Alexander Gordon (archbishop of Glasgow)

Alexander Gordon (died 1575) was a 16th century archbishop of Glasgow, bishop of Sodor and bishop of Galloway. He was the brother of George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly, the ex-Chancellor of Scotland. He acquired his first ecclesiastic appointment, as Postulate of Caithness, despite competition with Robert Stewart, brother of the Earl of Lennox.^[1] He was provided and consecrated to the archdiocese of Glasgow in the year 1550. This see was resigned to the pope in 1551, and he was given a pension and the title archbishop of Athens in partibus, along with the commendam of Inchaffray. In 1553, he was translated to the bishopric of the Isles (Sodor) at Iona. In 1559, after the death of the bishop of Galloway, Alexander was translated that bishopric. Alexander became a Protestant, and died on 11 November 1575.

Alexander was closely connected to the Scottish royal family, his mother, Margaret Stewart, Countess of Huntly, was a daughter of James IV. After the Earl's death she married Sir James Drummond of Innerpeffray, where Alexander and his brothers occasionally lived. In 1544, Alexander described himself as a servant of Francis I of France, and he was a loyal and well rewarded servant to the Queen Dowager, Mary of Guise. Apart from his ecclesiastical preferments, Guise gave him a yearly pension of £200 on 17 January 1547. The next year Alexander claimed poverty because Robert Stewart had possession of his Caithness rents, but he wrote that he would not tempted by English offers, 'for suppose poverty banish me from your grace's service, riches shall not cause me offend.'^[2] Alexander sent Mary of Guise a vivid account of the capture of Ferniehirst Castle from the French in February 1549. He was there in the company of his brother George, Earl of Huntly.^[3]

Alexander travelled through England to Scotland with a retinue of 12 followers in April 1553.^[4] Alexander preached at the wedding of his niece Jean Gordon to the Earl of Bothwell on 24 February 1566.^[5] A year later, Alexander was a signatory to Ainslie's Tavern Band in April 1567, agreeing to the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to Bothwell.^[6]

John Gordon, future Bishop of Galloway, was the son of Alexander Gordon and his wife Barbara Logie. John seems to have been illegitimate; his parents married, perhaps clandestinely, only in 1546, before Alexander obtained ecclesiastical preferment.^[7]

References

• Dowden, John, The Bishops of Scotland, ed. J. Maitland Thomson, (Glasgow, 1912)

1. ^ Cameron, Annie I., ed., Scottish Correspondence of Mary of Lorraine, Scottish History Society, (1927), 12-13, 239-240.
2. ^ Cameron, Annie I., ed., Scottish Correspondence of Mary of Lorraine, Scottish History Society (1927), 40, 96, 102, 214, 240
3. ^ Cameron, Annie I., ed., Scottish Correspondence of Mary of Lorraine, SHS (1927), 286-290, 20 Feb. 1549.
4. ^ Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol 2, part 2, Oxford (1822), 235 (passport from Edward VI).
5. ^ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 2, Edinburgh (1900), 258.
6. ^ Wormald, Jenny, Lords and Men in Scotland, John Donald (1985), 406.
7. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11061/11061. Retrieved 2007-05-01.