Gordon Red Weathered Tartan

Most clan tartans acquired their families by accident; this one was chosen deliberately, by a duke selecting from three patterns a Huntly merchant had put in front of him in 1793.

A Berwickshire place-name that moved north

The name is territorial and Lowland in origin, from the barony of Gordon in the Merse, in Berwickshire. The first man on record holding it is Richard of Gordon, earlier of Swinton, who died about 1200 and granted land to the monks of Kelso between 1150 and 1160. Sir Adam Gordon appears at the sharp end of the wars of independence: he supported William Wallace at the recapture of Wigtown castle in 1297 and was made its governor, later shifted his allegiance to Robert Bruce, and was killed at Halidon Hill in 1333. It was his son, Sir Alexander, who first carried the designation of Huntly.

The move north came as reward for backing Bruce, with lands in Strathbogie in Aberdeenshire. The stronghold there was renamed Huntly in 1506, borrowing the name of the older Berwickshire property. The line changed hands and surnames along the way: Alexander Seton married the Gordon heiress Elizabeth, and his family took the Gordon name, becoming Earls of Huntly and later Marquesses. Alexander, first Earl, was styled Cock o’ the North, and the epithet stuck to his successors. The chiefship is held today by the Marquess of Huntly, Granville Charles Gomer Gordon being the thirteenth of that title.

Three patterns and a duke’s choice

The account kept by the House of Gordon has Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, commissioning three variations on the Government sett — the pattern generally called Black Watch — from William Forsyth, a merchant in Huntly, in 1793. The Duke kept for himself and for the regiment he was raising the version carrying a single yellow overcheck, and the two he did not want were offered to cadet branches of the family. That is the likeliest origin of the separate setts recorded for Gordon of Esslemont and Gordon of Abergeldie. The same account notes that the Gordon Fencibles, raised in 1793, wore the pattern before the regiment that made it famous existed.

What makes this history unusually clean is that the design is not claimed to be ancient. It is a Government sett with one line added, produced to order, at a datable moment, for a named customer. The yellow line is the whole of the invention.

The 92nd and the yellow line

The regiment was raised in Aberdeenshire on 10 February 1794 as the 100th (Gordon Highlanders) Regiment of Foot, renumbered the 92nd in October 1798, and formally styled the 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) from July 1861. On 1 July 1881 it amalgamated with the 75th (Stirlingshire) Regiment to form the Gordon Highlanders. Credit for the raising is given differently in different places: the clan sources name Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, while the regimental numbering and some published accounts attach it to his son George, who commanded it and later succeeded as fifth Duke. The record allows both readings, since the money and the influence were the father’s and the soldiering was the son’s.

The regimental and clan versions of the sett are not identical, and the difference is worth knowing if two Gordon kilts in a room do not match. The pattern issued to the regiment lacks the black guard lines on either side of the yellow overcheck; the clan version has them, and its black bands are narrower. In military nomenclature the Gordon pattern sits in the family of Government setts numbered 5A, the same bracket as the Mackenzie regimental.

Dress, red, and the wider Gordon list

The Gordon name carries an unusually large number of recorded setts. Alongside the principal green and blue pattern the Scottish Register of Tartans holds a series of Gordon Dress variants, a red Gordon, the Esslemont and Abergeldie branch patterns, a miniature version and a Gordonstoun school tartan — something close to twenty entries under the surname. The dress patterns, which lift white into the ground, are nineteenth-century and later reworkings for evening use rather than old designs. There is also a report that Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun asked in 1618 that the plaids of the family and its dependents be brought into agreement, an early gesture towards uniform dress, though it says nothing about what pattern he had in mind.

Who it belongs to

Anyone of the name, and anyone descended from the Gordon lines through another surname, has an obvious claim. Beyond that, this sett has a second and much larger constituency: it was a regimental tartan for close to two centuries, and men who served in the Gordon Highlanders or whose fathers did wear it on that ground rather than on genealogy. Given how the pattern came into being — as cloth commissioned for soldiers — that use is as authentic as any other.

Sources: The House of Gordon USA, Tartans; Clan Gordon, Wikipedia; 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) Regiment of Foot, Wikipedia; Regimental tartan, Wikipedia; Scottish Register of Tartans; Peter MacDonald, Tartan History, scottishtartans.co.uk.