186 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
placed on board a Swedish ship, in which he arrived at Falmouth in September
1796.
The “ Gordon Highlanders ” returned to Britain in 1795, but in consequence
of the disturbances then breaking out in Ireland, they were immediately hurried
off there. The Marquis directly followed, resumed the command, and was
actively employed with the regiment until tranquillity was restored, Notwithstanding
the irksome and disagreeable nature of a soldier’s duty connected with
civil commotion, the conduct of the “ Gordon Highlanders ” in Ireland was highly
exemplary; so much so, that on leaving the county of Wexford, in which
district they had been principally employed, an address was presented by the
magistrates aiid inhabitants to the Marquis, in which, after paying a marked
compliment to the orderly conduct of the men, they stated that “ peace and order
were established, rapine had disappeared, confidence in the Government was
restored, and the happiest cordiality subsisted since his regiment came among
them.”
In the expedition to the Helder, in 1799, the “Gordon Highlanders,” whose
number a short time previously had been changed to the 92d, with the Marquis at
their head, formed part of General Moore’s brigade, and although not engaged in
repelling the first att,ack of the enemy, bore a distinguished part in the great action
at Bergen on the 2d October, in which the Marquis was severely wounded.’
So entirely did the conduct of the regiment on this occasion give satisfaction to
General Moore, “that when he was made a Knight of the Bath, and obtained a
grant of supporters for his armorial bearings, he took a soldier of the Gordon
Highlanders, in full uniform, as one of these supporters, and a lion as the
other.”
The Marquis had obtained the rank of Colonel in the Army in 1796,-that
of Major-general in 1801, and was placed on the North British Staff as such from
1803 till 1806, when he was appointed Colonel of the 42d, or Royal Highland
Regiment.’ At the general election of that year he was chosen Member of
Parliament for Eye, in Suffolk; but he only remained a short time in the
Commons, having been, on the change of ministry which soon followed, summoned
by writ to the House of Peers, by the title of Baron Gordon of Huntly, in
the county of Gloucester. In 1808 he was raised to the rank of Lieutenant-
General in the Army ; and the same year, on the resignation of his father the
Duke of Gordon, the Marquis was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of the County of
Aberdeen.
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales testified his approbation of the conduct of the Marquis
on this occasion by the appropriate present of a Highland mull, set in gold, decorated with valuable
Scotch pebbles, and inscribed with a handsome compliment in the Gaelic language.
a On the anniversary of the battle of Alexandria, the 21st March 1817, his Royal Highness the
Duke of York, then President of the Highland Society, in the chair, presented the Marquis of Huntly,
on behalf of the 42d Regiment, with a superb piece of plate, in token of the respect of the society for
a corps which, for more than seventy years, had continued to uphold the martial character of their
country. This his Royal Highness accompanied with an impreasive speech, in which he recapitulated
the various services of the corps, from the battle of Fontenoy down to those of Quatre Bras and
Waterloo.