The Gordons, this account further says, began a prosecution of Inverey and his party before the Court of Justiciary. Inverey had recourse to Macintosh, his chief, who exerted himself so effectually in behalf of his kinsman that when the case was called no plaintiff appeared. Nevertheless Dr John Stuart (Historical MSS, as above) produces a warrant “for apprehending John Farquharson of Inverey and others his followers, who had been outlawed for not compearing to answer at their trial, and had subsequently continued for many years in their outlawry, associating with themselves a company of thieves, murderers, and sorners; therefore empowering James Innes, Serjeant, and Corporal Radnoch, commanding a party of troops at Kincardine O’Neill, to apprehend the said John Farquharson and his accomplices.” From this warrant Dr Stuart considers that we may infer that Inverey was the aggressor in the affray with Brackley. But there is nothing to identify the case, and the date of the warrant is February 12, 1685, nearly twenty years from the affair which we are occupied with, during which space, unless he were of an unusually peaceable habit, Inverey might have had several broils on his hands.
Gordon of Brackley, as reported by Mrs Brown, from what she may have heard in her girlhood, a hundred years after his tragical end, was “a man universally esteemed.”[[64]] “Farquharson of Inverey,” says Jamieson, without giving his authority, “a renowned freebooter on Deeside, was his relation, and in habits of friendly intercourse with him. Farquharson was fierce, daring, and active, exhibiting all the worst characteristics of a freebooter, with nothing of that blunt and partially just and manly generosity which were then not uncommonly met with among that description of men. The common people supposed him (as they did Dundee, and others of the same cast who were remarkable for their fortunate intrepidity and miraculous escapes) to be a warlock, and proof against steel and lead. He is said to have been buried on the north side of a hill, which the sun could never shine upon, etc.” All which, as far as appears, is merely the tradition of Jamieson’s day, and will be taken at different values by different readers.
The ‘Peggy’ of A a, b, C, D was Margaret Burnet, daughter of Sir Thomas Burnet of Leys, and own cousin of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury.[[65]] This lady married Gordon of Brackley against her friends’ wishes, or without their consent, and so probably made a love-match. After Brackley’s death she married one James Leslie, Doctor of Medicine,[[66]] a fact which will suffice to offset the unconfirmed scandal of the ballad.
It is now to be noted that a baron of Brackley had been murdered by caterans towards the end of the preceding century. “The Clanchattan, who, of all that faction, most eagerly endeavored to revenge the Earl of Murray his death, assembling their forces under Angus Donald Williamson his conduct, entered Strathdee and Glenmuick, where they invaded the Earl of Huntly his lands, and killed four of the surname of Gordon, Henry Gordon of the Knock, Alexander Gordon of Teldow, Thomas Gordon of Blaircharrish, and the old baron of Breaghly, whose death and manner thereof was so much the more lamented because he was very aged, and much given to hospitality, and slain under trust. He was killed by them in his own house after he had made them good cheer, without suspecting or expecting any such reckoning for his kindly entertainment; which happened the first day of November, 1592. In revenge whereof the Earl of Huntly assembled some of his forces and made an expedition into Pettie,” etc. (See No 183, III, 456.) So writes Sir Robert Gordon, before 1630.[[67]]
Upon comparing Sir Robert Gordon’s description of the old baron of Brackley who was murdered in 1592 with what is said of the baron in the ballad (A), there is a likeness for which there is no historical authority in the instance of the baron of 1666. The ballad intimates the hospitality which is emphasized by Sir Robert Gordon, and also the baron’s unconsciousness of his having any foe to dread. (“An honest aged man,” says Spotiswood, “against whom they could pretend no quarrel.”) Other details are not pertinent to the elder baron, but belong demonstrably to the Brackley who had a quarrel with Farquharson.
Of the two, the older Brackley would have a better chance of being celebrated in a ballad. He was an aged and innocent man, slain while dispensing habitual hospitality, “slain under trust.” The younger Brackley treated Inverey’s people harshly, there was an encounter, Brackley was killed, and others on both sides. His friends may have mourned for him, but there was no call for the feeling expressed in the ballad; that would be more naturally excited by the death of the kindly old man, ‘who basely was slain.’ On the whole it may be surmised that two occurrences, or even two ballads, have been blended, and some slight items of corroborative evidence may favor this conclusion.
‘The Gordons may mourn him and bann Inverey,’ says B 14. It appears that the Earl of Aboyne sided with Inverey, though the Marquis of Huntly supported the laird of Brackley’s son;[[68]] whereas all the Gordons would have mourned the older baron, and none would have maintained the caterans who slew him.
In the affray with the Farquharsons in 1666 there were killed, of the Gordons, besides Brackley, his brother William and his cousin James Gordon of Cults. The Gordons killed by the Clanchattan in 1592 were Brackley, Henry Gordon of the Knock, an Alexander Gordon (also a Thomas). According to A 34, 35, the Gordons killed were Brackley and his brother William, his cousin James of the Knox [Knocks, Knock], and his uncle Alexander Gordon; according to B 12, 13, there were killed, besides Brackley, “Harry Gordon and Harry of the Knock” (one and the same person), Brackley’s brother, as we see from 10; in D 10, the killed are Brackley, and Sandy Gordon o the Knock, called Peter in 21. A Gordon of the Knock is named as killed in A, B, D, and it is Henry Gordon in B; an Alexander Gordon is named in A, B. A William Gordon and a James (of the Knocks, not of the Cults) are named in A. On the whole, the names sort much better with the earlier story.
In B 15 we are told that if Craigievar had come up an hour sooner, Brackley had not been slain. Upon this Dr Joseph Robertson (who assigned the ballad to 1592) has observed, Kinloch MSS, VI, 24, that Craigievar passed to a branch of the family of Forbes in 1625; so that Craigievar would have done nothing to save Brackley in 1666, the Gordons and the Forbeses having long been at feud. To make sense of this stanza we must suppose an earlier date than 1625.
The fourth edition of Spotiswood’s history, printed in 1677 (about forty years after the author’s death), calls Brackley of 1592 John Gordon. Further, there is this anonymous marginal note, not found in the preceding editions: “I have read in a MS. called the Acts of the Gordons, that Glenmuick, Glentaner, Strathdee and Birs were spoiled, and Brachlie, with his son-in-law, slain, by Mackondoquy [that is Maconochie, alias Campbell] of Inner-Aw.”[[69]]