CHARTING A COURSE
was probably not entirely impartial himself on this); the latter he considered a disgrace as an historian. He wrote several minor histori- cal works himself, and in his will left notes for his son James, Parson of Rothiemay, that would form the basis of the latter’s History of Scots Affairs 1637-1641, a key source for the period. He was also a keen collector of music, his book of lute music is amongst a handful that preserved traditional Celtic airs for posterity. It is overwhelmingly as a cartographer that
Gordon is now remembered. In 1641, Charles I entreated him to re-draft and edit a collec- tion of maps of Scotland. These maps were the work of Timothy Pont, a graduate of St Andrews who spent much of the 1580s and ‘90s travel- ling around Scotland and mapping what he saw. Pont, minister of Dunnet in Caithness, died before his maps were published, but by 1630, they had reached the Flemish engraver William Blaeu in Amsterdam who engraved the most legible amongst them and sent the rest back to Scotland for revision. Gordon’s work may have been mainly
intermediary, but the task was
mammoth. He was helped by his son James, who would himself later produce a wonderful depic- tion of the towns of New and Old Aberdeen. As well as cartographic revision, the Gordons also provided descriptions of historical, cultural and topographical features to add to Pont’s. The result, Theatrum Scotiae, was a fascinating, if at times crowded, source for the period. Gordon’s work was
considered a matter
of national importance, and he was granted parliamentary protection to enable him to carry it out. In a 1648 dedication of the work to
its patron, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, he cited the many factors that had hindered its comple- tion: his many children, the management of his estate, old age, and his preference for a private and retired life. Most of all, though, that he was living at the very centre of the civil chaos engulfi ng the kingdom. In 1640 the Scottish Parliament had adopted
the Covenant, which was written to protect Scotland from Charles I’s religious reforms. A few years later Scotland was in the grip of a fi erce and bitter civil war, as Royalist sympathis- ers – led by the 1st Marquis of Montrose – took up arms against the Covenanters. This Scottish Royalist challenge was ultimately defeated in 1645, but not before a great deal of blood had been spilled on both sides. Aberdeenshire was at the heart of the Cove-
nanter Wars, and as a ‘much esteemed cousin’ of the Royalist House of Huntly, Gordon of Straloch was endlessly being summoned, at short-notice, to Strathbogie, Aberdeen, Inverness and Edinburgh to give attendance and counsel to successive Marquises and their offspring. The Marquises of Huntly were actors of the greatest importance on the national stage, and Straloch was a trusted commissioner between them and the other major players – Marischal, Montrose and Argyll; the latter more than once seeking his assistance in efforts to bring recalcitrant Gordons to co-operate with the covenanting regime. Although he took the covenant, Gordon’s
perspective was steadfastly royalist, and his third son, William, reportedly died in Paris of grief on hearing of the execution of Charles I in 1649. Unsurprisingly, Gordon was not in favour with the Cromwellian regime of the 1650s, and the 1655 edition of Blaeu’s Atlas was dedi- cated to Oliver Cromwell, and not Charles II as it had been intended. Nevertheless, this quin- tessential Scottish laird, born in the minority of James VI, while Mary, Queen of Scots was a prisoner of her English cousin, lived to see the restoration of Mary’s great-grandson to the British throne. He died in August of 1661 and was buried in Newmachar kirkyard. A man of continental education, Robert
Gordon of Straloch, who corresponded as easily in Latin or French as he did in Scots, had nevertheless taken a benign interest in his native culture. Active in contributing to, and promoting, the written history of his nation, he played a defi ning role in the production of the fi rst atlas of this country during a time of extreme civil strife. Surely, just the kind of graduate the Earl Marischal, so many years beforehand, had hoped might emerge from his college gates. Straloch’s own grandson and namesake would later found the boy’s school in Aberdeen which would grow in to the university that today bears their name.
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