1st Duke of Gordon

19
ton as tutor to the Marquis. It was objected that
a- lease given by a tutor was valid only during
the period of the tutory, and did not bind the ward
after the tutory had expired. The judges there-
fore decerned (January 3, 1672) against the tenant
to remove "though the advocate and others
thought it hard" (Morison, 16,285).
HIS SPELL OF CONTINENTAL
SOLDIERING.
In 1673 the Marquis joined the French army.
This move was natural, for his family had long
been intimately associated with France, which
had sheltered them in times of great difficulty,
and which sympathised with their gay tempera-
ment far more than the dourly Presbyterian
Scot. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the
Marquis would have been 'permitted to take post
at home: so he joined the French at Oudenarde,
and was piesent at the surrender of Maestricht,
which fell (June 29) after eight days' siege.
William Gordon says that he spent the winter
at Caen in Normandy. If so, it is not unlikely
he may have been 'occupied with a plot in which
his sister, Lady Anne Gordon, was involved at
this period. Lady Anne is usually stated in the
peerages to have married the Count de Crolly.
He was no other than an Irish knight, Sir Miles
Crouly, who on November 7, 1694, received per-
mission to be naturalised in Franoe (Stuart
papers: Hist. MSS. Coin., i., 9-1), his wife receiv-
ing similar permission the following August
24. We learn of the plot from a spy, Edmond
Everard, on December 21, 1678 (Fitzherbert
papers: Hi.st. MSS. Com., pp. 141-2). At that
time it was quite an old story. He writes: —
The information of the plott was five yeares
since made by me, but was supprest, and was
again given in to the Committee of the Lords
sitting in Parliament at Westminster on the 21st
December 1678, by me, Edmond Everrard.
Whilst I was employed as agent at the French
Court for the English Militia's concernes, one of
the officers (now Sir John Fenwick) brought me
first to the acquaintance of my Lady Anne Gor-
don (sister to the now Marques of Huntley, in
Scotland.). She after about a yea-re's frequenta-
tion communicated unto me certain* important
secretts concerning the Popish plott against Eng-
land.
Shoe is a lady of vast coirrespondency amongst