New Spalding Club > House of Gordon > Gordons under arms

412 HOUSE OF GORDON.
the schip, to thair gryte amasement, feir and dreddour. Aluaies thay gat wp ilk man with
horribill crying and schouting ; sum escaipit; vther sum pitiluUie perishit and drount. About
the number of Iburscoir and tuelf soldieris wes wanting, drount and gat away.
Eldest son of Sir Alexander, of Navidale, who was the fifth son of
Alexander, Earl of Sutherland (House of Gordon, ii. (132)). K. at Edgehill
(see 122), 1642, Oct. 23 (Enrls of Sutherland, 486). Brother of John, 832,
1754. Cousin of Adam, 1637, George, 475-6, and John, 833-
1657- Alexander. 1638, Jun. 20, soldier in Capt. James Scott's Coy.,
of Hammond's Reg., Scots Brigade in Holland, captured at Fort Calloo by
the Spaniards, and sent to the Fort of Lillo, where he was still a prisoner,
1639, Mar. 15 (Ferguson's Scots Brigade, i. 313, 455).
He may have been the Alexander, with whom John, 1746. is credited (by
the Earls of Sutherland, 180).
1658- Alexander. 1686 (?), Ens., for five years, in infantry and
cavalry to King James ; served the King of France in the same capacity (his
own statement, quoted in Patrick Gordon's Tagebuch, i. 645 ; in Gordon's
Peter the Great, i. iv, it is stated that he entered himself after the revolution
as " a cadet in one of the companies raised at the desire of King James VH.
to assist in the wars he then had in Catalonia "). 1690, Jun. 5, at the siege
of Namur, which capitulated to the French on this date {Tagebuch, i. 645),
and at Rosa in Catalonia (see 1660). for which he was made Capt. of French
infantry he served six years in France and then returned to his father in Scot-
land (ibid., I. 645), where his editor (Peter the Great, 1. v) says he stayed till
the year 1692 or 1693 ; but he first appears in Russia in 1695, Oct. 29, when
he was at Reval (Tagebuch, 11. 638), and then at Great Novgorod, 1696, Dec.
31 (ibid., I. 645), applying to Patrick Gordon, 1795, for a post in the
Russian army, which he got as major by 1696, Feb. 28, when he received 50
roubles from the Czar to buy cherry cloth and crimson damask, apparently
for a uniform (ibid., i. 649) ; his editor tells a curious story of his advance-
ment being due to Peter the Great's appreciation of the way in which he
stood up for Scotland at a Russian wedding, when he " beat six men "
(Peter the Great, i. v-viii). 1696, Jul. " present at the taking of Azov from
the Turks and had frequent encounters with the Tartars ; the troops under
his command, animated by his example and inured to a strict tho' not a
severe discipline were amongst the first in the Russian army who dis-
tinguished themselves in the field " (Peter the Great, i. ix ; this service is
not noted in the Tagebuch). 1697, Dec. 16, Lt. Col. (Tagebuch, in. 162).
i6g8, Mar.-Oct., in the campaign against the Turks (ibid., iii. 178, 187,
189, 190, 203, 205, 214). 1698, Oct. 8, returned to Moscow (ibid., in. 218).