1st Duke of Gordon

And lastly, that your petitioner's ancestors
have for a long space been hereditary governours
of Your Majestie's Castle of Iuvernesse till his
father was turned out for his fidelity to your
Royal father. By winch meanes, together with
the knowne sufferings and great losses of the
family of Huntly upon the account of loyalty it
is brought into a low and 6ad condition.
May it therefore please your sacred Majesty
to take the said estate of the said family and of
your petitioner into your gracious consideration,
and order some redress© thereof, eyther at the
Parliament, or any other way as your Majestie
shall judge expedient. And that in the meaner
time your Majestie of your princely goodnesse
and justice would grant your petitioner some
present subsistence that he may be able to goe
about the affaires of his family.
As also to appoint him Sherife of the said
Sheiires till the 5000 lib. be paid. And (how soone
your Majestie shall judge expedient) to remove
strangers from the cittidell of Invernesse, that the
Government thereof may return e to the Marquesse
of Huntly, and to your petitioner during his
minority.
And your petitioner shall ever pray.
The spirit of the petition was granted on April
3, 1661, when the attainder (1649) against his
grand fatlher, the beheaded Marquis, was rescinded
by Parliament in favour of his children and
grandchildren, so that they might serve them-
selves heirs and executors to him according to
the laws of the kingdom ("Acts of Parliament,
Scot.," vil., 162), though it had been remitted by
the King alone in 1651. In 1662 he had a grant
from the King of the Humtly estate, which had
fallen to the Crown through the forfeiture of the
Marquis of Argyll (ibid, vii., 374). Ladjf Huntly
was full of gratitude to Lauderdale, to whom she
wrote from Edinburgh on October 8, 1662 (Add.
MBS. 29, 314, f. 11) : —
I cannot expres \\ow much I esteim my sonne
and my selff oblidged to yr Lo[rdshi]p for the
manie and undiservid faveeurs you ar daylie con-
fering on us, bot in perticcullar that yr
Lo[rdshi]p is plesid to doe my sonne the honour
to aesepbt to be one off his courrators as Mr
Hay shoos me: for which I most hartal lie thank
yr Lo[rdsihi]p, and wishis with all my hartt that
it may be my good forttun befor I dey to be abill
to show my grattitud be doeing yr Lo[rdshi]p
sum acseptabill serveice; for fcher is nou brething
who is and shall be mor willing at all occasions