Earls of Aboyne

SI
He was also a good cricketer. In 1791 he
played an innings of "about 150" at Aldr-rmastoii
Wharf (Lord Harris's "Kent County Cricket," p.
249). Harriett Countess Granville tells us in
her letters (i., 401) that when he was in Pari6 in
December 1826, he was "indefatigable. He danced
with Marie Antoinette, and was still dancing at
the London balls in the early years of Victoria/'
He certainly danced away his fortune, and was
sequestrated on November 12, 1839 — under the
designation of "banker, insurance broker, and
underwriter in Aberdeen." The facts about his
bankruptcy, as taken from the "Mercantile Com-
pendium of Scotch Mercantile Sequestrations/'
1854, are as follows: —
Amount of funds as in his estate, £365,390 8 2
Amount of funds realised, 499,648 10 4j
Preferable debts paid, 6,340 17 5f
Debts heritably seenred, 128,064 19
A dividend of Is 2d in the £1 was payable at
November 1, 1863. The Marquis was allowed
.£1500 a year by certain creditors, though others
who refused drew their proportion of the allow-
ance. It was paid quarterly in advance, and
swallowed up ,£20,625. The bankruptcy recalls a
wonderfully prophetic utterance of a "News-
letter," dated Dalkeith, February 3, 1652 ("The
Cromwellian Union," Scot. Hist. Soc, p. 17), in
reference to the 3rd Marquis of Huntly, brother
of the 2nd Viscount of Aboyne: —
Huntly is a man more in debt than his whole
estate : a man infinite iproud and ambitious,
vastly expensive. That which at present quiets
him is that he is in possession of his whole
estate. Neifner sequestration nor law troubles
him, and he hath by him companions for any
adventure.
Baillie in his "Letters" (iii., 249) wrote in 1554—
"There is more debt on the house nor the land
can pay."
There is a charming description of the Marquis
in Patricia Lindsay's "Recollections of a Ro/al
Parish" (1902): —
The Gordons are so popular in these days
that perhaps I may be pardoned for making a
digression down the Dee from Crathie for a little,
and describing another "Gallant Gordon" who
was a very vivid personality to my childhood —
the old Marquis oi Huntly, grandfather of the
present peer, and then head of the clan, the
dukedom of Gordon being extinct. He was a
frequent guest at my father's (the late Dr Rob-