344 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°<» S. N" 44., Nov. 1. '56. 



dice Mr. Tickell's excellent version. Any gentlemen who 

 have made obserrations upon Mr. Pope's Homer, and will 

 be pleased to send them to Mr. Curll, at the Dial and 

 Bible against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street, shall 

 have them faithfully inserted in this work." 



And here we must, at least for the present, 

 leave " this pretty quarrel as it stands." 



s. isr. M. 



Edmund Curll. — The information that Ed- 

 mund Curll lived at the " Post House " at Middle 

 Temple Gate, is somewhat new, but conJSirmed by 

 an imprint quoted in your Number of 18th Oc- 

 tober, under the above head. Where was the 

 Post House ? Was it the house, or rather shop, 

 afterwards inhabited bv Benjamin Motte at the 

 Middle Temple Gate ? ""(See " N. & Q.," P' S. xii. 

 490.) Middle Temple Gate. 



GOBDON OF AUCHLCCHBIKS. 



In the last number of the Edinburgh Review 

 there is a very interesting article on the diary of 

 General Patrick Gordon of Auchluchrles, who is 

 represented as sprung from a younger branch of 

 the Gordons of Haddo ; and it is remarked as a 

 singular, but not improbable inference, that the 

 Russian system of aggrandisement may have been 

 suggested by a cadet of the family of the Earl of 

 Aberdeen, the late premier. 



Of this relationship there is not a vestige of 

 evidence. The ruling family of the name were 

 Earls of Huntly and Dukes of Gordon, who, 

 though Setons in the direct male line, took the 

 name of Gordon upon the marriage of Alexander 

 Seton with the only daughter and heiress of Sir 

 Adam de Gordon, who was killed at the battle of 

 Homildon in September, 1402. These Gordons 

 came from the Merse, and there is still a parish in 

 Berwickshire over which the last Duke of Gordon 

 claimed certain rights of superiority. 



Peerage writers wish the public to believe that 

 the Aberdeens were a younger branch of the ducal 

 race; and there is a nice little romance to the 

 tune of making the founder of the Aberdeens a 

 certain Bertrand de Gourdon, who shot E,ichard 

 the Lion-hearted at Cbaluz. According to history 

 this Gourdon was a common archer, who, having 

 been brought before the dying monarch, was for- 

 given by him, and was ordered to be liberated 

 with a handsome present ; but the Flemish ge- 

 neral, who had no notion of such generosity, very 

 coolly caused the aforesaid ancestor of Lord 

 Aberdeen to be flayed alive. How, after such an 

 operation, he could get to Scotland, we are not 

 told ; but perhaps in the next edition of Douglas 

 and Wood's Peerage, this remarkable fact will be 

 verified by proof. 



The truth is, the Gordons of Haddo cannot go 

 very far back, for the above-named genealogists 

 are constrained to admit, that from the " imperfect 

 state of the Scotch records," and " destruction of 

 the family papers " in the civil wars, the descent 

 cannot be " clearly " deduced. Consequently 

 one Patrick Gordon, of Methlic, is the first known 

 worthy of the race of Haddo ; some say this gen- 

 tleman was a white fisher, and the inventor of 

 that remarkable Scotch delicacy, the " Finnan 

 Haddie." But this is just as likely as the legend 

 of the skinned archer. Indeed, all that can be 

 said with certainty is, that the Gordons of Haddo 

 were respectable Aberdeenshire proprietors, and 

 that the family attained the honours of the 

 peerage, in the person of Sir George Gordon, in 

 1682, 



The chief of the Gordons probably was the 

 Viscount of Kenmuir, and Lord of Lochinvar, a 

 peerage of a more ancient date than that of Aber- 

 deen, having been conferred by Charles I. on John 

 Gordon, who married a daughter of Archibald, 

 Earl of Argyle. When the viscount was restoi-ed 

 by George IV., the then Duke of Gordon wrote a 

 letter to him, congratulating him, as a cadet of his 

 family, on the reversal of the attainder. His Lord- 

 ship, whilst thanking his Grace, respectfully begged 

 to remind him, that the Dukes of Gordon were 

 Setons, and that he thought he was himself the 

 representative in the male line of the old stock of 

 Gordon. 



Upon the final settlement of the Seton Gordons 

 in Strathspey, the name spread rapidly, and it is 

 far from improbable that Gordon of Auchluchrles 

 was a Seton Gordon ; there is just as much like- 

 lihood of the truth of the one supposition as of 

 the other. His connection with either fiimily is 

 purely conjectural; but as he was of the clan 

 Gordon, he was of course a Highland cousin of all 

 its magnates, and he would be graciously received 

 by them, seeing he was a general in the service of 

 the Czar Peter, and Envoy from Russia to the 

 English Court. J. M. 



POPIANA. 



The Pope and Blount Letters (P* S. xii. 377.)— 

 Mb. Cabeutuers says that Mr. A. Chalmers " ob- 

 tained the use of the original letters addressed to 

 Teresa and Martha Blount, . . . then in a loose 

 state, and . . . many were never returned, and can- 

 not now be recovered." Now before we can 

 count our losses we must know what our posses- 

 sions were. Does Mb. Cabeuthees assume that 

 the Blount family ever had in their possession all 

 the published letters professedly addressed to one 

 or other of the Miss Blounts ? If not, what is 

 the basis of his calculation ? It appears to me 

 that A. Chalmers is responsible for all those letters 



