The chart, Pedigree of the Gordon Family, from about 1050, dated January, 1935, accompanying a reprint of Captain Douglas Wimberley’s original 1900 study, Notes On the Family of Gordon of Terpersie with a Table of Their Descent, records a grim synopsis of the events which brought down the curtain on the sixth and final Laird of Terpersie’s career:

CHARLES, VI. of Terpersie, fought under Prince Charlie, taken prisoner when in hiding after Culloden, executed and forfeited 1746, buried close to St Cuthbert’s Church, Carlisle.

Charles married Margaret Gordon; there are reasons for supposing that she was some years his junior.

In actively siding with his namesake, the Young Pretender, in the failed Jacobite insurrection of 1745-46, Charles, VI of Terpersie brought down destruction upon himself and his house. In The House of Gordon, edited by John Malcolm Bulloch, (1886, digitized by the Internet Archive 2013), Volume II (p. 129), it is suggested that he was in Gordon of Avochie’s regiment. We know from the petition subsequently submitted in his own behalf by Charles’s eldest son, James, to King George II (Record Office, S. P.D. Geo. II, B. 85, M. 149, cited in Bulloch, at p. 130) that Charles was already ‘aged and infirm’ at this time.

Bulloch (at p. 129) records the circumstances of the last Laird of Terpersie’s apprehension:

Tradition says that his arrest was effected at his own house when, lurking among the hills (after Culloden), he ventured to pass the night there. His captors, not sure of his identity, carried him off to the parish minister, but, as they did not get satisfaction, they brought him to the farm-house where his wife and children resided. On his approach, his children ran out and greeted him with cries of “Daddy! Daddy!” and so unwittingly sealed his fate. Wherever he was captured, he was tried at Carlisle.

Andrew Jervise, F.S.A. Scot., in Epitaphs & Inscriptions from Burial Grounds & Old Buildings in the North-Eaft of Scotland, with Hiftorical, Biographical, Genealogical, and Antiquarian Notes (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1875), at p. 266, gives an alternative version of the story:

Helen Gordon’s father, who was a son of Dal- persie, or Terpersie, in Tullynessle, was out in the ’45. He was long a fugitive ; but was at last captured by the Royalists while hiding in an aper- ture in his own house. Being identified, or, in other words, betrayed by, it is said, his neighbour, the minister of Kinnethmont, he was taken to Carlisle, where he was executed along with other ten rebels, 15 Nov. 1746.

382 prisoners were sent for trial. According to Bulloch (at p. 129), the sheer weight of numbers required that, subject to certain exceptions, they were offered the option of drawing lots; one out of every twenty was thus selected for trial, the other nineteen submitting to transportation.

The trials, presided over by Chief Baron Parker, Sir Thomas Burnet, Sir Thomas Dennison and Baron Clark, commenced on 12^th August. Of ninety-six convicted, thirty-one were executed and two died in prison. The others were transported.

It was doubtless in connection with these proceedings that ‘the Magistrates of Aberdeen assured the Lord Justice Clerk, by way of mitigation, that they could find “no person in this place that ever saw” Terpersie in arms’. (Bulloch, p. 129)

The sources diverge markedly as to when Charles’s trial took place; Bulloch advances the date as 24^th September, whilst Wimberley favours 1^st November. There is however agreement on the final outcome; Charles Gordon, VI. of Terpersie was found guilty of High Treason and sentenced to death.

Whilst incarcerated, Charles received daily visits from a gentlewoman of the neighbourhood, whose identity does not seem to have been preserved.

On the eve of his execution, Charles wrote a letter to his wife (quoted in Bulloch at p. 129 and Wimberley at p. 13:)

Dear Heart, - I now tell you that I suffer death to-morrow for my duty to God, my king and country. I bless God I die in charity to all men. I think my butchered body will be taken care of and buried as a Christian by order of Francis Farquharson, who has acted a father to me, and laid out a good deal of money to and for me, whereof you may expect a particular account, which I leave you on my blessing to repay him. I die with the greatest regret that I’ve been a bad husband to you, and I beg you’ll pardon me in your heart, and that you’ll express your goodness (as you’ll answer to God and me in the everlasting world) by your care of and motherly looking to your children’s salvation and right putting them to business in this world. I know not how many are alive; only set the boys to some right imployment (sic) while young, and strive to admonish the daughters in the fear of God. I herewith send you a note of what I would have done with the trifles I have a concern in, for you know the lump of my business. My dearest – if I should write till my life ends I would still have something to say. But to stop that I end with my dying blessing to you, and my poor mother, if alive. Your last from your unfortunate husband, Cha. Gordon. Carlisle, Nov. 14, 1746.

This epistle was duly forwarded by the gentlewoman of Carlisle, together with the commentary that Charles had ‘died as became a truly penitent Christian, to the conviction of all the clergy and others that conversed with him.’

Charles was hanged, along with ten others, on 15^th November 1746, on the Gallows Hill, at Harraby, Carlisle, and afterwards drawn and quartered.

Charles did indeed receive the consolation of a Christian burial. Acting on the instructions of Francis Farquharson, one Wright, probably the writer in Edinburgh, provided a coffin for Charles’s body. The gentlewoman dressed him in the customary grave clothes and attended the burial.

A letter (cited in Bulloch at p. 129) from James Wright, writer in Edinburgh, to a sister of one of Charles’s fellow sufferers, Sir Archibald Primrose Bart., of Dunipace, at four o’clock on the day of execution, discloses that ‘He (Sir Archibald) lies on the north side of the church, within four yards of the second window from the steeple. Mr. Gordon, of Terperse, and Patrick Murray, goldsmith, lie just by him’. Regrettably, due to alterations carried out to the church and graveyard in the intervening period, the location cannot be precisely determined.

Confirmation of Charles’s will was effected at Elgin on 9^th July 1747; the inventory amounted to 320 pounds and thirteen shillings (Scots). The Duke of Gordon’s chamberlain, James Chalmers, acted as cautioner. The ranking creditors included Charles’s widow and servants, listed in Bulloch (at p. 130) as ‘George Meldrum, Robert Pirie, Alexander Hutson, Alexander Gordon, Barbara Gordon, Jean Christie, Jean Kelman, and Augness McRob’. The incidental detail emerges that Charles had been a tenant of the ‘Miln of Gartlie’, i.e. the Mill of Gartly, for which the sum of 151 pounds and one shilling (presumably Scots) was owed to Duchess Dowager of Gordon, who held a liferent interest, as back rent for the year 1745.

Forebears

The 1935 pedigree chart traces the Gordons of Terpersie back in almost uninterrupted succession to Adam de Gordon, who was killed at the seige of Alnwick in 1093, although the Christian name of one ancestor in the paternal line, a great-grandson of the first (known) Adam de Gordon, remains unaccounted for.

Brothers and Sisters

The 1935 pedigree chart lists one younger brother and four sisters.

Thomas died unmarried.

Christian married Patrick Leith of Threefield. Bulloch (p. 128) expands on this. Patrick was Christian’s first cousin; his parents were George Leith of Threefield and Jean Gordon, Christian’s aunt, a daughter of Christian’s grandfather, George, V. of Terpersie. The Balbithan MS, cited in Bulloch in the same context, offers the further commentary that Patrick Leith ‘should have been the heir of Threefield and Whitehaugh’ but, by implication, wasn’t.

Anne married a man whose surname was Leslie. Bulloch (p. 128) clarifies that this gentleman was the Rev. William Leslie; William and Anne were married on 19^th December 1699. William died on 28^th January 1729, aged 55. William and Anne had four sons and two daughters; one of the sons, George, wrote a manuscript at some time during the second half of the 18^th century, a transcribed portion of which survives, providing an important record of the Gordons of Terpersie, their offshoots and antecedents.

George Leslie manuscript

Eliza married William Kennedy, who went to Holland.