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John Gordon (bishop)


John Gordon (1 September 1544 – 3 September 1619) was a Scottish prelate.

John Gordon was the natural son of Alexander Gordon (c. 1516-1575), Bishop of Galloway and former Archbishop of Glasgow, and Barbara Logie; his parents married, perhaps clandestinely, only in 1546, before Alexander obtained ecclesiastical preferment (for this, see his new DNB entry).

Gordon first studied at St Leonard's College, St. Andrews. In June 1565 he was sent to pursue his education in France, having a yearly pension granted him by Mary, Queen of Scots, payable out of her French dowry. He spent two years at the universities of Paris and Orleans. On 4 January 1568 he was confirmed by royal charter in the bishopric of Galloway and abbacy of Tongland, vacated in his favour by his father; the charter specifies his skill in classical and oriental tongues. At this time he was in France, in the service of the Protestant leader, Prince Louis of Conde, but he soon came to England, entered the service of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, and attended him at the conferences of York (October 1568) and Westminster (November 1568), held for the purpose of considering Mary's guilt.

When Norfolk was sent to the Tower (October 1569), Gordon transferred his services to Mary herself, and seems to have remained with her till January 1572, when she was deprived of her household. Mary commended him to the French king, and he enjoyed the post of gentleman ordinary of the privy chamber to Charles IX, Henry III, and Henry IV, with a yearly pension of four hundred crowns. He saved the lives of several countrymen at the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, but never renounced Protestantism. In 1574 he exhibited his Hebrew learning in a public disputation at Avignon with the chief rabbi Benetrius. By his marriage in 1576 with Antoinette, widowed daughter of Rene de Marolles, he acquired an estate which gave him the style of "Sieur of Longorme". With the see of Galloway his connection was never more than nominal, the revenues going to his father or to his brother George.


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