DUNROBIN 



the top of Dunrobin Castle, " which shews us/' says 

 Gordon of Straloch, "that whatsoever by fate is 

 allotted, though sometimes foreshewed, can never be 

 avoyded. For the witches had told Alexander the 

 bastard that his head should be the highest that ever 

 wes of the Sutherlands ; which he did foolishlye inter- 

 pret that some day he would be earl of Sutherland, 

 and in honour above all his predecessors/' 



For more than fifty years after this the two earls 

 and their successors waged almost incessant guerrilla 

 upon each other's lands and people, a condition of 

 affairs far from unusual between country neighbours 

 in Scotland during that troubled century, but accom- 

 panied in this instance by deeds of more than common 

 brutality. When Queen Mary came to the throne, 

 John Gordon, twelfth Earl of Sutherland, known as 

 "Good Earl John/' held the upper hand; but he 

 was forfeited and banished in 1563 on a charge of 

 complicity in the rebellion of his kinsman, the Earl 

 of Huntly. After Queen Mary's abdication in 1567, 

 he was restored by Act of Parliament, and returned 

 to Sutherland with his third wife, widow of the fourth 

 Earl of Menteith. 



During Sutherland's exile, you may be sure that 

 the Earl of Caithness had not been idle. He had 

 induced Sutherland's uncle, Gilbert Gordon of Gartay, 

 to marry Isobel Sinclair of Dunbeath. Gilbert died, 

 leaving one son, John, who lived with his mother 

 at Helmsdale Castle, a lonely fortalice about thirteen 

 miles north eastward along the coast from Dunrobin. 



195 



