Earl voluntarily warded himself here, at Blackness Castle.

Now, he didn't face a harsh prison regime.

He was given an apartment suitable to his lordly position in life,

allowed wine and contact with his friends in the outside world.

In any case, his confinement didn't last long.

After just ten days, his great friend and protector, the King, released him without charge.

'But the mother of the murdered Earl of Moray demanded justice and gathered all the evidence she could.

'This included an extraordinary and unique piece of visual forensics,

'that still hangs on the walls of his descendent, John Doune, the son of the present Earl of Moray.'

It's about six foot four, I think.

-That's amazing. This picture tells the story, really.

-It does.

It does. It's the death portrait of the 2nd Earl of Moray,

Bonny Earl of Moray, as he lay in the days after he was murdered.

In a bid to get justice from the King, the Bonny Earl's mother took his body to Edinburgh.

Now, this painting, which she commissioned, is extraordinary in many ways.

I've never seen anything like this, but to me it looks like,

almost like a scene of crime picture.

It shows very accurately the fire at Donibristle.

The Bonny Earl's body lying down by the shore, and there's really kind of forensic detail, almost.

Yes, I think it's... I think it is absolutely accurate.

It's thought to have been painted by a herald painter from the court,

called John Workman, and his mother would have instructed him

to depict every single blow and every cut and every bullet hole

that was on his body, so it is really evidence that you could show in court.

'Among the 16 wounds on the body is a deep slash across the leg,

'that prevented escape.

'The other cuts are proof of a protracted and agonising death.

'The slashes across the face were inflicted by Huntly himself.

'According the story, Moray's dying words were, "You have spoiled a better face than your own, Huntly."

'Despite the efforts of the Bonny Earl's mother, justice was never done.

'King James protected his friend and Huntly was never brought to trial.

'He literally got away with murder.'

But the King got little thanks.

Over the next few years, Huntly continued to plot against the Crown.

Unbelievably, the King continued to reward and forgive his troublesome friend.

King James, it seems, never gave up on his friend.

Years later in London, after he'd become the first sovereign of a United Kingdom,

he introduced Huntly to his son, the future Charles I.

"This man," he said, "is the most faithful servant that ever served a prince."

'James now demanded an end to the blood feud between the Gordons and the Earls of Moray.

'The deal brokered by the King involved a marriage between the two rival families.

'Huntly's daughter now became the wife of the new Earl of Moray.'

Peace may have broken out between the Gordons and the Earls of Moray,

but this didn't mean that Huntly would stop his rebellious ways.

In 1634, he was again denounced as a rebel and imprisoned here, in Edinburgh Castle.

Once again, he was released after just a few short months, but this time he was stalked by ill health

and not even the intervention of his friend the King could stay the hand of the Grim Reaper.

George Gordon, the 6th Earl of Huntly and the Chief of Clan Gordon,

died a few days after his release from the castle, on the 13th June, 1636.

George Gordon was finally laid to rest amongst the bones of his ancestors, here at Elgin Cathedral.

His openly Catholic funeral was no doubt a provocation to the Protestant state,

but the ceremony symbolised the end of the bloody feud between the Gordons and the Earls of Moray,

because amongst the pall-bearers was the Earl's son-in-law, James Stewart, the 3rd Earl of Moray,

the son of the man he'd murdered.

In helping to lay Huntly to rest, this new Earl of Moray was also helping to lay to rest

one of the last great feuds of Scottish history.

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