William Gordon

William Gordon was a 17th-century landowner and Covenanter. He is remembered as being a correspondent in Samuel Rutherford's Letters and being one of the biographies in John Howie's Scots Worthies. He was regarded as a man of strong religious convictions and piety. In 1664 he was banished for listening to ministers who lacked a government licence, both at his mother's house and in the woods. He arrived at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge after the fighting was over and, hesitating to surrender, was shot. Life before the Restoration William Gordon of Earlston was a Covenanter, born in 1614. He was the second son of Alexander Gordon of Earlston (1587-1654) and Elizabeth Gordon, his wife. His father represented the presbytery of Kirkcudbright as an elder at the General Assembly of 1638 in Glasgow. William studied for the ministry of the Church of Scotland, and graduated as master of arts. On the outbreak of the civil war in 1639 he accepted a command under General Alexander Leslie, and was present in the following year at the taking of Newcastle. After his elder brother's death he returned home to assist his now disabled father, and served on the committee for war of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, from whom he presented a petition to parliament in 1648. During the Commonwealth he took part in Glencairn's insurrection in Scotland in 1653 on behalf of Charles II; but, disgusted by the animosities which prevailed in Glencairn's army, he withdrew, and, taking advantage of an act of indemnity issued by Cromwell in 1654, surrendered and returned home. That he lived quietly under Cromwell's administration is shown by his appointment on two commissions in 1656 and 1659 for raising taxation in his stewartry. Gordon was a man of eminent piety. His tenants were bound by their leases to observe family worship and other duties of religion. He went at their head to church every Sabbath day. His skill in solving cases of conscience is remarked by Wodrow in his Analecta. After the Restoration