Series 2 > Origins of the 'Forty-five

ABERDEEN AND BANFF lix
deenshire lords were more or less sitting on the fence.
Nor is this to be wondered at; family tradition and
i family connection would make them very chary of
’ taking any prominent steps against the Jacobites. The
| Duke of Gordon, whose mother was a daughter of the
Earl of Peterborough, had been brought up a Protestant
I and a Whig in defiance of the Catholic religion and Jacobite
^ principles of his predecessors. Yet he must have had
l some sympathy with the family tradition. Early in
September his father’s old factor, Gordon of Glenbucket,
E carried off horses and arms from Gordon Castle while the
[ Duke was there, apparently with his connivance. More-
l over, Sir Harry Innes of Innes in writing of this to his
brother-in-law, Ludovick Grant, adds : ‘ I am sory to tell
; yow that the Duke is quite wronge.’1 By the end of
‘ November, however, he had pronounced for the Govern-
I ment. Lord Findlater was a Jacobite in the ’Fifteen, and
j had then been imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. Lord
i Kintore’s father had fought at Sheriffmuir, and been
deprived of his office of Knight-Marischal as a punishment.
Lord Braco’s family was deeply concerned on the Jaco¬
bite side; his son-in-law, Sir William Gordon of Park,
i his brother-in-law, William Baird of Auchmedden, his
nephew, a son of Duff of Hatton, were all ‘ out,’ and his
£ eldest son was only kept by force from joining the
Jacobites.2 Lord Aberdeen had only in March succeeded
• his father, who, it is known, had intended to join the
! Stuart cause.3
s Lord Forbes, whose traditions were Whig, and whose
father was Lord-Lieutenant of the county in 1715, might
have acted, but his family connections were nearly all
Jacobite. He was the brother-in-law of Lord Pitsligo and
1 Chiefs of Grant, vol. ii. p. 155.
2 Family information.
3 See The Earl of Aberdeen, by the Hon. A. Gordon, p. 4: London, 1893.