Clan Gordon: The Cock o’ the North

Overview

Clan Gordon was for centuries the dominant power of the north-east, its chief — the Marquess (later Duke) of Gordon — known as the “Cock o’ the North.” Their motto is “Bydand,” Scots for “steadfast,” still the motto of the Gordon Highlanders they raised.

How the clan came about

The Gordons were an Anglo-Norman family who took their name from the lands of Gordon in Berwickshire, in the Borders. The first firmly documented chief is Richard of Gordon, around 1150–1200, recorded granting land to Kelso Abbey. His descendant Sir Adam Gordon aided William Wallace in 1297, and in the early 1300s the family moved north to Strathbogie in Aberdeenshire — the base of the great power that followed.

Rise & fall

From Huntly Castle the Gordons rose to be among the mightiest magnates in Scotland — Catholic power-brokers who could raise armies and topple rivals, and who feuded famously with the Forbes and the Campbells. Their power peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries and waned after the Jacobite risings (in which the family split), but they remained hugely influential. Crucially for Scotland’s national drink, it was Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon, who championed the 1823 Excise Act — the law that made legal distilling viable — and urged his own tenants to take out licences.

Battles — won and lost

The most notable actions the clan fought, and how they ended:

• Halidon Hill (1333) — vs the English (chief killed) — LOST
• Otterburn (1388) — vs the English — WON
• Brechin (1452) — vs the Lindsays / Earl of Crawford — WON
• Flodden (1513) — vs the English — LOST
• Corrichie (1562) — vs Mary, Queen of Scots’ forces (Huntly rebelled; the earl died) — LOST
• Tillieangus & Craibstone (1571) — vs Clan Forbes — WON
• Glenlivet (1594) — vs the Earl of Argyll’s larger army — WON
• Alford (1645) — vs the Covenanters (for Montrose) — WON

The signature feud was the bitter Gordon–Forbes war — including the killing of some twenty Gordons at a banquet in the Forbes’ Druminnor Castle — so violent it took two Acts of Parliament to settle.

Where they lived & ruled

The Gordon heartland was Aberdeenshire and Moray, with the original cradle in Berwickshire and a southern offshoot in Galloway. Their castle network ran across the north-east from the great seat at Huntly.

Orange markers = the clan’s chief castles, seats and territories. Click a marker for its name; where we have a page, it links through.

Clan & whisky

The Gordons have a real claim on Scotch: on the Duke’s own estate his tenant George Smith founded The Glenlivet, and near the old Gordon seat of Huntly the Duke championed the whisky of GlenDronach.